Life lesson

I had a great aunt who, as the saying goes, smoked like a chimney. I don't remember her ever without a cigarette in her hand. It is said that, on the rare occasion where she could not smoke, her hands shook so badly she couldn't grip her purse. On the rarer occasion when she cooked, the food was dry and tasted of burnt tobacco. The interior of her Chicago Gold-Coast apartment was dark and yellow-grey, not from lack of imagination, not from lack of objets d'art, but from years of soot and smoky oils accumulating on every surface.

Aunt Caroline had a magnificent singing voice -- she was a professional, with a rich, deep contralto/tenor range. Experts speculated that, had she not been such a heavy smoker, had she not dried and fried her larynx into pemmican, she very well might have been greater than Callas. After all, Caroline had always had the ability to be dramatic, on- and off-stage. All she really needed was an octave above. But she smoked.

She married late in life -- Uncle Bob was a firm believer in long engagements, so Caroline didn't actually walk down the aisle until she was entering perimenopause. More than twelve years she waited for that moment, and the cost was great. Caroline had wanted -- desperately wanted -- children. She was too late to that party. Since she had none of her own, her late brother's grandchildren became a more-than-acceptable substitute.

In other words, she spoiled us rotten.

I loved Aunt Caroline.

The smoke was a part of her mystery, part of her charm, part of her.

Aunt Caroline died young -- just barely into her forties.

She was killed by a drunk driver.