My Sister
Kathleen was the person in our family who made things happen. Not noisily — she was not a noisy person — but with a steady, cheerful determination that meant things got done, problems got solved, and anyone who was struggling found themselves somehow sorted without quite knowing when she had managed it. She chose nursing at seventeen and never doubted it. She used to say that people were at their most honest when they were frightened or in pain, and that was where she liked to be — not because she enjoyed their suffering but because she felt she could do something real there. I think that was true. I also think she chose it because she could not bear to be in a job where she was not genuinely needed. She came to terms with her diagnosis in a way none of us managed. We were angry and she was not. She said she'd had a very good go and didn't much see the point of spending the time she had left being cross. She wrote letters to Thomas and the children. She organised her filing. She baked a Christmas cake in September because she wasn't sure she'd manage it in December. She did manage it. We ate it at the wake. I am so glad she was my sister.