On a recent Monday, while the Pianist was inside looking at art, I was sitting in a chair in front of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. A good spot to catch up with the Sunday New York Times book review section.

There, on Page 9, was a review of “Colored Television,” by Danzy Senna, a novel about a biracial woman married to a Black man. According to the reviewer, it’s “funny, foxy, and fleet.” The Los Angeles Times says it is “the New Great American Novel.”

Senna’s mother is the writer Fanny Howe, who is white. Her father is the writer Carl Senna, who is Black.

Reading the review took me back to the late 1960s, when I was a fledgling lawyer at Hill & Barlow in Boston. Faneuil Adams, the firm’s senior partner, came to my office and asked if I could take on an assignment.

At the time, Adams, a widower, was keeping company with Mary Manning Howe, the widow of esteemed Harvard Law School professor Mark De Wolfe Howe. Adams told me that the Howes’ daughter, Fanny, was married to Carl Senna. Would I meet with Carl’s mother and prepare a will? (Coincidentally, after serving as law clerk to Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes and before taking up teaching and writing, Howe began his law career at Hill & Barlow.)

I had taken an estate-planning course in law school, so I thought I could handle it. A few days later, Mrs. Senna came to see me. Adams hadn’t mentioned that she was Black. She was the last thing from “fancy”—a petite, simply dressed woman with a winning smile.

I explained what was involved in preparing a will and asked her about her family and about her wishes. She told me that she had very little property. No house, no stocks, no jewelry, nothing of value, really.

I probed a bit. Perhaps something of sentimental value to leave to her children? She couldn’t think of anything offhand.

At this point, I wasn’t sure a will was even necessary, but I said I would be glad to write something for her to review. She gave me the particulars—names, addresses and the like. Then, as we were finishing our conversation and she was about to leave, she became animated.

“I almost forgot,” she said. “There is one thing.”

“I thought so,” I said to myself as I picked up my pen.

“I’m sick,” she said. “I only have a few months to live.”

I didn’t know what to say, but it didn’t matter. She knew what she wanted to say. “I want to leave my body to medical science.”

I didn’t recall learning about that in law school, but I assured her that we could put her wishes in writing. We did, and when the time came, her legacy was completed.

Hers is the only will I ever wrote. Today, more than 50 years later, her granddaughter is one of our country’s leading writers. “Colored Television” is her sixth book, and she has received numerous awards.

Mrs. Senna left behind more than she knew, not just her body but also a legacy in the form of a granddaughter who writes about matters of importance.

Joseph D. Steinfield lives in Keene and Jaffrey. He can be reached at joe@joesteinfield.com.