I always wanted to be my Aunt Phyllis when I grew up.

Despite our shared love of dipping pork chops in applesauce and having gobs of thick hair on our heads, she is everything I’m not.

With just a flash of her big-toothed smile, every stranger wants to become her friend. I, on the other hand, am lucky if I can build up enough courage to look the person next to me in the eye.

She makes a trip to the grocery store feel like Disneyworld. She lets me suck the lime in her margarita and jabbers stories of aliens and ghosts that leave my eyes big and my mind knowing my years will never be as wild as hers.

I can still hear her unexpected 7 a.m. scream ringing in my ears, “Saysay get on up, we are leaving in 10.” She continues to barge into my room at early hours, knowing far too well I am in need of beauty sleep and I hate surprises, but every time, I cannot help but throw on some clothes and give my day to her. I do not know where she is taking me, but it never seems to matter.

Her face glistens with beauty and her soul is younger than mine, but her heart is gasping for life. She continues to destroy not only her life with every puff, but mine as well.

Sharing a cigarette may be used as a friendly hello or a welcoming handshake, making new friends with just a light, but no new friend was worth the stinging sensation in my aunt’s left arm, days later discovering it was not a sore shoulder, but a heart attack.

A full, firm pack of cigarettes used to be satisfying for her to hold, the little white paper roll was once a thrill to smoke, but now it is the cigarette that smirks when it is pulled from the pack and forced into a frown. The tingle nicotine once gave her was never worth the hours of lying in an operating room with her chest cut open and a dying heart inside.

What was once only a thin cylinder stuffed with tobacco soon became the cause of trembling hands and a mind that is lost without the comfort of a cigarette. It was no longer my aunt in control, but the devious nicotine: an alkaloid with a high as euphoric as cocaine. The once harmless roll of paper is what caused a blocked carotid artery in the left side of my aunt’s neck.

After every heart attack and surgery, I watch her get wheeled out of the hospital with a balloon in one hand and a cigarette in the other.