It looks as if there are a number of us at roughly the same place in this sad process.
My sister Jane was the youngest of 5 (4 girls and a boy). She died 18 years ago in a road accident 15 months after she graduated. She was closest, chronologically, emotionally and tempermentally to my brother. He was quite stiff upper lip about it all at the time but now, 18 years later, he felt able to talk about his feelings.
My older sister, the secular one, has always kept a picture of Jane on her bedside table but virtually never talked about her until the last few weeks. My younger sister, the religious one, puts everything down to God?s Will and almost seems to think of Jane as the lucky one for being in Heaven before the rest of us.
As for me - Jane and I never really had that much in common despite growing up in the same house. There were enough years between us that we were never in competition so we didn't have many sister-to-sister talks.
But Jane would have made a super wife and mother and it makes me sad that she never was given that opportunity.
BTW we never knew exactly how she came to crash her car. There was no proof that there was any other vehicle involved but it was very hard to explain what happened unless she swerved to avoid something. 