Sister secrets

My aunt, who died earlier this year, was a woman of great strength and a raucous sense of humor. But despite having three children who loved her dearly, there was clearly something missing in her life, something that revolved around an arduous marriage to a man who was often angry. Even 20 years after he died, this gap still manifested itself. Though she could be sweet and loving (she never forgot a birthday), she could also be petty and unforgiving.

When I was old enough to notice the melancholy in my aunt's life, I asked my mother (my aunt's younger sister) about it. She told me that my aunt had been deeply in love with a young man who had been killed in World War II. Ten years later, my mother said, my aunt married my uncle, after he had pursued her relentlessly for many years. My father believes that my uncle was humiliated at having to wait so long for my aunt's hand, and made her life difficult as a form of unconscious punishment.

I thought of this family saga during the final credits of Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood, Hollywood's latest big-budget "chick flick," based on two best-selling novels by Rebecca Wells. For all the screaming and hand-wringing, southern-fried aberrations and family angst, this film is basically the story of a woman whose life never turned out as she had hoped, in large part because the man she adored, a dashing pilot with a killer smile, was shot down and killed during World War II.