Category: Family

My Great Grandmother Survived “The Great Tri-State Tornado” of 1925 – the deadliest tornado in U.S. history

On By ©️K.T. 2026In autobiographical, biographical, childhood, Crone, Family, grandmother, Mother, tornadoLeave a comment

The 100 Year Anniversary of The Great Tri-State Tornado

revised 2025 first published May 2011

The author, a baby, being held by her maternal great grandmother

Seeing the footage, videos and photos of splintered trees, the rubble of homes, first responders and devastated people — and hearing of the rising tolls of the injured, missing and dead and imagining the immense pain of all the fractured families — especially in Tuscaloosa, Alabama and in Joplin, Missouri — it is all the more remarkable to me that my great grandmother, Mable Agnes Brantley, then just one day shy of her 18th birthday, and her soon-to-be husband, Harry T. Ruble, survived the 1925 “Tri-State” tornado.

That tornado devastated the town of Murphysboro in Jackson County in Southern Illinois. It remains the DEADLIEST tornado in U.S. history to date: an F5 on the Fujita Scale — nearly 700 people died — but it is also infamous for its duration, sustained speed, length and breadth!

Mable Brantley would go on to have a full life, to raise children during the Great Depression, to work outside the home before and during the War Effort and for decades after — and more importantly, to help to raise her grandchildren, great grandchildren, and great, great grandchildren. Continue reading “My Great Grandmother Survived “The Great Tri-State Tornado” of 1925 – the deadliest tornado in U.S. history” →

institutional knowledge

On By ©️K.T. 2026In Crone, Crone Consciousness, Death, death and other endings, endings, Estrangement, Family, friendship, grief, kin, mourningLeave a comment

another part of mourning, an enduring part of mourning:

the loss of the “institutional knowledge” of you that they alone held, documented and archived;

when

a life-long, childhood or early adulthood friend

a beloved mother, or grandmother, or father,

a harmonious sibling, a close cousin

a long-time lover,

a partner in a long marriage, officiated — or not

a child whom you birthed or raised and who may have also birthed or raised you, have mercy.

when, those relationships become one-sided through death — or other endings,

not only are they gone,

Continue reading “institutional knowledge” →

sonlight [june 2024]

On By ©️K.T. 2026In biographical, Family, june, Mother, Motherhood, myth, Poem, poet, poetry, son, SonlightLeave a comment

what radiance i’ve possessed in your eyes
has naturally dimmed after these 30 years;
and so has yours — in mine, these last five,
if i am being truthful,
which you know me to be,
guttingly

once the solar star, now, a mere lighthouse on the other’s shore,

do you still wonder what you are?

you,
my sonlight, are still golden, burning hot and bright,


but these blue lenses of ours,

and these blue talks of ours,


reveal
we are animal, elemental,

sometimes too human, and fragile.

only, you fail to acknowledge another possibility, another cosmic continuum.

Continue reading “sonlight [june 2024]” →