“Poor Little Rhode Island,” is a jaunty ditty that was featured in the Hollywood film “Carolina Blues” in 1944. For some reason, both its first line and its tune have remained lodged in my memory ever since.

Were I to quote its other lines, you would appreciate the song’s overall fatuousness. For example, in stanza two, the state is addressed (without a noun) as “You’re such a teentsy weentsy.”  Affectionate, possibly, but definitely smarmy.  

A two-week vacation in Rhode Island this summer prompts my reference to this absurd relic of the World War II era. Any time spent there serves to belie the condescending attitude of the song’s creators.

This season’s experience, like that of a sojourn in Matunuck, R.I. two summers ago, makes me wonder why so few Great Boston residents appreciate the virtues of that state as a vacation site. I’m no real estate flack but I value stylish houses and graceful shore lines when I see them.

Rhode Island’s beaches rival those of Massachusetts for beauty and grandeur. Where it has the advantage is the accessibility of these sites, at least by comparison with the notoriously jammed approaches to Cape Cod. Traffic sometimes causes delays on I-95, the main drag through Providence heading south, but these tie-ups seem exceptional rather than the rule.

One of our motives for visiting Rhode Island was the opportunity to be near a favorite cousin who lives in the town of Wakefield. Spending time with her always brings pleasure to us and other family members.

Our vacation this year meant house-sitting in our cousin’s neighborhood for people not previously known to us. Part of the experience involved getting to know the workings of a home quite different from our own. The challenge of finding this structure’s virtues and coping with some of its surprises proved a continual source of fascination.

The presence of the family’s cat, Java, offered a special challenge. He, it turns out, is remarkably vocal and insistent on his own ways. My general approach was to give him as much time outside the house as possible. But my wife, who served as interpreter between us, was charmed by his affectionate temperament and exotic good looks.

Some readers will remember that we had 13 years of previous experience at home with an ornery cat, Phileas J. Fogg, by name. Phil was never cuddly and would often pose non-negotiable demands. We missed him when he was gone, though, and our recent experience reminded us of the joys and frustrations of having a pet.    

Wakefield is a charming place, by and large. The neighborhood where we stayed features houses with large porches that often curl around the whole front of the structure. Part of the daily pleasure of being there turned out to be the breezes that, almost invariably, cooled the porch. It proved to be the best site for reading and conversation.

Early mornings, I would stroll down to the local old-fashioned shopping center where I bought newspapers at Healy’s store. The proprietor, with whom I share a first name, proved a genial fellow with whom I immediately found common ground. A procession of customers, most of them male, would also come in to get their newspaper. Sales of the Providence Journal boosted my morale: newspapers continue be a vital, if ancient, technology.

Papers in hand, I would often proceed to “Appetites,” a local coffee shop, for morning tea and muffin. There, more of the town’s old boys would sit and exchange local gossip.

One of them, Tom, announced one morning that he was not at the top of his game. He was definitely not feeling his best.

“What’s wrong?” I asked with the innocence of a visitor. “My dog died,” Tom replied. Summoning up such sympathy as this canophobe could muster, I expressed condolences to the man.

Soon after, he informed me that he was “just kidding.”

With a next door neighbor I fared much better. Born in 1924, this tall slim man immediately seemed to me remarkable for his physical abilities. Conversation revealed that he left college in his freshman year to enter the Army Air Corps. After training, he piloted a B-17 over Italy, bombing German positions in the north.

It fascinated me that he could take on such responsibility at age 19, commanding an 11-man crew and managing such a large plane. With modesty typical of the man, he dismisses these feats, quoting one of his flying instructors who told his pilots-in-training: “It’s just like driving a car.”

This veteran also dismisses talk of “the greatest generation.” Instead, he feels that the war gave to his age peers a definite structure for their young lives. It was easier, he thinks, for them to find themselves in the world than it has proven for many young people these days.

Who knows? This Rhode Island sojourn may at last root out of my head both music and lyrics of that silly old song.

Richard Griffin

Someone asks you the identity of a friend with whom you have recently spent time. Despite yourself, you cannot come up with her name. A quick mental review of the women you know best produces no results.

You feel frustrated at being unable to remember a person you know well. Why, you wonder, must I struggle with a label for such a familiar face? What is happening to me that I have failed to recall someone so close?

Shrugging it off, you pronounce it to be a “senior moment.” You have long since concluded that it is one of aging’s most typical experiences. Society has invented this term, and you hear it used often.

For the last few years, I have been carrying on a vigorous one-man campaign against the expression. I believe it to be in the best interests of my age peers to stop speaking of memory lapses this way.

Though it may seem harmless, even playful, to label our temporary inability to recall words as senior moments, it actually does harm to us in the long run. This conviction of mine has been strengthened of late by two women psychologists who have reported on their research.

These scholars, Laurie O’Brien and Mary Lee Hummert, took three groups of middle-aged men and women and gave them a memory test. The people had two minutes to study a list of 30 words. Then they were asked to write down as many as they could recall.

The first group was told they would be compared with people over age 70. Participants in the second group were told they would compete with people in their 20’s. Finally, members of the third group were not to be tested against any others.

You might expect the second group to have been intimidated by being compared to young people. After all, those in their 20’s reputedly have sharp memories with few deficiencies. It seemed, for all the world, an uneven contest.

But, to my surprise and apparently that of the researchers, the test takers who did worst were those pitted against people over 70. These middle-agers could remember only 12 words or so, whereas those compared with the twenty-somethings scored more than 14 words. They did just as well as the test takers who were not compared with any other group.

Erin Linn, a friend and neighbor who is an active scholar in psychology, says of this type of research: “I think it’s very important. It adds to our knowledge about the importance of stereotypes.”

Dr. Linn has hit on the central meaning of the experiment discussed here. Those who fared worst in the memory test were those who shared stereotypes of the later years. They have bought into the widespread idea that people 70 and above have memories like sieves.

Just being associated with the oldest generations was enough to make middle- agers falter in recalling the words in the test. The researchers also reported, from other sources, that these same people, some of them still in their 40s, felt anxious about growing old.  

This stereotype finds dramatic expression in the words senior moment. It implies that my age peers have a stranglehold on forgetting and ignores the fact that people of all ages have lapses in memory.

The goal of my campaign is not to drop the phrase “senior moment” from the American vocabulary. Rather, I want to retain the words but change their meaning.

These words ought to let everyone know how later life can prove to be a season rich in thought and affect. It can be, and often is, a time for harvesting the beauty and meaning that mark the life of virtually everyone who has lived for decades. Fascination is the appropriate response to much that we have experienced.

My friend Frederick Buechner has written: “Every person we have ever known, every place we have ever seen, everything that has ever happened to us – it all lives and breathes deep within us somewhere whether we like it or not, and sometimes it doesn’t take much to bring it back to the surface in bits and pieces.”

So much of growing older is psychic and dramatic in ways that others cannot see. The senior moments in which I recall the richness of my world and my life are what make later life so precious. These moments live on with us and enrich our spirit, turning growing older into an inner adventure.

That’s why it makes sense to empty out the expression “senior moment” and fill it with new material. Why should we willingly downgrade old age, a time in our lives that deserves respect for its power to renew our appreciation of human existence?

Senior moments, yes, but only if they suggest the virtues of later life, not its deficiencies.

Richard Griffin

After arriving back at Logan Airport from a recent trip to Iowa, I decided to travel toward home by the MBTA’s new Silver Line.

It marked a first for me, taking the bus from the Delta terminal to South Station. I wanted to see for myself how well this new feature of the T’s transportation system works.  The results must be judged mixed.

I did save money. My fare was only 35 cents, as contrasted with the more than 40 dollar total cost of a taxi. Thanks to the senior discount shared with my age peers, I traveled most of the way home for a pittance.

However, the term used by the T to describe the vehicle turned out to contain a false claim. It took what has been named the “Bus Rapid Transit” a whole half hour to travel the few miles from my airport terminal to South Station.

There was nothing rapid about the trip. Surely, there must be a better way to cover this short stretch of tunnel and roads.

No wonder that the Association for Public Transportation, a group that advocates for improved services, continues to oppose the use of the term Rapid Transit “for service that is anything but.”

After picking me up, the bus stopped at Logan’s every terminal. Lots of passengers got on, mostly young people loaded with suitcases and heavy packs of various shapes. It made for a packed vehicle with inadequate space for the luggage and with some riders (fortunately not I) forced to stand.

What surprised me were all the other stops after we cleared the tunnel. It made for painstakingly slow progress with some people getting on and off at stops unfamiliar to me such as the Federal Court House and Convention Center.

It soon dawned on me that I would have probably made faster progress by taking the old shuttle to the airport subway station. Then, of course, it would have been necessary to change transport twice before I could catch the Red Line. But that inconvenience would be counterbalanced by getting to the subway much faster.

All in all, the Silver Line bus deserves the rating it receives from my friend, the transportation expert Christopher Lovelock. He calls it “a cheap way of not having a rail line to the airport.” The Silver Line bus that I took would have made traveling impossible or, at least, uncomfortable for many of my age peers.

One obvious temporary solution to the Silver Line time problem would be to make at least some of the trips express runs from the airport to the South Station. The T could add more buses and designate them as non-stop. However, the T rejects this approach: spokesman Joe Pesaturo told me the agency believes this would not shave off time from trips.

Unlike me, some other passengers bound for commuter trains at South Station may not object to the current system. They may regard the bus ride to their connection as worth the half hour. Others may fault me for looking for gold when silver signals progress over what the MBTA offered before.

However, to get people in general to use public transportation, you have to make it fast, reliable, and efficient. Otherwise, they will resort to private means if they can afford to do so.

What really needs to be done is first to extend the Blue Line in a loop to the airport. Secondly, the Blue Line needs to be connected to the Red Line. That has been long planned, with a link between Bowdoin Station and Charles promised as a condition of the Big Dig construction.

However, the Commonwealth has reneged on this promise, claiming that the Silver Line takes care of the matter. That forms the basis for a lawsuit currently brought by the Conservation Law Foundation.

The Silver Line in its current format may well be attracting lots of passengers but, from my observation, it is not providing the level of express airport service that many people need.  

These issues connected with public transportation need much more discussion than they receive. Why, in the current debates among the candidates for governor do we hear little or nothing about airport access?

In reviewing the web sites of the four major candidates, I found no mention of public transportation as an issue. Those who seek the office of governor should present proposals for improvement in this vital resource for citizens at large.

Older people, many of whom may suffer at least minor disabilities, are likely to hold public transportation to a higher standard. If we cannot foresee that buses and subway trains will provide us with seats and offer us other forms of security, then we may choose to stay home.

The Silver Line bus that I took would have made many of my age peers unable to travel or, at least, uncomfortable because of crowding and the overly long duration of its short route.

Richard Griffin

In the dark of the movie theater, a significant moment has come. Across the screen comes action that I have seen before, some three hours ago. It's time to leave.

I lean over and whisper to my companions: “This is where we came in.” So we stand up, and shuffle past the other kids who are sitting between us and the aisle, perhaps spilling some of their popcorn on our way out.

As Roger Angell observes in his new memoir Let Me Finish, the phrase “This is where we came in”  has dropped out of use long since. People no longer arrive in the middle of a film. Almost everyone takes pains to show up at the time when the film starts, if not earlier for the previews.

Angell adds: “Walking into the middle of movies was the common American thing during the double-feature era, and if one stayed the course, only minimal mental splicing was required to reconnect the characters and the plot of the initial feature when it rolled around again.”

Looking back, I feel astounded that we did not care about getting to movies at the beginning. How could we feel content with watching them from some mid-point to the end, and then from the beginning to the middle? It now seems nonsensical even if, as the memoirist recalls, the mental splicing demanded no great effort.

But, if nothing else, it meant that people were coming in and searching for seats in the dark, with the fuss that usually entails. Even then, I did not like kids crawling over me just as the tough guy with the gun was forcing bank employees to open the vault.

From the vantage point of six or seven decades later, I suspect the practice reflected the mentality of us moviegoers. It was not merely an ingrained habit to arrive at any old time. Rather, we did not look on movies as art but rather as simple entertainment, served to an American public that loved Hollywood stars with all their glamour and allure.

This habit of untimed arrivals also says something about the kind of movies Hollywood was making when I was a boy. Often, they were B films, those that a studio would turn out quickly without investing much money. They were meant to fill out the double bill and keep you in the theatre for a while longer.

However little went into them, I used to enjoy these potboilers, the equivalent of cheap novels. Commonly, the ones I saw revolved around crime and featured the low life of gangsters, their loves and their rise and fall. The actors I remember in films of this genre ─ Jimmy Cagney, John Garfield, and Humphrey Bogart ─ turned out to be more talented than I knew, as their work in other films would demonstrate.

The second-rate films also had the virtue of being short. In those days you would not have to sit through productions that lasted two and a half hours. Predictable they may have been, but you could be confident they would lead from a beginning and move toward a middle and a reasonably timely end.

Of course, there was a second movie that, combined with the other one, would mean a total of three hours or so of viewing time. Two for one seemed like a bargain: for your 15 cents, you could take in a lot of worlds different from your own.

The main feature I frequently found less interesting than its accompanying film, however minor-league the quality of the latter. In  the principal films, I remember interminable love scenes with Bette Davis and other stars whose prolonged kissing or teary confrontations with lovers would thoroughly bore me. When would the real action begin?

Nowadays film connoisseurs have a higher regard for the films of the 30s and 40s than I would ever have expected. They often admire productions that seemed to me at the time of their release to be just ordinary.

Of course, during my boyhood, I had only a vague concept of how a film was made. I did not realize how much technique went into the fashioning of movies, nor did I know of the talents required to direct a good film. And watching them from some mid-point till their end could not have helped me to appreciate them.

I regret that so many of my current age peers have given up going to the movies. (Less than one-quarter of the audiences last year were over age 50.) The many fine films I continue to see offer to those of us who see them both imaginative stimulation and new angles on the world. As fodder for conversation they also strengthen bonds with other people, especially the younger generations.

It’s been a long time since I last whispered “This is where we came in.” Beginning to end suits me a whole lot better.

Richard Griffin

For a lifetime, language has been important to me. I remember, in adolescence, trying to figure out what could be my life’s work. At one stage, I used to draft articles and submit them to my father for inspection and evaluation.

In the guise of a sportswriter, I wrote an account of a Red Sox game. I judged it a good piece of work but my father, a newspaperman of some eminence, after perusing that effort pointed out that I had not mentioned the final score.

That piece did not suggest I would become a second Red Smith or Roger Angell.

On another occasion, I wrote a review of a play I had seen. That, too, proved flawed, as my father had to point out. It did not look as if I would follow in the steps of Elliot Norton, the outstanding drama critic who wrote then for the Boston Post, as did my father.

Despite these adolescent fumbles, I continued to cultivate a taste for language. It was important for me to use words correctly and to write clearly and effectively. Becoming editor of The Walrus, my high school newspaper, sharpened my taste for words. So did my work on The Arrow, our yearbook, although my copy of this latter publication reveals clichés galore.

A current preoccupation of mine is the use of language by members of our federal government. I have been amazed and often distressed by the way words are manipulated to achieve dubious political results. To make matters worse, the American public seems altogether too little aware of this twisting of language designed to cover up reality.

The well known journalist Katrina Vanden Heuvel showed herself both eloquent and passionate about this subject in a talk I heard her give this spring. She began by saying of the current leadership in Washington: “This administration has reached, not just for its guns, but its dictionary.”

Notice, for example, the way advocates for radical changes in Social Security stopped speaking of “private accounts.” The new name, and one that shortly became politically correct, at least for the advocates, is “personal accounts.” The change may seem small enough to be inconsequential but it made the privatization of the system seem much more acceptable.

Another term applied to the same radical plan to change Social Security is “ownership society.” Again, it serves as a euphemism for “privatization,” a word that more honestly describes what is being proposed. But privatization must be avoided under threat of older Americans and others rising up in protest against the mangling of Social Security.

The White House has also used the term “compassion agenda” for a set of themes that justify pulling back on federal assistance to elder citizens. Describing these themes political scientist Robert Binstock writes: “Elders should be productive, assume individual responsibility, and become part of the ‘ownership society’ rather than relay on government programs.”

And what could be more humanistic than the phrase for an educational program that features testing? “No child left behind” sounds like an ideal that every American would wish to embrace. Let’s be inclusive and give all our children the advantages of a fine education.

A program to allow the cutting of trees in the nation’s forest carries the slogan “Clean skies, healthy forests.” This phrase has provoked critical wags to propose an alternative title: “No tree left behind.”

The Patriot Act is another specious title that makes it look as if the invasion of the privacy of American citizens is altogether justified by the virtue of patriotism.

Then, to justify a war that is dubious at best, the public has been served from a whole menu of evasive terms. “Regime change” sounds a whole lot better than “invasion.” And “collateral civilian casualties” goes down much more smoothly than “killing innocent people.” “Prisoners” have become “detainees.”

As to forms of torture, “sleep adjustment” becomes the substitute for sleep deprivation, whereby prisoners are kept awake by force, the better to wring information out of them.

The latest twist in language comes, not from the adminstration itself, but from the commander at Guantanamo, Rear Admiral Harry Harris. He has called the suicide of three prisoners an act of “asymmetric warfare waged against us.”

Besides driving me to my dictionary, the admiral has won my admiration for bravado. It takes chutzpah to imagine that people who have been imprisoned for four years under grueling conditions, without being charged with any crime, are actually perpetrating an act of aggression against us by hanging themselves.

The British author George Orwell sounded the alert about this kind of language. He pointed out what a threat it mounts to democratic freedoms. “But if thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought,” he once wrote.

The corruption of language, Orwell believed, leads to the loss of liberty. When words are twisted like pretzels into meaning what manipulators want them to mean, then we are all in trouble.

Richard Griffin

Eerily, wordlessly, Eve moved toward me across the auditorium at Lasell College. As she got closer, I feared that she would run into my midsection. Her double, Lucy, was at the back of the hall; at least I would have to deal with only one of them.

Perhaps I could stop Eve by speaking to her. I suggested this to the young woman who was with her. No, the woman explained, this humanoid robot had been programmed to respond to her voice alone.

Eve and Lucy measure some five feet high and have metal skin with pieces bolted to one another. They were visiting from the state of Georgia. The people who drove them to the conference had disassembled them before leaving and then, on arriving, had carefully put them back together.

The spokesman for the company that has developed these pseudo-people believes they will become standard issue in the homes of the future. R. Martin Spencer, CEO of GeckoSystems, Inc., claims that “mobile service robots” will perform many functions and revolutionize elder care. In Japan some nine companies are already developing eldercare robots; in the United States at least four.

Adopting Spencer’s vision, let me predict that a frequent 80th birthday present, 30 years from now, will be an Eve like the one I encountered at the conference. Family members will want their elders to have this electronic helper at hand to assist with medical reminders and household tasks.

Further, I fantasize that cousins of Eve and Lucy will appear in the bridal registries of the future. These creatures will be programmed for such routine duties as housecleaning and serving drinks and meals. In the more distant future, I expect these mechanical servants to become as common at home as computers are nowadays.

Spencer was one of several presenters at a Lasell conference entitled “Growing With The Times: Future Trends in Aging & Technology.” Keynote speaker Joseph Coughlin, founder of the AgeLab at MIT, feels strongly that the potential of the technology already at hand goes far beyond our actual use of it. “Although the technological invention is ready,” he has written, “the business model translating invention into innovation is not.”

It is not enough to focus on telemedicine devices that put us in touch with doctors and other health care providers at a distance, Coughlin maintains. Technology can enrich the lives of older people in many other ways, helping them to develop healthy and fulfilling lifestyles.

Today’s older generation would probably welcome such help; those in the rapidly aging boomer generation will insist on it. These boomers want more opportunities for learning, study, and travel, activities that can be facilitated and enhanced by technology.

Coughlin looks to technology that will make for “a seamless quality of life, regardless of age.” For him, microwaves and garage-door openers are examples of devices that have successfully improved daily life for many people. For those looking toward the future, he emphasizes keeping track of trends and changes in behavior so that technology can respond.

Pierre Larochelle, a professor of mechanical engineering at the Florida Institute of Technology, outlined the recent careers of robots. The first successful one was sold in 1966. It could pick up only 400 pounds, tops. Nowadays, robots only one-fourth the size of the earlier ones can pick up loads weighing tons.

Only recently have robots been directed to consumers, rather than to industrial use. They can now mow lawns, serve as vacuum cleaners, and check on medication-taking. Others, often very small, are now used in surgery and, by a factor of two, have been found to reduce recovery time and blood loss.

A robotic wheelchair developed by Dean Kamen, the inventor of the Segway, can go up and down stairs. I have seen it function and admire what it can do for people unable to walk.

“The future is extremely bright,” says Larochelle, who expects great leaps forward in the five years.  

Part of that future is already with us. I have just now discovered how one prominent institution uses innovative technology. Massachusetts General Hospital has had a robot on its staff for the last seven years.

A four-foot mobile service robot named DOC (Delivery on Call) is charged with taking X-ray results from one floor to another, riding the elevator like a real person. It moves on wheels and works from 8 to 4, taking time off at lunch, not for nutritional need but for hospital scheduling.

DOC maneuvers through sensors placed within its skin and uses a computerized map to find his (or her) way. The robot is recharged every night in order to be ready for work the next day. The MGH employee who manages the robot expresses satisfaction with DOC’s performance and speaks of his metal colleague without any suggestion of awe.

Richard Griffin

What sense does it make to attend a memorial service for someone you hardly know? I found out for myself a few weeks ago when I went to a liturgy for a woman named Nancy.

Nancy’s husband, Bob, was a college classmate of mine, itself a good reason for my presence in the church. He died long ago ─ in 1972 ─but I still recall him as a fellow student with whom I had much in common.

Dorothy, the minister, began the service by recalling the telephone call she had received from Nancy a few weeks before her death. It led to a close relationship that Dorothy now treasures.

“To be in her presence was an enormous gift,” says the minister; “We became friends for life, no matter how short.” And she added, “What struck me about Nancy was her grit and her grace.”

In the year of her husband’s death, Nancy was only 41 and had three children to bring up. For a time, she planned to enter law school, but ultimately decided against beginning a career that might interfere with the care she wanted to give the children.

Instead, she earned a master’s degree in education and later caught on in the world of business. This led to a long and satisfying career in human resources within a large corporation.

Her own upbringing in Newton had featured close friendships. Nancy was one of four neighborhood girls who were pals. One of them, Barbara, shared fond memories of youthful adventures and good times together.

Nancy’s college years meant much to her, providing value for the rest of her life. Habits instilled in her by study and learning would prove lasting, as would the friendships that she first formed in college.

The greatest sustaining force in her life, according to the minister, was “her awareness that her children and grandchildren loved her unconditionally.” Receiving them at her summer house in New Hampshire gave her special pleasure.

Of her role as grandmother, one of her children, Beth, drew laughter by saying of Nancy: “She fancied herself Mary Poppins and Dr. Spock rolled into one.” Grandmother, she added, would interfere only when matters of health and education were at issue. However, her daughter recalled that the latter two subjects “were never discovered to have any limits.”

At age 69, Nancy moved from a suburban Connecticut setting into Manhattan. There she engaged in volunteer activities and enjoyed the arts. A classmate named Ruth remembers that Nancy “could not stand the current government in Washington.”

More positively, when she was terminally ill, Nancy wrote of wanting “a better life for the world’s unfortunate people.”

These notes about one woman’s life and death have taken shape from the intermittent jottings of this journalist. Their obvious incompleteness fails to indicate the full scope of that life with its accomplishments and its trials.

Looked at from one angle, this record suggests a woman who had it all. However, that did not happen all at once. As one friend of Nancy observed about her and some other women of the era, “We were the lucky generation; we could have it all, but sequentially.”

Nancy’s legacy to her family and friends stands out boldly. Her love for them, her enthusiasm for life, her appreciation for beauty ─ these are gifts that they treasured in her and will continue to value.

Even without knowing her, I felt moved by hearing about the many facets of a life eagerly lived. In fact, at various points in the service I was stirred by the varied revelations of Nancy’s character. Her daughter Beth has learned from her mother’s example that “life’s circumstances define us only up to a point.”

In accepting full responsibility for a still young family after her husband’s untimely death, this woman showed strength of heart and soul. It was reported that she chose not to marry again because she wanted her children to be formed by herself without the perhaps problematic influence of a stepfather.

It’s hard to grasp the meaning of a life before its end. Only from the perspective of the complete span of years can one appreciate the shape of that life.

The cultural anthropologist, Mary Catherine Bateson, speaks of the need many modern women have discovered for “composing a life.” In a book that takes this phrase as title, she writes of working “by improvisation, discovering the shape of our creation along the way, rather than pursuing a vision already defined.”

Elsewhere Bateson suggests that “personal life no longer proceeds by straight lines but requires adjustment and exploration.” This voyage of discovery is what I came to see in Nancy’s life as she faced a series of challenges.

Obviously, a memorial service is not sufficiently long or detailed to convey a  person’s life in its totality. However, it delivered enough for me and others to appreciate the beauty of one woman’s life lived ardently and fruitfully.

Richard Griffin