The Graduate of Grace
A retrospective evaluation of a life lived with paint-stained hands, a guitar in reach, and a heart big enough for everyone.
Official Progress Report
Department of Human Flourishing • Eternal Records Division
| Subject of Study | Instructors' Observations | Grade |
|---|---|---|
| Acrylics & Fine Art | Student demonstrates an extraordinary ability to see beauty where others see blank canvas — and an even rarer gift for teaching children to see it too. Fine heart, fine art. Prolific output. Gallery-worthy temperament. | A++ |
| Healing Arts (Shiatsu, Reiki & Reflexology) | Certified practitioner across three modalities. Known to heal what ails you before you've finished describing the symptoms. | A+ |
| Guitar, Voice & Cantoring | Could hold a room with three chords and a hymn — despite a hearing disorder that would have stopped most people from ever picking up an instrument. Church choirs operated at full capacity whenever she showed up. | A+ |
| Costume Making & Cake Design | Every Halloween and birthday was an event. Student's cakes defied both gravity and expectation. Costumes brought entire fictional worlds to life. | A+ |
| Baby Whispering & Perfect Playmate | Babies stopped crying on contact. Children materialized from neighboring zip codes. She kept a place in her heart reserved for grandbabies — and it was always full. | A++ |
| Knitting & Crocheting | Hands perpetually in motion. Produced enough scarves, hats, and toys to outfit a small village. | A+ |
| Horticulture & Canning | Pantry stocked with enough preserves to share with every neighbor. | A |
| Collecting & Reading | Read voraciously — she preferred nonfiction and really loved to learn about a variety of things. Could always recommend exactly the right book. | A |
| Animal Husbandry | All creatures great and small received equal affection. She rescued fallen birds — baby birds that had fallen from the nest — and gave sanctuary to injured animals. The student's love for animals was matched only by the animals' love for her. | A+ |
| Mom / Grandma / Aunt / Friend | Core competency. Second mom to Rita, Steve, Michelle, Melissa, Kylee, Kalia, Soha, and Kendra. Second grandmother to more than we can count. Loved without condition or limit. | A++ |
| Christian Faith & Good Samaritanism | Catholic, Lutheran, Christian Mystic — labels never quite captured it. She simply lived it. She gave sanctuary to people who needed a place to rest and recover. 'Let's pray for her growth,' she'd say when someone fell short. Loved without condition or limit. | A+ |
| Survivorship | Faced every hardship with grace and emerged holding someone else's hand. Lost her son Bill in 2020 and her brother Stephen, and carried their memory with quiet, unbreakable strength. | A++ |
| Swimming | Efforts noted. Enthusiasm present. Results... inconclusive. The committee recommends continued land-based activities. | C+ |
| Financial Planning | Student's generosity consistently outpaced budgetary constraints. Sharing always took priority over saving. | B- |
| Loving Her Body | The one area where the student's legendary compassion did not fully extend to herself. The committee wishes she could have seen what everyone else saw. | Incomplete |
Principal's Final Remarks
“In my thirty years overseeing the Department of Human Flourishing, I have never encountered a student who overcame such unthinkable challenges and refused to let herself be defined by tragedy — but rather by the love and steadfast strength she learned from each one. Her record is, frankly, unprecedented.”
“Student's artistic output alone would merit honors. Combined with her healing practice, musical gifts, and the sheer number of humans she mothered — biological or otherwise — we are compelled to create an entirely new distinction.”
“We note with admiration that the student's favorite quote was from Julian of Norwich: 'All shall be well and all shall be well and all manner of things shall be well.' The committee finds that she spent her entire life making it so.”