She was the mother of seven children and matriarch to 19 grandchildren and 27 great-grandchildren.

Her titles included businesswoman, retiree, singer, secretary, traveler, gambler, friend and sister. But she was much more than that, deeper, funnier, kinder and more quietly powerful than words could ever describe.

And now she’s gone.

During a 93-year lifetime, Delores Eade Hebert accomplished all this and much more.

Born to parents who thought her place was to marry a nice Catholic boy and raise babies, she pushed back and convinced her father to let her attend business school.

While on vacation in Virginia Beach, Va., she caught the eye of a good-looking sailor on leave. He pursued her for two years until she finally agreed to marry him.

A dreamer, he promised her a life of prosperity. Instead, they moved to Vidor, Texas in the beginning of the summer to wooden sidewalks and relentless heat.

She’d admit she was a bit spoiled. All that changed when she found herself working at a struggling newspaper.

She wrote stories, sold ads and soon had three children to mother. My grandfather, who published the newspaper, died suddenly, and my father lost his spark. Mom and Dad moved back to New York where she stayed until her Southern husband swore off the snow.

They returned to Louisiana, and that’s where we grew up. My mom worked outside of the home, but we never felt neglected.

There was a hot meal on the table seven nights a week. On Sundays, we all went to Mass and came home to pot roast and lively family discussions around the table.

Mom did all that with little help and no complaining. She made sure we had everything we needed, not necessarily everything we wanted.

She gave the right advice at the right time, comforting us when needed and straightening our shoulders when we needed that.

Food was her love language, whether she was cooking Lebanese kibbee or chicken and sausage gumbo. She could conjure up a meal out of nowhere, and nobody went hungry in the Hebert household.

Mom had a keen sense of humor and laughed at herself most of all.

She never missed an important event in her grandchildren’s lives, and that included her step-grandchildren. Once you were part of the Hebert family, you were family forever.

She was there for graduations, weddings, baptisms and birthday parties. She knew something special about each one. They joked that she didn’t play favorites, but each one believed they were at the top of the list.

Her life wasn’t easy financially, but she never made us feel like we were less than. She believed in every one of us more than we believed in ourselves.

The world is a sadder place without this woman who was barely 5-feet tall yet stood 10 feet above the rest of us.

We are forever grateful Mom filled out a grandparents’ memory book years ago, and this is what she wrote:

“I want them to remember me not only as their grandmother, but as a friend, a supporter, and a guardian of their heritage. I want them to remember that I tried to put my family first with my efforts to have family get-togethers and opened my home and heart to them. I want them to remember me with a smile, remembering my “goofiness,” my feeble jokes, and that every once in a while, I came out with some outrageous stuff.”

She was our mother, our children’s Siti and our grandchildren’s Sit-Siti.

Rest in peace our queen.

Dee Hebert, my mom, will always be the best person I’ve ever known.

This column was originally published in The Fort Bend Herald.