(Reader Note: The word “anatomy” usually refers to a physical body. In a less literal sense, anatomy denotes an analysis of something. This “Farewell Anatomy” represents how a handful of people were processing the end-of-life for Jessica Hughes.)
By Patty Huston-Holm
“Please pray for Reverend Jessica. Today is her birthday. Fever of 109.” – text from Mary Jane Dennison, Savannah, Georgia, at 9:30 a.m. Eastern Standard Time on Wednesday, Dec. 3, 2025.
The average human body temperature is 98.6 Fahrenheit (37 Celsius) degrees. Body fever is a concern. If it rises above 105, organs begin to malfunction and eventually fail.
The Rev. Dr. Jessica Hughes, right, with her University of South Africa (UNISA) thesis supervisor, Prof. Marilyn Naidoo
Like Jessica Hughes, Mary Jane, along with her husband, Brian, served in Uganda through the Society of Anglican Missionaries and Senders (SAMS). The Dennisons got to know Jessica as they lived near her apartment adjacent to Josephine Tucker Hall on the Uganda Christian University (UCU) campus in Mukono. All now are back living in the United States.
Before this…
Heidi Reichert, Communications Coordinator, Diocese of the Mid-Atlantic and a long-time friend of Jessica, was among friends planning a 55th birthday celebration – complete with smiles, prayers and cupcakes.
“I don’t think she will be able to eat the cake,” Heidi said on Monday, Dec.1. “But maybe a bit of the icing or a sip of a chocolate-peanut butter smoothie that she loves.”
Jessica Louise Hughes, confined to a bed in her Woodbridge, Va., home, had suddenly taken a downward spiral in her brain cancer battle and was not able to eat.
“She does a thumbs up when she wants more morphine for the pain,” Heidi, two years younger than Jessica, said tearfully with the realization of how terminal cancer robs faculties of people like her friend. “She has 24-hour care now.”
Rev. Jessica Hughes, left, with Rt. Rev. Canon Alfred Olwa, Bishop of Uganda’s Lango Diocese, and Uganda Partners Board member, Jack Klenk, with his wife, Linda
Common brain cancer symptoms include headaches, nausea, vision impairment, speech difficulties, weakness and paralysis. Jessica’s glioblastoma cancer is the most aggressive and most common type with a poor prognosis for survival.
Before this…
“I went to see her a few weeks ago,” Rev. Amos Kimera said on the morning of that birthday celebration.
A month prior, in early November, he traveled roughly 460 miles from Winchester, Mass., to Virginia to say what he felt might be a farewell to a friend who also was a preaching colleague and godmother to two of his three children. While most on the UCU campus where Jessica studied and taught call her “Rev. Jessica,” the two daughters of Amos and Florence Kimera, Makaila and Moriah, know her as “Auntie Jessica.”
“Before they went to school today, they wanted to know if they could call when they got home and sing her ‘Happy Birthday’,” Rev. Amos said on Dec. 3. “They adore her. She always brings them books and spends time with them.”
The Kimeras, which number five with the birth of a son not yet age one, came to the United States from Uganda in 2019. He serves in a clergy hospice role and pastors St. Peter’s Anglican Church of Uganda in Massachusetts, a state with up to 4,000 residents with Ugandan ancestry.
The relationship between Jessica and Amos started when they met and worked together on their master’s degrees within the UCU Bishop Tucker School of Divinity and Theology. They were so close that despite their differences in skin color, classmates lovingly called them “brother and sister.” Amos also gave Jessica a name from his Muganda tribe.
Rev. Jessica Hughes greeting Rev. Sam Hadido, a former copy editor at UCU’s The Standard newspaper, after a Sunday service in UCU’s Nkoyoyo Hall
“I call her ‘Nakalema,’ which means someone who perseveres,” he said of the word from his Luganda mother tongue.
That tribal name was fitting for Jessica as “she worked hard and expected me to do the same,” according to Rev. Amos, who added, “She wouldn’t settle for mediocracy.”
He recalled how she looked over his schoolwork with intense scrutiny for perfection and later his sermons with advice regarding audience impact.
During that November 2025 visit in Virginia, the two reminisced about the student days and when he worked in the UCU chaplaincy while she taught and both of them preached under the university umbrella. That day, Rev. Amos, 42, did most of the talking.
“She was tired,” Rev. Amos recalled. “I didn’t stay long.”
Before this…
In August, Mary Jane flew from her Savannah, Ga., home to visit Jessica in hers.
“She was homebound with around-the-clock care,” Mary Jane said of that visit to her former neighbor at UCU.
Jessica Louise Hughes outside her UCU apartment
In the years before a 2015 rumor of an Al-Shabaab terrorist group attack that never happened, a couple dozen North Americans including Jessica, Uganda Studies Program (USP) students and the Dennison family of six, lived among Ugandans in the gated Mukono campus.
“I remember that Jessica stayed, while our family and USP students left,” Mary Jane recalled of the UCU exit by some non-Ugandans a decade ago. “She kept our cat, Meri, which made our children happy.”
Before the Dennison’s Uganda departure, Mary Jane was often a passenger in a Rav4 that Jessica drove with ease on unregulated, bumpy and heavily traveled Kampala and Mukono Town roads – something that Mary Jane continued to fear once getting her own driver’s license. She also remembered how Jessica exuded confidence with protecting and correcting the Dennison children and admired her understanding and respect for a culture that was not their own.
“The conversations since August became shorter and shorter,” Mary Jane said. “Gradually, she responded to texts only with a heart emoji.”
After this…
Just before the American Thanksgiving holiday and upon hearing the news of Jessica’s failing health, Prof. Marilyn Naidoo penned a prayer for the woman who she supervised in the University of South Africa (UNISA) doctoral program.
In a Nov. 26 email from her home in Johannesburg, South Africa, Prof. Naidoo asked that Jessica “know how deeply inspiring your journey has been.” She further petitioned, in part: “I thank God that you came forward with a critical area of study (discipleship), and my prayer is that this academic work and writing bear much fruit for the Kingdom of God…You have contributed wisdom that will live on and bless others, far beyond this moment. May the Lord continue to lead and guide you even in these moments. As you face this season, may you feel surrounded by love and peace…”
Jessica began her PhD work in 2014 at UNISA, which has the largest enrollment of any university system in South Africa. In her thesis, entitled Discipleship Praxis in Light of Colonial Mission History in the Anglican Diocese of Kampala, Uganda, she investigated how Anglican church leaders understood and lived out the concept of discipleship to account for how revival movements and missionary engagement shaped current practice. Nearly eight years later, in 2022, she graduated but without a ceremony.
Jessica Hughes and Heidi Reichert, preparing to fly home from Uganda after settling Jessica’s affairs and saying goodbye
“We were standing in the wings with maybe 2,000 people in the audience when about 50 support staff came on the stage using this occasion to protest their salary adjustment,” Prof. Naidoo recalled. “Security couldn’t get control of the situation and so the ceremony was canceled. I felt sorry for Jessica that she had come all this way at her expense.”
In place of the formal ceremony, Jessica and her supervisor got a photo of them together and then did a three-hour lunch.
Before this…
Like most teachers, Jessica’s student impact is far-reaching. In addition to the many UCU theology and divinity students under her wing, there were younger learners in other curriculum areas. One such student was Joseph Lagen. Now a UCU School of Law alum, he interviewed Jessica for a story about her engagement with distance learning during the Covid pandemic lockdown.
On the last Friday of November 2025 and during a break from his work with the Hiinga investment firm in Kampala, Lagen talked via Zoom, remembering a September 2021 Uganda Partners story he wrote on Jessica’s role with eLearning. She inherited leadership after the Covid-related death of the former head of UCU’s eLearning department.
While her expertise in divinity and theology was well known, Lagen learned that Jessica also had a master’s degree in human performance systems from the Arlington, Va., Marymount University and an undergraduate degree in psychology from George Mason University, Fairfax, Virginia.
“Mostly, I remember her smile and warm, joyful demeanor,” Lagen said. “I already admired her Christian work ethic, but was able to see that she was just as dedicated to improving e-learning as she was to that for which she was better known – theology.”
After this…
In a Zoom conversation on Dec. 3, Prof. Naidoo talked about the importance of overall research. While the audience for a 200-page thesis is limited, readership increases when smaller articles are extracted, published and used by other researchers – even when they die.
Specific to Jessica’s research, she pointed to the value of how she assessed how discipleship is practiced in the Anglican Church of Uganda.
“Her findings revealed that the church primarily focused on evangelism, lacking a genuine, deep, and holistic understanding or practice of discipleship,” she said. “Jessica maintained that this imbalance has resulted in the Anglican church producing converts rather than mature disciples, weakening the church’s ability to fulfil the Great Commission in its fullness…Jessica’s work is not merely academic; it is prophetic so that faith becomes life-giving and transformative for Ugandan Christians.”
At the same time…
On a cold, early December morning in Massachusetts, Rev. Amos recalled Jessica’s high quality writing skills and, in more recent years, how she confided in him that she felt her capabilities were slipping.
“Amos, I can’t write,” she had confided in 2022. “When I get back home, I need a checkup. I may need to pack up my things (in Uganda) and see what else God has in store for me.”
On their visit in November this year, Rev. Amos told her to “keep fighting…keep holding on” to which she replied “I’m ready to be with the Father.”
Even as a member of the clergy, Rev. Amos struggles with a goodbye to a colleague and friend.
“There are so many stories that only we two know and share,” he said.
As a farewell to Jessica saddens him, he looks at the biblical 2 Timothy 4:7 scripture “I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith” declaration made by the Apostle Paul as the end of that disciple’s life.
After this…
On Dec. 1, Heidi had been hopeful to give Jessica the “best birthday ever.” Not just in the role as Medical Power of Attorney, but as a friend, Heidi was at Jessica’s side as she said her farewells in Uganda two years ago and has been there before and since – intermittently holding tears, listening to music, being quiet and then watching TV shows like “Psyche” to laugh.
She orchestrated video “love” messages from other friends (some with dogs and cats) and started showing them to Jessica on Dec. 2 “just so she doesn’t get too tired watching.”
The memories and well-wishes via video (90 total) and Facebook (93 comments) that Jessica watched on her Dec. 3 birthday and the day before came from Uganda and, in the United States, from friends in Virginia, Pennsylvania, Arkansas, Tennessee and North Carolina. Some friends recalled the teenage, Gar-Field High School Jessica babysitting for their now-grown children. Three adults say she inspired them to lead in Kairos prison ministry. Many are members of All Saints’ Anglican Church that has years of loving and supporting Jessica in her SAMS work.
On Jessica’s birthday, her caregiver was able to give her applesauce and a latte-flavored protein drink but before the sun came up on Dec. 4, Jessica “was vomiting violently and couldn’t keep food down.”
Before this…
Before going to Uganda, Jessica had traveled to Alaska, Washington State and Canada in North America and to Germany, France, Italy and the United Kingdom. In a story that she wrote for Uganda Partners in April 2020, she asked for faith and perseverance during the Covid lockdown, quoting Jeremiah 29:7: “Also, seek the peace and prosperity of the city to which I have carried you into exile. Pray to the Lord for it, because if it prospers, you, too, will prosper.” She wrote: “Just as the Lord was with the exiles in Babylon, He is with us also.”
After this
At her wish, the Rev. Dr. Jessica Louise Hughes took her final breath on earth and went “to be with the Father” on Monday, Dec. 8, 2025. A memorial service/celebration of life will likely be conducted following Christmas with her cremated remains laid to rest in Bacon Race Church Cemetery in Virginia’s Prince William County.
(NOTE: Patty Huston-Holm, the author of this story and a volunteer with the Uganda Partners organization, often stayed to watch what Jessica Hughes called her “Meri, Meri, Quite Contrary” cat in a UCU apartment when Hughes traveled back to the United States. To Patty, she said several times, “I never planned to come to Africa, but God planned it.” Apologies are issued to those whose voices and images are not reflected in this legacy piece as your numbers are many and your love for Jessica goes deep with impact long-lasting.)
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