I was very blessed to know my great grandmother, Clova Auberry, until she was 105. I have been closer to her, my grandmother, and great aunts/uncles than most anyone in my life.

They really felt like kindred spirits to me. Wonderful people. (Thread)

I realized after something about my great grandmother more fully after she passed. She was soft, kind, sweet, generous but strong. A stoic.

She had no degrees, never even got a driver’s license. Born in 1905. Wore dresses from feed sacks. Survived the Spanish Flu of 1918.

She raised 5 kids through the depression while her husband worked in a deep vein coal mine from the time he was 16.

She gave the meat & cheese to her family while she ate green peaches off a peach tree in the yard. She lived through rations & victory gardens.

She was cooking when the radio said Pearl Harbor was bombed. She lived to see electricity, telephones, cars & even the internet become household norms.

She mowed, grew gardens, killed snakes with a hoe & could take a chicken from the yard to the table by hand.

She buried her parents, siblings husband and 3 of her 5 children. She lost them to time, illness, plague and war.

She read her bible daily. Saved littler bits of leftovers in her fridge. Loved glazed donuts. And was nearest to a saint I’ve ever met.

In hindsight, I now see that this person that was the definition of decency to me lived a life awash in tragedy & loss.

Her undying strength, faith, patriotism & heart weren’t just things that were there by chance. There we things she cultivated. They were hewn from life.

And through it all I never heard her once complain. She was made of sterner stuff.

She never lamented any of it. She read me 2 Timothy chapter 4 and reminded me that it is our race to run and our faith to keep - no matter the obstacle or challenge.

She would be here now - not complaining of the sacrifice. Striding through the fear with a giant’s steps somehow bigger and bolder than her slight thin frame and snow white hair seemed capable of.

Marcus Aurelius himself would be awestruck by her stoicism & strength.

So even if you weren’t lucky enough know her, but you feel like you need a hero now, Clova Auberry would be there for you too. Because that’s who she was and the that’s legacy she left.

She would hug you, she would ask you to endure, and she would say it... because she did.