hope is a memory

“Memory produces hope in the same way that amnesia produces despair,' the theologian Walter Brueggeman noted. It's an extraordinary statement, one that reminds us that though hope is about the future, grounds for hope lie in the records and recollections of the past. We can tell of a past that was nothing but defeats and cruelties and injustices, or of a past that was some lovely golden age now irretrievably lost, or we can tell a more complicated and accurate story, one that has room for the best and worst, for atrocities and liberations, for grief and jubilation.”

― Rebecca Solnit

As disability activists have been warning for years, fascism feeds on pandemics, when eugenics tends to rear its ugly head, promising to purify society by ridding it of its “weakest links.” Historians will one day draw a straight-line from anti-maskers & anti-vaxxers to the 2024 presidential election outcome, and despite disabled people’s impassioned pleas, here we are.

But just as we can look to the past for dire warnings, mass death, and unfathomable human suffering, we can look to the past for hope, too.

Last month was the anniversary of my cousin Marcia’s death, a Catholic convert who dedicated her entire adult life to caring for the poor and the sick — even and especially the ones labeled “degenerates” and “undesirables” by society at large.

As my state strips civil rights protections for trans & nonbinary folks and advances a bill to criminalize vaccines; as Texas seeks to imprison trans people simply for existing; as H5N1, the Measles, and COVID-19 spread; as the Trump administration takes a sledgehammer to Medicaid, Social Security, DEI, scientific research, university funding and more … we must look to the past to learn how to fight for our rights, care for one another, and survive.

My cousin Marcia was just one person, and so am I—and so are you. Maybe we cannot singlehandedly alter the course of this country, but we all have it within us to help our neighbors and save lives.

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Nineteen years ago, my cousin Marcia — I always called her my aunt because she was a couple decades older — careened off I-80 on her commute home to Cedar Rapids from a long night shift counseling youth in Iowa City. Her car rolled into the ditch, and Marcia lay there until Highway Patrol discovered the accident scene.

I was closing out the cash register in an art boutique in Portland, Oregon, when I answered my cell phone to hear my mother crying.

“I am sitting with Marcia’s body,” she whispered.

“What do you mean sitting with her body?” I asked, even though, deep down, I already knew. Marcia lived with a ticking time bomb inside her brain, discovered after she started having seizures: an inoperable arteriovenous malformation she nicknamed Sheila — which I always pictured as supervillain Sheila Carter on Young & the Restless, lying in wait. Sheila lived up to her namesake, crafting a diabolical plan: a clot that, when dislodged, would almost certainly murder Marcia with a stroke.

And that is exactly what happened: an embolism, a seizure, Marcia losing consciousness before her car hit the ditch.

“She doesn’t even look dead,” my mother said. “I am waiting for your Aunt Joann so she can see her before they take her to the morgue.”

And the thing is, she’s not dead — not really. Marcia was the sort of person who made a mark on her community. If she wasn’t counseling at-risk youth, she was rolling up her sleeves to help feed the poor at Dorothy Day Farm in Williamsburg, which she co-founded with no capital to her name — and where she lived, despite freezing cold showers (even in the brutal Iowa winter), rat infestations, and needing to collect water with a cistern.

The goal: provide food for Catholic Worker soup kitchens, shelter for homeless people, and valuable gardening skills.

"As stewards of the farm, our obligation is to take care of the land," Marcia Davis says, "and to share its fruit with all who come here - no questions asked."

The land is owned by Wayne Schoff, a Lisbon businessman who allows the Dorothy Day community to reside on 25 acres rent-free

"It isn't costing me anything to have you folks farm," he says.

"Rather than the buildings being left vacant, it's better that someone is getting some use out of them.

Wayne Schoff was just one person, too. Two “just one persons” made a huge difference in the lives of people facing food insecurity and homelessness in Iowa.

I spent a lot of time on that farm in the early 1980s, where Marcia taught vacation Bible school. Church was never my thing, but I loved being in Marcia’s presence. She emanated a kind of light you rarely see in people, and I wanted to be like her.

And sometimes, when I am my better self, I am like her.

Last year, I told my therapist that I volunteered for a reproductive health clinic when I was fourteen, teaching peer sex education during the height of the AIDS crisis.

“I taught one of my first outreach sessions to a boys’ program, which when you consider my history … “ I trailed off.

“Do you think you did that because nobody was there to give that guidance to you?”

“I never thought about it that way,” I said.

But looking back, Marcia was there. She never sat me down and gave me “the talk,” but she showed me what it looked like when someone stepped up.

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After I moved for college, Marcia stepped up for people with HIV/AIDS, opening the only AIDS hospice in Iowa, during a time when being HIV positive often meant winding up on the streets — no income, no money to pay rent, no family willing to provide shelter or care.

October 1996, Cedar Rapids Gazette:

One AIDS hospice had opened previously in Iowa, lasting only two weeks until neighbors picketed until it shut down, preferring fear & homophobia over compassion. Marcia and her co-founder, Peter Bergman, pressed ahead, anyway. “We’re not here to debate whether the community will attack us or won’t,” Bergman said to the Gazette. “We don’t have time for that.”

It was not too long later that Marcia got diagnosed with the arteriovenous malformation. Time, for her, was much shorter than she thought. Sometimes I think about how Marcia pressed on in those final years, driven to keep helping her community even as Sheila lurked inside her. Instead of making her give up, it made her work harder.

Likewise, in 2025, we do not have time. We cannot wait on permission. We cannot give up because we are tired. Like Marcia, we do not have a choice but to press on even with grave threats, even to our lives.

Marcia had no money; she took a vow of poverty.

Marcia had no rich benefactors. No social media platform. No political influence.

She was just one person. But she did all of this, anyway.

I like to imagine her today, advocating for Long COVID patients and organizing an urban garden as food prices soar. Maybe she would still be helping out at Food Not Bombs. She is not here with us anymore, but she is still teaching me — and us.

We are all just one person, and just one person can do a lot.

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If you are facing food insecurity in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, Matthew 25 has a 50% discount on its CSA, as well as a 50% discount via the Farm Fresh Friends program at their farmers market and a free produce section at the corner store. You can also get a meal at their Groundswell Cafe and pay only what you can afford. Visit this site for details: https://www.matthew-25.org/i-need-help/

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