Thanksgiving grace

Ring. Ring.

“Hi Gena. She’s just passed.”

My head sank. We expected this. We had been expecting it for months. But when the world loses someone like Grace, you really feel it.

For those who don’t know Grace, this story sheds light on the type of person she was:
One day, she witnessed an injustice toward an unhoused man who had come in to find respite and sit on a bench at the settlement house she worked at. “Get out!” the director yelled at the man, throwing a paper cup of water on him. The man had a mental illness and simply came to the office every day because he didn’t have anywhere else to go. The director was having a meeting, but Grace walked into the closed doors and interrupted the meeting. She said, “Why did you throw him out?! All he did was sit there! He wasn’t doing anything harmful!” In an interview with me she told me, “I wanted him to know I was very upset about it.” After that incident, Grace went and checked on the man. His arms were shaking, he was physically and emotionally wrought. That happened midweek. By Friday, Grace was fired. “I knew I would lose my job, but there was an injustice. I felt that man had no one to speak for him. He couldn’t speak for himself. I knew in my heart and gut that what the director did was wrong,” she said.

Grace Mary Miller, born in July 1935, was named after her paternal grandmother, Grazia. The Italian version of her name was Grazia Maria Mierolo, but she never used that, even though I called her Zia Grazia sometimes making her smile deeply. When Grace’s grandfather first came the United States from Italy, he americanized his name to Miller so he’d get hired by the railroad company—notorious for not hiring Italians.

After 90 years of life, the last standing of her generation in our family, Grace passed on to join many others in our family including her twin brother, Neil, and her beloved older sister, Gina, of whom I am named after. She left a wake in her passing that will be felt for generations. The events of the following days had me often thinking about her worldview of good and bad, her legacy of mothering, and the ways in which I know she lives on.

THURSDAY
Grace died on a Thursday afternoon. I had already signed up to attend a community meeting on the immigration and economic issues our community was facing, especially the effects the Big Beautiful Bill will have on our neighbors and our community. I had just started getting involved in a nonpartisan, progressive organization. Earlier that week, I had taken a training from an immigrant rights organization teaching Charlotte metro area residents how to respond when Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) showed up. Charlotte had a lot of incidents during what was called Operation Charlotte’s Web. But the people of Charlotte showed up, too, and disrupted a lot of potential illegal apprehensions. A group of us was working toward organizing if CBP showed up in my county which borders Charlotte’s county.

As I sat there at the local art studio, looking around at the many people in my own community I had never met, I thought, this is exactly the type of meeting Grace would attend—or lead. Her constant fight for justice, especially for the homeless, made a name for herself —infamous to some politicians she wouldn’t stop holding accountable—in Rochester, New York.

We talked about how the absence or reduction of SNAP benefits would affect children, families, and the economy. We talked about housing and homelessness. We talked about the reduction to the public education budget in North Carolina, and how that would affect education overall. If Grace were sitting next to me at that table, she would have had a lot to say about each of these. She had 35 years of experience serving Rochester’s unhoused, and she never waivered on her stance to keep the doors open of the House of Mercy, the low-barrier shelter she founded which imposed no limits on how long a resident could stay. She told me a story of one man who stayed a full year at the shelter. She had several people tell her to kick him out. She wouldn’t. He knew others thought he should leave. Months after he left, he came back with an envelope for her. He had set aside some money from his new job to give back to the House of Mercy.

Four years ago, when I interviewed her, she said, “It’s like people want rules and regulations, law and order. I believe there’s only one word: and it is love. It’s radical compassion, and it’s caring and loving the people who need us most. Rules and regulations keep people out. Inclusivity, that’s what Jesus was about: including the people that law and order said no to. He walked with the people who were rejected in society: the lame, the blind, he cured them and healed them out of love. He didn’t put them in institutions. He showed love and compassion and care. It’s just one word: love. And love encompasses all that. You can be crucified for living like that or wanting to live like that.”

FRIDAY
The day after Grace died, my son’s school had a fake bomb threat in the morning. In the evening, three teenagers fired shots in our little downtown during the annual Christmas tree lighting, a large community gathering where many families with little children were watching school choirs and dance troupes, shopping at businesses that opened specifically for the event, and enjoying the Grinch movie playing on a large screen TV in the middle of the closed-off street.

I feel Grace's words in my bones: “I believe in giving people second chances. And sometimes those in authority don’t like that. But people need that."

I read that one of the 17-year-olds will be charged as an adult if he comes out of critical condition. And I hear the voices of those around me ready to say, “He deserves more.” And I feel that. I wonder what the teenager who called in the fake bomb threat will face as a punishment, and part of me is eagerly awaiting to hear what the punishment will be. That threat came on the heels of a high-school walk out protesting the presence of CBP and ICE in the area.

For the past two weeks, immigrant neighbors have been scared. They have not left their homes to even go to the grocery store. School attendance decreased. My friend from Central America said to me, “It’s worse than COVID, because at least with COVID, we could put a mask on and leave our houses.”

After the events of Friday, I feel her words so deeply: school was not safe. Shopping was not safe. It was not safe to attend community events.

SATURDAY
On Saturday, I attended a social event that had me wondering what makes people make the right choices, and what makes people choose poorly? Is it social capital? Is it familial bonds? Is it upbringing? But what if the difference is so stark even within the same family structure? Is it opportunity? Morality? What is it?

SUNDAY
On Sunday, our pastor reminded us of the moment that Christ is on the cross and the thief asks to be remembered in Christ’s kingdom. “Today, you will join me in paradise,” Christ says. She talked about how God is there in the moments we think are too dark for God. There is no darkness that is too dark.

I’m not sure I can make sense of all I feel. When we get what we deserve, is that justice? When we don’t get what we deserve, is that mercy? Who decides what we deserve? When we get a mix of justice and mercy, do we become better humans? Ones that would never tear families apart? Ones that would never traumatize communities? Ones that would say to someone who has overstayed their welcome: stay longer. Ones that would stand up to injustice? What makes a human bad? Who is bad? Is it the director who threw water on the innocent man? Is it Border Patrol ‘just doing their job’? Is it the one who called in the fake bomb threat? Is it the one who fired shots around many innocent bystanders? Or should good and bad be reserved as modifiers of decisions, not human beings?

TODAY
On Thanksgiving morning, one week after her death, here's what I do know: As a child, Grace dreamed of having twelve sets of twins. But then when she grew up, she became a nun and took a vow of poverty. And yet, her dream came true in a very different kind of way. She became the mother of whole community of people who needed her most, at great sacrifice. “People [at The House of Mercy] feel that there is someone who has the mother qualities they’ve lacked in life, they feel they’ve found a mother. There’s no pomp and circumstance. They see me as a mother. They come because they know they’ll be helped, they won’t be turned away. They know that. They know that they are accepted and loved and the door is always opened to them no matter what,” she said.

Juxtaposed against Grace's life, as a mother, it feels somewhat easy to mother my young children. Grace saw the world through mother-like eyes, and I’m not sure I’ve developed that skill fully just yet. This is the legacy Grace leaves: not just to be a mother, but to mother the world. To feel the pain of others and take it on as your own.

When we move from noun to verb—which I do not think is assigned only to one gender—I think we start to see the adjectives of bad and good only belonging to decisions. Humans are not illegal. Humans are not bad. Nor good. But decisions are.

TOMORROW
I will continue to wrestle with my questions of right and wrong, justice and mercy. I will continue to hope that the essence of who Grace is will live on in the many people she mothered along the way, including me.