My favorite aunt, Maria, is ninety-four and lives in Bavaria. As I reside in Northern California, the distance between us is great. I miss her terribly.

I love the image I have of her in my mind. She’s sitting at the dinner table, eyeglasses dangling from one hand, the other hand wiping tears of laughter from her eyes. So often full of silliness, my aunt Maria loves to laugh.

I’ve managed to keep her near me by patterning a character in my novel, The Still Voice, after her. Like my aunt in her younger days, the character is a member of the Wiesbaden Swim Team. She’s adventuresome and pretty fearless.

Maria survived World War II living in a small town about an hour northeast of Wiesbaden. A story she loves to tell happened after the war was over. Her husband, imprisoned in a POW camp, had escaped and hitchhiked home from the Russian Front. He had her open a surprise he carried with him--a tin of bacon he’d managed to pick up along the way. She worked the metal key around the edge of the tin. When it sprang open, the bacon was full of maggots. What did she do? She squeezed the maggots out into the kitchen sink and fried up the bacon. The grease, she said, would make good oil for cooking!

Desperate as those times were, my aunt never lost her sunny outlook. One of her favorite sayings is, “Every day is a gift from God.” As a fifty-year breast cancer survivor, she has every right to say that.

This morning her son and my favorite cousin, Dieter, called to see how I was doing after my breast cancer surgery. I had to admit it’s a cranky day. The incisions burn a bit. My throat is sore from having had a breathing tube stuck down it. I feel weak. As I complained, I had to remember this operation saved my life. From now on, every day is a gift from God.