Every Woman Alive

AFTER I POURED THE PERFUME
DOWN THE DRAIN.

When My Mother The Dowager Duchess was in hospital for her back surgery during the summer of 2015 and I spent my "down-time" cleaning her apartment, I noticed a full bottle of Chanel Number 5 perfume sitting on a shelf in her bathroom. The label was brown with age, as was the perfume. The bottle had sat on a shelf in my mother's bathroom my entire life. When I was visiting her that day, I finally asked about it.

"Your father brought that from Paris for me when he came back from the war," she explained. "I hated that scent, so I would never use it."

"Over the next 39 years, until the day he died, he never asked you why you didn't use it?" I asked.

"Oh, I immediately told him I hated Chanel No 5," she said.

And, as if it made perfect sense, she told me, "I didn't want to hurt his feelings [um, too late] by throwing it away."

So, she instead placed it in plain view on a display shelf in their shared bathroom.

And there it remained for nearly 70 years.

EVERY WOMAN ALIVE WANTS CHANEL NUMBER 5? REALLY???