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She was seventy-five. I was thirty. Though she was not my grandmother or my mother, she was indeed a grandmother and a mother. She was elderly, but she certainly was not old.

In fact, for a woman of seventy-five, I often marveled at the vim and vigor she displayed in living her life, even exuding a lusty sensuality that I, a young person of thirty, had yet to discover in myself.

Her wit was keen and sharp. And with an easy humor and quick chuckle, she refused, unlike so many her age, to yield to the bitterness and cynicism of life. Her twinkling blue eyes and wry smile always left you feeling that she knew something you didn't know - and she wasn't telling.

She was elegant and genteel, with an elevated air to her speech, common to the old school aristocracy of the Deep South. Yet, she still managed to possess a humility that always made you feel welcome.

She treated me as her equal. Though at her age and stature, she certainly had earned the right to be my superior. Instead, however, she called me her friend. It was a gift of which I never felt deserving, but tried to care for with the same respect and honor she afforded me.

She loved to drink beer and listen to country music, which we often did. Hanging out together in local bars, we would pump quarters into the juke box and stack our beer cans on the table while she told me stories of her life, raising her boys with a man 20 years her senior. When asked how he died, in her characteristic, lilting southern accent, she would always say, "He just got old on me."

That was the thing about Ernestine. She didn't want to get old. Oh, she knew that at 75, a convincing case could be made to the contrary, but she also knew that she did not have to surrender to the power of the years. And so she didn't.

She lived her life with an unbridled energy and enthusiasm that was uncommon to her age. Surrounding herself with friends and family, she loved and laughed her way through life and in the process, held back the advancing years that sometimes casts a long shadow in life.

She generously gave advice when asked, though she never presumed that it was needed. And she had a way of meting out any necessary reproof and correction without making the hearer feel inferior or small.

When I asked for her opinion in business, she would often tell me "You just name your price", knowing, even better than I it seemed, that it was a lesson I had yet to learn. Naming my price, that is.

It was not just the value that one places on the goods and

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