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She lost her mom, Bessie Ness, who was 85 when she died on Oct. 10. And now Ness is battling leukemia.
Despite all the pain and sorrow, on Thursday Ness and her brother Larry still were able to have a joyous Thanksgiving Day meal.
They joined dozens of other guests at Millersville's Grace United Methodist Church, which was offering a Thanksgiving meal for the community for the first time.
"It's real hard without my mom … so this helps out a lot," Ness, 54, said quietly, sitting down with a plate of turkey, stuffing, gravy, corn and other turkey-day staples.
Added her 59-year-old brother with a smile, "The food's much better than eating out somewhere. Plus, they're real friendly here and make you feel at home.
"It feels like family."
The church at 163 W. Frederick St., a few blocks from Millersville University, decided to offer the meal this year after seeing the need both in the community and within its own church.
Church member Stacie Skelly thought that "we need to do something like this" while having Thanksgiving dinner with her family last year.
"Even if we don't wind up serving hundreds of people, if someone has a need and we met it, then we've met our goal," she said.
But inside the upstairs church hall, the 10 tables, all covered with orange tablecloths and featuring Thanksgiving centerpieces, hosted a total of several dozen guests for Thursday's meal.
A few arrived early, thinking it started at 11 a.m. instead of noon, and got to see the church volunteers taking care of last-second details.
As folks arrived to the unmistakable aroma of turkey wafting out from inside the church, Lead Pastor John Laughlin greeted them just outside the door with a friendly "Happy Thanksgiving."
"This is what it's all about. The church is the people, not the building itself," he said, shaking hands with two men on their way in.
Said one volunteer, church member Brad Phelan, "If we can help one person, we've done our part.
"And you can't describe how good it makes you feel," Phelan said, adding that he almost "could do this for selfish reasons because of how it makes me feel inside."
Skelly, who after getting the dinner idea last year organized it with Melissa Cramer and Allison Schucker, said the holiday celebration gave people both from the community and within the church a place to go.
"So in a way, we've already served a purpose before we even started," she said, and then poured more cooked carrots into an enormous crock pot.
Along with the dozens of volunteers Thursday, there were others who couldn't make it Thanksgiving Day but still wanted to help.
So on Wednesday night, some 35 people were there getting the church hall ready, "and we had this place set up in 10 minutes," Skelly said.
Church member Dave Mitchell, whose job Thursday was an important one — making sure everyone had enough coffee — called it "a wonderful opportunity to help the community."
"We're in a community where we have college kids, who maybe can't get home for the holiday, so we're available to cater to them," and to others like seniors or the homeless and whomever else "we can help out," he said.
The dinner at Grace UMC was just one of more than a dozen free Thanksgiving dinners for the community offered, mostly at churches, around Lancaster County on the holiday.
In Denver and Ephrata, the pair of annual dinners at the Denver Recreation Center and Ephrata Pioneer Fire Hall were again a "booming" success, organizer Carol Haller said.
The four-hour dinners have served as many as 1,000 people at the two sites, and were still going strong a little before 2 o'clock, she said from Denver.
"There's a real need for this; you can see it. You can just look out and see all the people who are blessed by this," she said.
And the annual dinner at Colemanville United Methodist Church in Conestoga "went beautifully," organizer Gloria Chmiel said.
They served five turkeys and all the trimmings to nearly 70 people at the church or on a takeout basis and had 17 volunteers taking time on the holiday to help.
The guests "are so appreciative to be able to come and have this," Chmiel added.
