I took some time yesterday to meet with relatives and mourn my aunt’s passing. I can’t say she was my favorite aunt, but she certainly was a firecracker as her son described her in the eulogy he gave. When I think of her, I don’t think of her in her older years, her mind addled by Alzheimer’s and her body relegated to a wheelchair. I think of her in her small house that was always getting flooded in suburban Chicago close to O’Hare Airport with planes overhead constantly. I can see her now, plain as day, a mixed drink (probably a Manhattan) in one hand and a cigarette in the other, talking loudly and irreverently as she was prone to do after a drink or two or more. No, she wasn’t my favorite aunt, but she was my most spirited aunt. Even in her last few years in nursing care, she was still full of piss and vinegar. I heard that she regularly plotted escapes from the home, and once called 9-1-1 to report that she was being held there against her will. She raised two families – her four boys and then three grandchildren from one of her boys. She buried a husband, an infant daughter, and two of her sons. It was a full life but a hard life. However, I think she was happy that she lived it in her sometimes soggy house in the Chicago suburbs after escaping from Chicago’s harsh east side where she grew up.