I come from a long line of obituary readers.

The kind of women who sip black coffee while reading each and every life story, all the while shaking their heads and saying things like Lordy, Lordy.

And sometimes, if it was someone who died in an especially tragic way, they’d pick up the phone and call all of the other ladies to say things like, “Did you see that Sue Sexton died? Yep. She was John’s girl, you remember? No, I haven’t seen her since she was knee-high to a grasshopper. Sad. Lordy, Lordy.”

The older I get, I find that these Southernisms I used to observe in the older women of my family are sneaking their way into my personality. It started with eating garden-fresh tomatoes whole like apples. Then it was buying Aqua Net because as my grandma insisted, it’s the only thing that holds curl when it’s humid and now…now I’m an obituary reader, too.

Lordy, Lordy.

Today I got a strange feeling that I ought to look up Roberta Bryant, the woman I met and wrote about for the letter B in Kentucky A to Z: A Bluegrass Travel Memoir. We used to chat on the phone when Ada was a baby and I hadn’t heard from her in while. My bones knew but I had to look. Sure enough, I found that she had passed away last fall.

If you didn’t get to read about Berta, let me tell you a quick summary of the story that appeared in Kentucky Monthly magazine and later in my book:

My editor, Steve Vest, sent me out looking for Blue Diamond, a town he chose at random from a cup of Kentucky towns that started with the letter “B”.

I wasn’t allowed to do any research before going to Blue Diamond. If I had, I may have realized Blue Diamond no longer existed. It was a coal camp that went extinct long ago, after the mine closed.

I spent an entire day with my good friend and navigator, Brittany, lost in the Hazard-region of Kentucky. It was one of the times that I was truly scared during my travels for the series. I’m fairly confident we ended up in the middle of a meth lab on the backside of a mountain. Thanks to some fast and apologetic talk, the folks there sent us (quickly) back down the mountain.

We were heading home when we spotted the road that led us to Berta, who was then in her late 80s. Actually, her son led us to her. Sometimes talking to strangers is a good thing, even if Brittany insisted that scary movies started the exact same way: two girls lost in the middle of nowhere, talking to a man in a truck.

Berta lived in a trailer near her old place, where she raised her kids on her husband’s mining salary. On her front porch (with her pet goat) we heard wonderful, beautiful, heartbreaking stories. She told us how she found Jesus (rather Jesus found her) when she was pregnant, walking a muddy road to church while her husband was fighting a war. She was so tickled, she ran to church with mud splashing clear up to her belly.

And I promised her I wouldn’t print this story until she had passed, but I reckon now it’s okay to tell you:

She was having problems with young boys trying to break in her trailer and steal her medicine. At almost 90-years-old and barely five foot tall, she stood on her front porch with a pistol pointed at one young man’s special places as she said, and told him “Get off my porch, Son, or I’ll shoot you in the penis. I won’t shoot to kill you but I’ll ruin every Saturday night of the rest of your life.”

That moxie.
And gentleness.
And hospitality.
And joy.
And that sweet servant’s heart.
All of those things I saw in Berta are the things I admire most about Southern women.

So in honor of Berta, here’s 10 of the best things I’ve learned about life from the black-coffee-drinking, obituary-reading, tomato-growing, sassy Southern women in my life:

1. If you can’t buy it, honey, you can make it!

2. You’ll feel better if you put your lips on.

3. Death comes in three’s and calls for chicken.

4. A solid wardrobe includes a funeral dress,  a denim jacket and pearls. Each one of those pieces stand on their own, or heck, put em’ together.

5. The best way to bring a marriage feud to an end is baked goods…particularly chocolate cake.

6. Births and deaths are a lot alike. For either one, you better have strong coffee and women who can bend the ear of God.

7. You can fancy up a chicken salad sandwich with a dollop of apple butter.

8. Put a fussy baby up on your shoulder, thump their bottom and hum in their ear. It evens em’ out.

9. Chocolate gravy is a thing and it heals your soul.

10. Assume anyone who walks through your door is hungry. Feed them. Feed their bellies and their souls with good food and better stories.

What have you learned from Southern ladies?