She died last week, and her memorial service was yesterday evening, but the gifts she gave to her community, her family, and her world are not gone. Nancy worked in a world of grave and frequent injustice and made justice the point of it all. She was a family law attorney when I met her, having reinvented herself after a divorce in middle age. She ran a practice that seldom made money beyond what her clients volunteered to pay. My own daughter availed herself of Nancy's help when a family crisis found her unable to contact myself or my wife who were out of the country. Hundreds of children grew up in her county with a better family life than they might have had without her help.

She had Polio in her youth in what had to have been one of the last epidemics before Science conquered that disease. It left her with a permanent limp and constant companions of pain and a crutch. No one noticed either unless they studied her carefully because she never allowed them to become a significant part of her day, they were just there. It is hard to describe nobility of spirit when what you remember is wit, humor and readiness to laugh at everything worthy of laughter. It is hard to see the parent in the person who never made her children into "children" but instead into adults worthy of her friendship. But it was never hard to see the dedication to family, community, church and humanity that composed Nancy's life. In the end the truly noble perish but their contributions linger on. Nancy was such a person.

In a way the loss of our parents is never easy to bear, but it must be bourne if we are to honor their gifts to us properly. Her children did her proud at her memorial as did her friends and her community. I am not a person who haunts memorial services but there are a few I will always remember, and Nancy's will be one of them. I saw her son coming of age in his presentation which was short enough and concise enough and full of respect but still gave humor as a measure of his love for his mother. I saw her daughters struggling with their emotions and each working out in their own way the greatest gift they could give their memory of her at that moment. I watched my wife and daughter both crying at various times in the service and laughing at others, each in its own way is high praise for the woman that Nancy was in her life. I watched a man, who obviously loved her deeply; give a eulogy that was true to her spirit and hope and faith in the future.

I am saddened by her passing, but she has given her gifts out so well and so completely that it will never leave a void except in the hearts of those who loved her. Nancy enriched the world with her presence and found joy in life wherever she was and regardless of whom she was with, and that gift lingers most of all. All of us who met her took some of that away if our hearts and minds were open enough to encompass joy in life regardless of complications and the presence of distractions like pain. It is in that joy, which she always shared freely, that I will most often remember her. The peasant summer evening at the theatre she helped build, the evenings at the concerts that she supported, the sound of the Opera that she so loved, the world of broken homes where she worked to soften the blows, and the decency and courage and humor that she brought to it all will linger. God bless and keep you Nancy, it is his duty to you now that you have done yours to everyone so well.