"The world is better because . . . [she] lived in it."

At sundown this evening, we lit the Yahrzeit candle for my mother, who passed away a year ago at the age of 95.  She was a wonderful and great woman.

http://washingtonjewishweek.com/18712/hilda-barcan-fishback/community/obits/   

Since all of our immediate family were here Thanksgiving Weekend, we went to visit the cemetery together.  Bobbi chose this very appropriate and meaningful portion from the Reform Yom Kippur memorial service to read at her gravesite.  I thought I would share it:

"If some messenger were to come to us with the offer that death should be overthrown, but with the one inseparable condition that birth should also cease; if the existing generation were given the chance to live for ever, but on the clear understanding that never again would there be a child, or a youth, or first love, never again new persons with new hopes, new ideas, new achievements; ourselves for always and never any others – could the answer be in doubt?

"We shall not fear the summons of death; we shall remember those who have gone before us, and those who will come after us!

"Let us treasure the time we have, and resolve to use it well, counting each moment precious – a chance to apprehend some truth, to experience some beauty, to conquer some evil, to relieve some suffering, to love and be loved, to achieve something of lasting worth.

"Help us then, to fulfill the promise that it is in each of us, and so to conduct ourselves that, generations hence, it will be true to say of us: The world is better because, for a brief space, they lived in it."