I didn’t really get to know my sister until nine years before she died in 2013.

We grew up in the same house, a three-bedroom, one-bathroom Cape in Piscataway, New Jersey. Carol was five years older than me, and my other sister, Nancy, was a decade in age past mine so I became the little kid Carol or Nancy had to baby-sit when my parents went out on Saturday nights.

I remember two things about Carol when I was a boy. She was headstrong. We locked horns a few times about this or about that until I finally figured her out. Give in or give up. Carol was always right even if you proved her wrong, if you get what I mean.

The first man she was going to marry got cold feet and ran away a few days before the wedding, leaving my father’s reception hall money contracted as nonrefundable. The guy resurfaced and decided to marry Carol after all, and despite everyone’s pleas to not go through with it, she insisted upon the wedding. I remember eating a piece of their cake in the small kitchen of our house, where their emergency reception was stuffed with about 12 people.

She had given birth to a son, Billy, but the marriage ultimately failed. She fell in love again, this time with a real man named Roger, a wonderful husband and father to Billy, and together, Roger and Carol had two more sons named Roger Jr. and Jason.

Sometimes life separates brothers and sisters. He moves on. She moves on. For me, our annual holiday get-togethers made me realize how much more I wanted my sister in my life. We were already middle-aged before we had started to make that happen.

I sat with Carol at her kitchen table one rainy afternoon and she told me a story. When she was 5 years old and I wasn’t born yet, she was walking home from school. A man jumped out and grabbed her, and dragged her inside a basement of an old city building. He told her they were going to run away together and have a good life traveling the country. Despite her awful fear, this little girl figured a way out. She asked him for a glass of water, and when he left the basement to get it, she climbed herself up on a chair and escaped through a window and ran home.

The year was 1951 when Carol rushed into the house engulfed in tears and told my soon-to-be mom and dad what happened. They scolded her for not being careful. End of story. No police report made. From that day on, she was told to walk home with a little girl from her school.

Not only did Carol learn to become headstrong from this terrible experience, she grew into a woman who never dismissed anyone’s problems, big or small, that were laid upon her kitchen table. You listened and you learned from the voice of reason, Carol’s reason, and the love she had for you behind her reason you could feel from every one of her caring words.

We shared so many stories from our years apart. They brought tears to our faces of both good and bad times. What we left unspoken on the table was that incredibly thick gloom of sadness we lived with as children, a time when Carol was just some strange girl in the house waiting for me to finish using the bathroom.

She was the first to move on from the black cloud and fill her life with sunshine as a terrific mother, an adoring wife and a great friend to many.

Carol had a series of health issues beginning with back surgery that had gone wrong and left her with what doctors had called bacterial infections that were slowly killing her body. Nothing they did or prescribed helped relieve her pain. Through all her suffering, she lived and loved the best she could.

After eight long years of trips to specialists and hospitals across the country, she called me one night. Her cracking voice, weakened by pain and fatigued by years of cries for help, asked how I was feeling. I ignored the question and said, “With all you’ve been through, what now?”

She forced a laugh. “I’ve given up praying to God,” she said. “I’m going to see if Santa Claus can help me.” I knew my sister was dying. I said, “Maybe God and Santa are already helping you. You still have your sense of humor.”

A few weeks later, she called and left a message. “Just calling to see how my little brother is doing. If you get a chance, give me a call tomorrow.”

Tomorrow never came for us. Carol was rushed to the hospital where she was placed on a ventilator. The family honored her request to disconnect the machine and let her die mercifully.

I think of my sister often. I miss her getting in my face and telling me like it was. She was a beautiful, compassionate, empathetic and sympathetic human being. I’d give anything to sit with her one more time at her kitchen table.

One day while we ate lunch together, and I was feeling the joy of the moment, Carol said, “I want you to be happy.”

She couldn’t see through her eyes, hazed by sickness and medications, that I already was.

Rich Strack can be reached at richiesadie11@gmail.com.