Guest Blog by Caroline Ghertler
My great aunt died less than a week ago. Losing her has been tougher than I expected. There’s an old song that goes: "When landmarks fall and institutions tumble, Will it be just a memory from the past?"

And that’s just how I feel. Losing my aunt, the consummate New Yorker, was like losing a piece of my world.

We weren’t very close. In fact, the last time I saw her was at my wedding nearly five years ago. She was very weak but she came to the ceremony anyway and I appreciated her for that. My father lived with my aunt when he was a child. It was just after his parent’s divorce. My aunt lived on the top floor of an Upper East Side apartment building, where she had a sumptuous view of the Guggenheim Museum and the resevoir in Central Park from her windowed breakfast room.

In the mornings, my father would be driven to school by my aunt’s chauffeur. He was so embarassed by that limo, he’d ask the driver to drop him two blocks from his public school. She was like a mother to him during those years, and throughout his life. And he loved her a great deal. Even if he was embarassed by her fancy limo.
She loved fine things and her apartment was not only full of art but a work of art, as well.

At her funeral her grandson eulogized her, wearing crazy blue-tinted granny glasses. He imagined that if his grandmother were there she’d probably say, "Why are you wearing those ridiculous glasses." In her honor, he removed them.

A friend spoke lovingly of my aunt’s good taste, fine manners, savoir faire and sense of humor. Just days before her death she asked him if he was a Yankees fan. When he told her that he was a Mets fan she said, "It’s going to be a long year."
I’m sorry that she won’t get to see the Yankees play the Red Sox and become world champions again.

After the funeral, we went back to my aunt’s apartment. It was strange to be there without her. I kept thinking she’d join us looking the way she looked twenty years ago. She’d walk around the antique-filled dining room checking to make sure that the platters were full of smoked salmon and caviar spread.

And she’d probably tell her grandson to take off his ridiculous blue sunglasses.

It was hard to walk away from that 15th floor palace. "This is the last time we’ll ever be in one of the great New York apartments," I said to my sister as we got on the elevator. "This is the last time we’ll ever know someplace like this."

Caroline Ghertler is Louise G. Crawford’s twin sister. She lives in Park Slope.