Today would have been my great grandmother's hundredth birthday. She passed away a little under 9 years ago. She worked until after she turned 91, and passed within a few weeks of actually stopping work.

She had family photos dating back to the dawn of photography. She outlived her husband, her son, and two of her grandchildren. She lived to see her great grandchildren, and practically raised me through elementary school.

She was a CPA in the 40s, until the 70s. Then she worked in fast food.

Her daughter kept or trashed all the photos after her death, and cut off all communication with the family.

We called her bang, because that's what she would say when we played. She would mime holding a gun and say "bang."

She came of age during the depression in Alabama, she moved to Atlanta and got married when she was 19. Her husband lost his leg, and was unable to work so she entered the workforce.

Her first child, my grandfather, was born on the day of the pearl harbor attacks.

She was unquestionably the strongest person I've ever known.

She saw so much, lived through so much hardship. Lost her husband in the 70s, and lived and worked for longer than I've been alive without him.

She was kind. She was welcoming. I watched her stand up for queer people and people of color my whole life, even though she was a a very old, very religious white woman from Alabama.

She taught me that people were more important than personal comfort. She was a good person, and I miss her.

Her favorite song was Beulah Land.

I particularly enjoy this rendition by Mississippi John Hurt: https://invidious.tube/watch?v=bvhHKYfWwbE&list=PL8a8cutYP7foWITx5OwjkWy_337O3O9i1

Picture the amount that the world has changed from 1921 when she was born to 2021 as I write this.

She was 8 years old the first time she met a black person, and she spent most of her early adulthood working as an accountant for black owned businesses in Atlanta. She only talked about this, to me, once in '08.

She spent an hour or two talking about the act of unlearning, and what it took for her to overcome the prejudices she had been taught as the daughter of an Alabama sharecropper.

How moving to Atlanta had taught her that the world was not what she had been raised to believe.

She talked about her sister Zora... Zora was 10 or so years younger than her. I met Zora once, and only for a few minutes. She still lived on the family farm. Resented Bang for leaving. She dropped five or six racial slurs in the few minutes we were in the building. At the time, Bang apologized that I'd had to hear that (I must have been 10?) and we left.

In '08, when we talked about Zora, Zora was basically gone with Alzheimer's. The same disease that had killed her son.

She talked about how Zora practiced, basically, this kind of performative cruelty any time she was around, because she resented Bang for leaving, and because she resented Bang for having compassion.

She didn't use the words "unlearn" or "performative cruelty", but the concepts were the same.