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Denise Washington and Diana Washington

Denise Washington and Diana Washington were mother-in-law and daughter-in-law who regarded each other as mother and daughter. Their bond began when Marcus Washington II brought Diana home in late 1987, while Diana’s brother Levi and parents Chris and Rochelle were still alive. Denise’s place in Diana’s life deepened through the subsequent losses in Diana’s family of origin.

At first, Denise knew Diana as a warm, expressive woman who matched her energy and loved her son. Diana later trusted Denise with the history of Levi’s life and death and the grief she carried beneath that warmth. Denise became another mother to her, without replacing Rochelle. She supported Diana through biscuit lessons, fears about motherhood, and illness. After Diana died, Denise carried the loss of a daughter while continuing to care for the family, as Rochelle had done after Levi’s death.

How They Met

Denise met Diana when her son Marcus Levi Washington II brought her home in late 1987. Marcus was twenty-one, Diana was twenty, and Diana’s brother Levi was thirteen. Marcus shared the reserve of his father, Marcus Levi Washington I. Diana, by contrast, was loud, warm, and quick to welcome strangers; Denise recognized in her a similar way of bringing people into a room.

Denise saw a kindred spirit in Diana and welcomed her as the daughter she had wanted. Diana came to regard Denise as another mother. Neither woman treated Diana’s relationship with Marcus as a competition for his affection.

Denise did not yet know the full Russell family history: Levi’s neonatal meningitis and extensive disabilities, Rochelle’s refusal to leave him at Rosewood, and the years of care that had shaped Diana’s understanding of communication and protection. Diana entered the Washington house while her brother, parents, and grandparents Teddy and Evie were alive. Teddy and Evie remained present in her life as they aged, and the Washingtons became an additional family and a crucial source of continuity as Levi, Chris, and Rochelle died in the years that followed.

Relationship Development

The Bond

Denise and Diana treated chosen family as fully familial. Diana called Denise “Mama” or “Mama Denise,” and Denise used “baby girl” for Diana. Marcus Washington I accepted their bond in his characteristically quiet way.

Both women were expressive, warm, and attentive to people who might otherwise be left out. Denise practiced that care through youth and women’s services, the food pantry, and other work at Greater Bethel AME Church. Diana filled rooms with conversation and made lonely people feel seen. Their methods differed, but both wanted everyone to have a place.

At Washington family gatherings, holidays, and basketball games, both women drew others into conversation and made room for people who might otherwise have stayed at the edge.

The instinct was similar, but each woman brought her own history to it. Denise’s warmth was sustained by faith and practice—Greater Bethel, decades of service, and the discipline of treating every person as worth showing up for. Diana’s years with Levi, and her anger at the discrimination he faced, strengthened her attentiveness to people whom others underestimated and her refusal to equate limited speech with limited presence. That history mattered, but it did not wholly create a personality Diana had already begun forming before Levi’s birth.

Diana Tells Denise About Levi

In the privacy of Denise’s kitchen, over tea, Diana told her about Levi. The telling was part of the intimacy they had developed as mother and daughter.

Diana described the brother born when she was seven: his neonatal meningitis and resulting brain damage, the doctors’ recommendation of Maryland’s Rosewood Center, and Rochelle’s refusal to leave him there. She described Levi’s full-body shrieks of laughter and his time on a blanket in Teddy’s garden, watching butterflies and fighting sleep because he did not want to leave them. She also recounted finding Levi dead when she went to wake him for breakfast, Chris’s death by suicide around the following year after years of pain and the loss of his son, and Rochelle’s later cancer and death in the mid-to-late 1990s. Diana believed her mother’s body had stopped fighting after losing Levi and Chris, although cancer remained the medical cause of death.

Diana entrusted Denise with the Russell family’s history and the grief she carried beneath her public warmth. By sharing the deaths of her brother and parents, she let Denise see losses that many people around her did not perceive.

Denise listened without trying to explain away or replace the losses. She accepted the account of Diana’s brother, father, and mother, as well as Diana’s eighteen years as Levi’s older sister, with the steadiness she brought to other forms of family care.

Denise carried Diana’s story with her. Marcus I later planted a garden in the backyard.

The Garden: Denise as Witness

Main article: Levi’s Garden - Washington Family Home

Denise’s role in the creation of Levi’s Garden began with receiving Diana’s account of her brother. Marcus I heard the story and planted the garden; Denise’s listening had helped make the gesture possible.

Denise watched from the kitchen window as Marcus I, who had never gardened, knelt in the dirt and planted marigolds for a boy he had never met because Diana needed a place to put her grief. She did not comment or involve herself in the building. She understood the garden as Marcus I’s answer to Diana’s story and as a way for him to express that he regarded her as his daughter.

Denise also watched Diana tend the garden and grieve privately among its flowers. She knew why Diana went there, but she did not follow, interrupt, or ask “are you okay” when Diana returned with dirt on her knees and red eyes. Giving Diana that space was another form of care: Denise recognized that Diana needed the garden as well as the kitchen in which she had first told Levi’s story.

After Diana’s death, Denise watched Marcus I return to the garden as his only visible form of grief for Diana. She later watched Marcus Washington III tend it, kneeling where his mother and grandfather had knelt. Denise witnessed its changes from a response to Levi’s story into Diana’s grief space, a memorial, and a family inheritance. Remembering that history was part of her role in the household.

Denise did not ordinarily tend the garden, although she watered it when no one else had and noticed when the marigolds needed deadheading. She left its regular care to Marcus I, Diana, and later Marcus III, respecting their connection to it as she respected Marcus I’s chair, newspaper, and silence. She did not kneel there; the kneeling belonged to them.

The Biscuits

Denise’s biscuit lessons gave Diana a way to speak about fears she had struggled to name, especially her fear that she would not be enough for her son.

During a lesson in late 1996, Diana was eight months pregnant with Marcus Washington III and making her fourth attempt at Denise’s biscuits. She had again made the dough too wet and overworked it. Her forceful approach worked on basketball courts, in boardrooms, and with other people, but the dough required cold butter, a light touch, and the willingness to leave it alone.

Diana could not leave the oven door closed or stop checking on the biscuits. She had begun checking on Levi when she was seven, listening for his breathing and feeling for fever after he came home as an infant. Finding him dead eighteen years later had broken her belief that checking could save him, but she responded by checking more intensely. Her vigilance shaped the lesson: as Denise taught her to fold the dough gently, she was also asking Diana to trust that some things could rise without constant intervention.

Denise began again with a new bowl. “Do what I tell you and nothing else. No improvising.” She measured two cups of flour, scooped and leveled, then added baking powder and a pinch of salt measured by long practice rather than a spoon. She cut cold butter in with two forks and left lumps so the butter would form layers. She added buttermilk slowly and showed Diana how to fold the dough from bottom to top, gently, rather than stir it.

The dough came together. Diana patted it out without a rolling pin—Denise warned, “I will use it on something other than dough”—then folded and patted it again to build layers. She used a round cutter with a red handle and did not twist it, because twisting would seal the edges and prevent them from rising. She placed nine uneven biscuits on the pan.

Nine minutes later, Diana opened the oven door. Denise called, “DIANA.” Diana answered, “I just LOOKED, Mama!” Marcus I responded from the living room with a low, amused grunt.

The biscuits rose, although one side was slightly flat after the oven lost heat. They were golden and layered, with the folds visible when cut. Diana ate one at the counter as butter melted onto her fingers. She considered it the best thing she had made, despite knowing that Denise’s biscuits were better; the achievement was that these biscuits were her own.

The lesson led Diana to voice a fear about motherhood rather than baking: “What if I’m bad at this.” She worried about feeding her baby and giving him the security she found in Denise’s kitchen. “What if I can’t do what you do. What if he grows up and the kitchen isn’t—what if I can’t give him what you gave Junior. What you give me.”

Diana summed up the fear: “I want to give him what I couldn’t keep.”

Diana had known a loving family and wanted her son to keep one. Her fear concerned continuity: a family that stayed, a kitchen that kept feeding, and people who remained alive. She wanted Marcus III to grow up with Denise’s kitchen, Marcus I’s chair, and a household whose warmth had lasted for decades. Levi’s neonatal infection had changed her family’s daily life; his death and the later deaths of Chris and Rochelle had taken away the home she had known.

Denise placed a hand on Diana’s belly, and the baby kicked against her palm. Denise said, “Lord, he’s strong.” Diana answered, “He gets it from me.” Denise replied, “He gets it from everybody in this house.”

Denise answered Diana’s fear directly: “That baby does not need you to be me. That baby needs you to be ‘’you.’’” She described the family awaiting him: a grandmother who made biscuits, a grandfather who showed up, the steady father she had raised, and a mother who filled rooms, coached with fire, and would make her son certain he was wanted. “He doesn’t need biscuits from you, baby girl. He needs ‘’you.’’ The loud, the basketball, the shoes, the—all of it. Everything you are.”

The lesson assured Diana that she was enough as the mother she already was. Her kitchen and her motherhood did not need to copy Denise’s. Diana’s energy, her basketball, and her good chicken would join Denise’s biscuits in a household where Marcus III would know what it meant to be fed by people who loved him.

Denise promised to continue the lessons: “Next Sunday. We’ll do it again. And the Sunday after that. And by the time that baby comes, you’ll have biscuits.” Diana replied, “They won’t be your biscuits.” She added, “Nobody’s biscuits are your biscuits, Mama.” Denise answered, “That’s correct. But they’ll be yours. And yours is enough.”

Because Denise knew the Russell family’s losses and Diana’s vigilance, she understood that the fear behind the biscuits concerned motherhood and the loss of a stable home. The lesson gave Diana permission to mother in her own loud, fierce, imperfect way, even if she opened the oven door nine minutes in. Diana never mastered Denise’s biscuits; the continued lessons remained a form of care.

Diana and Marcus III

After Marcus Washington III was born on January 21, 1997, Denise watched Diana devote herself to raising him. Diana later taught him basketball in the driveway, sat in the third row at center court for his games, and cheered more loudly than anyone else in the gym. Marcus III grew into a loud, expressive, warm presence that resembled hers.

Denise recognized her own habits in Diana’s parenting: talking with her son, drawing others toward him, and refusing to let him feel alone. Diana was building for Marcus III the kind of warm foundation Denise had given Marcus II.

Denise also recognized a difference: Diana checked on her son urgently, sometimes at thirty-second intervals, after learning through Levi’s death that a loved one could be gone by morning. Denise’s confidence came from decades of family continuity, while Diana’s vigilance came from losing her brother and parents. Denise understood both forms of love and chose to offer the steadiness Diana needed without criticizing the intensity of her care.

Family, Faith, and Cultural Context

Denise and Diana’s bond brought together two Black women who practiced care across generations and beyond biological kinship. Denise claimed Diana as a daughter, and Diana reciprocated by calling her Mama.

The Washingtons’ multigenerational household gave that bond a daily setting. Diana did not enter only Marcus II’s life: she joined a household in West Baltimore, and Denise’s welcome made room for her as a daughter. Their shared instinct for inclusion helped the relationship form quickly and endure through family losses.

Denise’s practice of inclusion was closely tied to Greater Bethel AME and decades of service rooted in her faith. Diana’s life with Levi gave her extensive practice listening to communication that other people missed and confronting efforts to diminish her disabled brother. Those histories helped the women recognize one another, while each had developed her own way of caring for others.

Both women acted on the conviction that no one should sit alone or be treated as less important. Denise’s church work belonged to a Black community whose institutions had sustained families through segregation and economic decline in West Baltimore. Diana’s defense of Levi grew from her family’s refusal to institutionalize their disabled Black child at Rosewood. Their commitments to inclusion took different forms but brought them close.

The biscuit lesson was one form of maternal knowledge passed between them. Denise’s assurance that Marcus III needed Diana herself gave Diana permission to mother in her own way. After the deaths of Levi, Chris, and Rochelle, Denise’s kitchen represented a family Diana could trust to keep feeding and caring for her son.

Diana’s words, “I want to give him what I couldn’t keep,” referred to the continuity lost through repeated deaths in her family. She had grown up in a loving Black household that resisted disability discrimination against Levi and endured profound loss. She wanted Marcus III to have the lasting household she found with the Washingtons.

After Diana’s death, Denise and Marcus I became Marcus III’s primary caregivers as Marcus II withdrew into grief and alcohol use. Denise cooked, kept the household running, attended games, and continued her work at Greater Bethel while grieving a daughter. Much of that labor was easy to overlook because the household continued to function; she had little room to stop or voice her own exhaustion. Her caregiving joined the work of other Black grandmothers who sustain family continuity across generations, although the particular demands and choices were hers.

Denise understood the scout game through her church-rooted faith. Keisha’s purple coat and place in Diana’s long-empty seat affirmed to her that love continued after death and that God remained present. Although Denise had not witnessed Diana’s unseen guidance, she believed firmly that her daughter had arranged it.

Diana’s Illness and Death

When Diana was diagnosed with triple-negative breast cancer in 2010, Denise supported her daily through treatment and decline until her death later that year. She cared for Diana as a mother, staying with and holding her through unsuccessful treatments, hair and weight loss, and the weakening of a woman whose voice had once filled every room.

Denise watched Diana die in a hospital bed. The illness had stripped away much of her strength and weight, while her memory and stubbornness remained. Denise continued to regard her as the daughter who had once matched her energy.

The loss also echoed Rochelle’s experience of outliving Levi. Rochelle had died of cancer after losing her son Levi and her husband Chris; Denise now faced the death of Diana at approximately forty-three. Denise knew Rochelle’s history through Diana, and the parallel added to the grief of outliving her own daughter.

Diana died later in 2010 at approximately forty-three. Denise continued to grieve her as a daughter in the ordinary rhythms of the household and in the care she gave Diana’s son.

After Diana

After Diana’s death, Denise helped hold the Washington household together through practical care and faith. Her son Marcus Washington II developed alcohol use disorder and withdrew from much of his parenting role. Denise and Marcus I took on Marcus III’s daily care without shaming Marcus II for what he could not then manage.

For Marcus III, Denise and Marcus I provided the continuity that Teddy and Evie had given Diana through her family losses: grandparents who remained present, kept a kitchen open, and cared for him when a parent could not. Diana had raised her son within that household so he would have its support if she died. She had been approximately twenty-five when she lost Levi and knew how suddenly a family could change.

Denise continued to grieve Diana while participating in the work and worship of Greater Bethel AME. Her faith operated through attendance, service, and prayer for Diana, Marcus II, and Marcus III. In her grandson’s face, laugh, and basketball, she recognized traces of his mother.

At the December 2014 UMD scout game, Keisha Clark sat in Diana’s former seat in the third row at center court, wearing a purple coat and laughing with Marcus III. When Keisha learned whose seat it was, Denise told her, “Don’t move.” Diana had guided Keisha there. Denise initially had no name for what she felt, but understood the moment as her daughter’s continuing care for the family, neither a replacement for Diana nor an end to grief.

Denise believed that Diana had arranged it. The conviction belonged to the same faith through which she prayed, kept showing up at Greater Bethel, and trusted that her daughter was somewhere beyond death. A seating arrangement that made sure her people knew they were loved was exactly the kind of intervention she recognized as Diana’s.

Impact on Each Other

Diana gave Denise the daughter she had wanted. Denise regarded their chosen bond as especially strong because both women had entered it intentionally. It depended on mutual affection, respect, and care: Diana matched Denise’s energy and returned the warmth Denise offered her. Neither woman needed the qualifier “in-law” to describe the relationship.

Denise gave Diana another mother without replacing Rochelle, whose name Diana carried as her middle name. Denise was present for biscuit lessons, pregnancy fears, Sunday dinners, and ordinary days after Diana had lost her brother and parents. The enduring house, family, and kitchen Denise had built became the continuity Diana wanted for her son.

Diana’s losses had taught her that the people she loved could be gone by morning. Raising Marcus III with the Washingtons gave her assurance that Denise, the family kitchen, and its routines would remain for him if she died. After 2010, Denise maintained that foundation through her own grief and Marcus II’s drinking.

Diana’s death remained a loss that faith, time, and community service did not erase. Denise cared for Diana’s son, continued to reach Diana’s grieving husband Marcus II, and carried forward her daughter’s practice of including others. She cheered loudly at games, brought strangers into conversation, and kept making biscuits on Sundays in the family kitchen.

These routines continued the family life Diana had wanted for Marcus III.

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