Obituary for Barbara Buffington (Buffington)
Barbara Louise Buffington, 75, of Tryon, North Carolina, passed away peacefully at home, directly in front of her favorite window, overlooking her beloved garden, surrounded by her family and her devoted dogs, at precisely 3pm on Wednesday, December 6th, 2023.
Barbara was born on November 19th, 1948, to Herman Lorain Buffington and Frances Victoria Buffington (Filek) in Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania. She was born very early, weighing about a single pound, and she fought her way into this life with the same indescribable fortitude and desire for light with which she lived and held upon her exit.
She will be eternally missed by many, especially her daughters, Raiford Hyde (nee Hudson) and Taylor Weston (Christopher Cody), her eternally beloved grandchildren, Lucy Boone Hyde and Warner Hudson Hyde, her cherished dogs, Boonie and Huddie, her life-long best girlfriends, her church family, and the entire list of amazing women she encouraged and championed and believed in and supported and lifted up and loved throughout her life.
She valued purity, deep and authentic conversations, stories with happy endings just as much as stories of saints and martyrs, synchronicity, symmetry, texture, diversity, and every single season of the year, especially simply experiencing the seasons shift and watching the world go through its perfect cycle. She really loved a hot fire. She really loved the sound of rivers and of ocean tides. She had an excellent sense of taste and design because she cultivated that sense through love and connection. Every single item she collected over the years of her life held specificity, meaning, history, color, whimsy, and a very specific relationship to her environment. She loved to gift items she felt would be useful or meaningful to others. She never held too tightly to things, but she held tightly to grace and to God and to the Virgin Mother and the saints.
She loved a good flashlight and then buying more of the same flashlights and giving them to people she felt needed to see in the dark. She liked light. She liked waking up early. She liked clocks, the good ones with heartbeats that always need to be touched and wound and tended to. She loved to hear the tick tock. She loved the beach, especially Pawley’s Island. She loved to explore the woods, exist in the sun, feel the wind, see the sunset, the rolling hills of the Blueridge foothills, to take the longest walks, and insisted on riding cows with her childhood friends until she finally convinced her parents to buy her a horse. She loved nothing more than to ride fast through open fields and swim in the lake on her horse’s back, and she loved to jump over fences as high and perfectly as they could jump together. She drove her car fast, too. Really fast. Always. Barbara was a fan of speed and wind and the freedom she felt when she was moving, fast or slow, until the absolute end. It goes without saying she loved baby everything and all animals.
She was also beautiful. She was so beautiful on the outside, in fact, and people said it to her so often, my sister and I would probably agree it bothered her slightly (the focus on the physical); But, gosh, she was just so indescribably beautiful in every way we feel bound to say it once more, like this: Her heart was beautiful, her ability to see the best in others was beautiful, her devotion to the Catholic church, to the Virgin Mother, to the sacred heart of Jesus Christ in all of his love and mercy, and and to God and the Holy Spirit and to life, with its joy and pain and light and darkness was graceful. She was full of grace. She was also complex and nuanced, tactful and straight shooting, and seemed to effortlessly read the intentions of others and act accordingly. She was never rude, and if she ever seemed to be, she was pointing out something necessary, gracefully. She loved every baby and every animal and all the baby animals on earth.
She wanted to be a cowgirl and she wanted to be a carpenter, but she ended up being a stewardess and loved to travel the world. She was preoccupied by her desire to learn how the world worked, and the unknown never scared her. She was brave and bold and feisty and stubborn and full of verve and never seemed to run out of space in her soul for those in need, and for operating, as best she could, from the deepest, most authentic embodiment of her true self. She tenaciously worked to open her heart and mind to others, saw equality and individuality in tandem, took care of herself and all of those around her, and auto didactically became the most independent, hard-listening, hard-loving, deep-thinking, strongest woman we will ever meet. As for her idiosyncrasies, light heartedness, inane sense of humor, fabulously exciting food cravings, sweetness, saltiness, and love of a fabulous twall or an oil landscape with just the perfect amount of light shining through the sky? I think she just came straight from God that way. We thank God for her and for our time with her.
She taught her family (everyone she encountered, really) how to live trough example. She kept her word. She was firm when she had to be, but she was funny and willing and open because those qualities filled her. Those were qualities she came into this earth naturally possessing. She was youthful and joyful and lived a full life, and as much as we lament our inability to touch her face and hold her hand and hear her voice and hold her, we know she is pure light and love, knows how much she was cared for and how much we will always love her, and that it lightens our hearts just enough to live through losing her to know she is no longer in pain.
In lieu of flowers, memorials may be made to P3/Paws, Prayers, & Promises, 685 Carriage Row, Tryon, NC 28782.
A graveside service will be held at 2:00 p.m. on Wednesday, December 13, 2023 at Greenlawn Memorial Gardens, 1300 Fernwood Glendale Rd, Spartanburg, SC 29307.
Barbara was born on November 19th, 1948, to Herman Lorain Buffington and Frances Victoria Buffington (Filek) in Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania. She was born very early, weighing about a single pound, and she fought her way into this life with the same indescribable fortitude and desire for light with which she lived and held upon her exit.
She will be eternally missed by many, especially her daughters, Raiford Hyde (nee Hudson) and Taylor Weston (Christopher Cody), her eternally beloved grandchildren, Lucy Boone Hyde and Warner Hudson Hyde, her cherished dogs, Boonie and Huddie, her life-long best girlfriends, her church family, and the entire list of amazing women she encouraged and championed and believed in and supported and lifted up and loved throughout her life.
She valued purity, deep and authentic conversations, stories with happy endings just as much as stories of saints and martyrs, synchronicity, symmetry, texture, diversity, and every single season of the year, especially simply experiencing the seasons shift and watching the world go through its perfect cycle. She really loved a hot fire. She really loved the sound of rivers and of ocean tides. She had an excellent sense of taste and design because she cultivated that sense through love and connection. Every single item she collected over the years of her life held specificity, meaning, history, color, whimsy, and a very specific relationship to her environment. She loved to gift items she felt would be useful or meaningful to others. She never held too tightly to things, but she held tightly to grace and to God and to the Virgin Mother and the saints.
She loved a good flashlight and then buying more of the same flashlights and giving them to people she felt needed to see in the dark. She liked light. She liked waking up early. She liked clocks, the good ones with heartbeats that always need to be touched and wound and tended to. She loved to hear the tick tock. She loved the beach, especially Pawley’s Island. She loved to explore the woods, exist in the sun, feel the wind, see the sunset, the rolling hills of the Blueridge foothills, to take the longest walks, and insisted on riding cows with her childhood friends until she finally convinced her parents to buy her a horse. She loved nothing more than to ride fast through open fields and swim in the lake on her horse’s back, and she loved to jump over fences as high and perfectly as they could jump together. She drove her car fast, too. Really fast. Always. Barbara was a fan of speed and wind and the freedom she felt when she was moving, fast or slow, until the absolute end. It goes without saying she loved baby everything and all animals.
She was also beautiful. She was so beautiful on the outside, in fact, and people said it to her so often, my sister and I would probably agree it bothered her slightly (the focus on the physical); But, gosh, she was just so indescribably beautiful in every way we feel bound to say it once more, like this: Her heart was beautiful, her ability to see the best in others was beautiful, her devotion to the Catholic church, to the Virgin Mother, to the sacred heart of Jesus Christ in all of his love and mercy, and and to God and the Holy Spirit and to life, with its joy and pain and light and darkness was graceful. She was full of grace. She was also complex and nuanced, tactful and straight shooting, and seemed to effortlessly read the intentions of others and act accordingly. She was never rude, and if she ever seemed to be, she was pointing out something necessary, gracefully. She loved every baby and every animal and all the baby animals on earth.
She wanted to be a cowgirl and she wanted to be a carpenter, but she ended up being a stewardess and loved to travel the world. She was preoccupied by her desire to learn how the world worked, and the unknown never scared her. She was brave and bold and feisty and stubborn and full of verve and never seemed to run out of space in her soul for those in need, and for operating, as best she could, from the deepest, most authentic embodiment of her true self. She tenaciously worked to open her heart and mind to others, saw equality and individuality in tandem, took care of herself and all of those around her, and auto didactically became the most independent, hard-listening, hard-loving, deep-thinking, strongest woman we will ever meet. As for her idiosyncrasies, light heartedness, inane sense of humor, fabulously exciting food cravings, sweetness, saltiness, and love of a fabulous twall or an oil landscape with just the perfect amount of light shining through the sky? I think she just came straight from God that way. We thank God for her and for our time with her.
She taught her family (everyone she encountered, really) how to live trough example. She kept her word. She was firm when she had to be, but she was funny and willing and open because those qualities filled her. Those were qualities she came into this earth naturally possessing. She was youthful and joyful and lived a full life, and as much as we lament our inability to touch her face and hold her hand and hear her voice and hold her, we know she is pure light and love, knows how much she was cared for and how much we will always love her, and that it lightens our hearts just enough to live through losing her to know she is no longer in pain.
In lieu of flowers, memorials may be made to P3/Paws, Prayers, & Promises, 685 Carriage Row, Tryon, NC 28782.
A graveside service will be held at 2:00 p.m. on Wednesday, December 13, 2023 at Greenlawn Memorial Gardens, 1300 Fernwood Glendale Rd, Spartanburg, SC 29307.