Marian Henderson Bray

Marian H. Bray (Mia) passed away peacefully in her home on August 18, 2023.

The daughter of Richard Van Bray and Marjorie Macomber Bray, Mia was born in Los Angeles, California and grew up in Charlotte, North Carolina. She received her primary schooling at Charlotte Country Day School followed by high school at Chatham Hall. For college, she attended Pine Manor Junior College and graduated from The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill where she was an English major and a music minor.

Mia’s lifelong love of the arts, particularly at the intersection of musicality and language, fostered in her a rare gift for writing. A talented fiction writer, Mia published a short story in The Scarlet Review in the late 1980’s and spent much of her adult life writing a novel. The characters in her novel became like companions to her and were much beloved by her close-knit writing group of several decades. Members of her writing group routinely shared with Mia’s family how skilled she was, how deeply her writing moved them. In Mia’s writing, one can perceive her profoundly observant nature and her capacity to make vivid the details of our inner and outer worlds.

Mia’s keen eye fueled in her a bright-hearted sense of awe and a passion for beauty. Her home was decorated with wall-to-wall paintings, plants, shells, pinecones, leaves, dried flowers, porcelain figurines, textiles, and photos of her loved ones at every stage of their lives. She was especially enthralled with nature and a devoted advocate of its preservation. A consistent donor to environmental organizations, she also adopted an elephant through the Sheldrake Wildlife Trust in Kenya and adopted many idiosyncratic rescue dogs. Most beloved among them, perhaps, her most recent chihuahua mix, Livvie.

While Mia was a gentle soul, she was also hilarious. Her gift for sound and language equipped her with a devastating wit that took many surprising and endearing forms. Ranging from deadpan to acerbic, physical to flamboyant, mimetic to morose, her sense of humor could disarm anyone. Her capacity to spot the humor of any moment made her both a delight and, at times, a liability. Her family remembers more than one church service where her silent laughter shook the pew, her children sliding away, mortified. And then, of course, there was her snort. Laughter was a fundamental, irrepressible part of who she was, and her repertoire was expansive. She was especially fond of those who were easily amused.

Most indelible of Mia’s contributions to the world, perhaps, was her limitless capacity to love her family and her friends and to perceive very little distinction between them; indeed, there was always enough to go around. Whether her relationships spanned many decades or many weeks, she was always trustworthy, gentle, supportive, and kind. Her authentic presence was a comfort to many and her capacity to listen without judgment soothed many hearts.

Mia was predeceased by her parents and nephew Johnse Bray and is survived by her beloved children, Katharine (Katie) Faulkner and Peter Faulkner; her brothers, Richard, Philip and Lawrence Bray; her nephews, Richard Bray III and Kirke Bray; niece, Marjorie McDowell; grandnieces Anna Bray and Claudia Bray; and her loving four-legged companion, Livvie.

A service celebrating Mia’s life will be held on Wednesday September 6, 2023, at 10:00 am, Christ Church, 120 East Edenton Street, Raleigh, NC.

In lieu of flowers, the family kindly requests that donations be made to Duke Homecare & Hospice.