By Nancy Patrick

My family greatly diminished on Friday, January 10, when my younger sister Peggy passed away. Our little family consisted of my parents, Henry (Buddy) and Norma Carr Smith, and the two girls. We began our lives together in Arkansas where my parents maintained their connections to the Carr family (most of whom remained in Arkansas) and the Smith clan (all of whom except my grandparents left Arkansas).

My parents moved us to Texas when I was five and my sister was one. The following years produced a total of sixteen cousins that created great family gatherings when all the grandparents, aunts and uncles, and children came together for holidays and summer vacations.

One expects parents to age and die; though sad, we know it will happen. The last of my parents’ generation died five years ago when my Uncle Raymond Smith died at the age of 93.

I handled the grief of losing aunts, uncles, and even parents better than I am handling losing my cousins and little sister. These people formed my childhood world, a world that passes into history before my aging eyes.

Nancy, 5 years; Peggy, 18 months

I write this article to honor my little sister whom I greatly loved. As I witnessed some of her final hours on this earth, I thought of how life had not always been her friend. That does not mean she did not love life.

On the contrary, my sister enjoyed life. Even as a child, she looked for and “adopted” every stray animal she found in the neighborhood. As I look at old photos of her, she seems to have an animal in her arms at all times—didn’t matter whether a cat, dog, chicken, hamster, or horned toad.

Her love of animals continued throughout her life. I can hardly remember a time when she didn’t have at least a dog and cat in her house. 

Peggy also loved children and babies. Our next-door neighbors adopted a baby girl when we were little girls ourselves. Peggy treated the baby as if she were a doll she could play with, read to, or pull around in a wagon.

In high school, she even volunteered at Abilene State School, “adopting” a little boy named John Paul whom she could bring to our home for visits. She absolutely loved him and all the other residents with whom she worked.

As a matter of fact, Peggy had her twin sons before I had my own son. She became a mother of these little redheaded boys at the age of nineteen. I had already been married six years when my nephews joined the family and had thought to remain childless until I fell in love with these little critters.

Peggy loved being a mother, and I enjoyed watching her as a very young mom trying to corral her two little fellas. Luckily, she and her husband lived in Abilene where our parents lived, so our mother enjoyed being a hands-on grandmother.

My sister also loved being a grandmother and was Nanny to six grandchildren. She beamed with pride when she talked about them.

No matter what my nephews did in school or at home, their mom defended them and challenged anyone to say a bad word about them. If they needed correction, she would see to it, but others had better not interfere.

My sister also loved to have fun. She was a much more daring and outgoing adolescent than I.  She may have questioned some of her decisions later in life, but she enjoyed them when she made them.

As the older first-born child, I always knew my kid sister had a more difficult time in life than I did. I was one of those “driven” first-born kids who loved school and loved pleasing adults. That can set a difficult pattern for children born next in line.

As a young child, some of Peggy’s behavior worried my parents enough for them to have her examined by a doctor. He suggested that they send her to kindergarten (before the public school provided it) for socialization. 

Although a child myself, I remember that my mother overreacted to some of my sister’s behavior, primarily because Mom worried about her. For example, she became very thin and anemic as a young child. I remember very tense events at meal times when our mother tried to force her to eat.

When Peggy was in elementary school, the school nurse often called our mother to come pick her up because she had stomach aches. Once she arrived home, she felt better and got to spend time alone with our mother.

As she got older, she began showing signs of adolescent independence. By the time she was fourteen, I had married and didn’t live with her in the bedroom we had shared for the fourteen years of her life.

Although not present in the home, I witnessed the development of my sister’s life as she made some unfortunate choices. One was the dissolution of her thirty-five-year marriage to the twins’ dad.

As a consequence of the shift in family dynamics, many relationships changed, creating less closeness than the family had once enjoyed. Several things that did not change included Peggy’s love for her sons and our parents. Neither did she and I ever experience a chasm in our sisterhood.

Most of our childhood photographs show the two of us, me with an arm around my little sister’s shoulder. That never changed. As I kissed her forehead on the afternoon of the day of her death, I whispered in her ear, “Your big sister is here and loves you. I will miss you so much.”

 God blesses many of us with special people who enrich our lives for short times or long times. He provided me a little sister for seventy years. 

Nancy Patrick is a retired teacher who lives in Abilene and enjoys writing