It’s taken over a week for me to write this. It has been difficult for me to put down my thoughts about losing a sister.

She wasn’t really a sister. She was two years my older cousin. She lived with her parents about a four-hour drive from our home. But my family was very close. My mother and her older sister Evelyn loved to spend time with their nephews and nieces. When i was an infant, my mother and grandmother would board the train and ride to Paris where Aunt Evelyn, with Nancy and Johnny, were there for her first teaching job. The men of the family were away, occupied with a small disturbance we call World War II. So, from the first thoughts i had in my head, we would spend at least one month a weekend together until we approached the end of high school.

She was the first daughter in my mother’s Prichard generation. Here, she is with our Aunt Bettye Kate Prichard Hall.

She was the leader in the Prichard offspring. Johnny, her younger brother was between Nancy and me. Then there was Martha and Joe, and the Florida Prichards, Butch. Tim, Pam, Mike, Patrice, and Mary Colleen, when they could get to Tennessee or we could get to Florida.

Nancy was always very special to me. She and my sister, Martha had a very special relationship.

Since i learned of her passing last week, memories keep popping up at unexpected moments:

The side yard of our home, probably 1950 or 1951: We played cowboys. My cousin Johnny shot me with his cap pistol. i dropped my six gun and fell to the ground. The other three children stood around me. i recalled the final words of a hero on one of my oaters and emoted with the best of them, finally expiring playtime, closing my eyes, and rolling my head to the side. Dead cowboy.

Nancy was caught up in the moment and began to cry. Even when i jumped up and cavorted to show i was alive, she kept crying. Even when we declared the game was over, Nancy cried at the dead cowboy. It was a good ten to fifteen minutes before we finally got her to wipe her tears and return to being a normal child.

She cried because she cared.

When our grandmother, “Granny,” chopped of the head of a garter snake in our backyard, Nancy cried.

When Granny preparing for supper mid-morning, she twirled a chicken by the neck, snapping the head off. The headless chicken was running frantically around the yard. The other children were laughing at the sight. Nancy cried.

After Thanksgiving in 1954, we took off to Nashville on Saturday for the movie at the Loew’s Theater on Church Street. The area was our most frequented spot in Nashville. We shopped at Harvey’s, Cain-Sloan, and Caster-Knott. This outing was strictly for the movie. The family women all wanted to see “Three Coins in a Fountain.”

After many twists and turns in the romantic comedy drama, the three women (the coins) end up with their men, and Frank Sinatra croons the title song.

Nancy cried all the way home.

◆◆◆

About five years earlier, the two families had gathered on our great uncle’s farm on the corner of Hickory Ridge Road and Blair Lane. “Papa” and Aunt Corrine Wynne had a picnic dinner in the front yard. The adults went into the living room and began to talk about important things. The five children, tired of their usual activities of chasing chickens, playing Red Rover, etc. wandered into the pasture bordering Hickory Ridge Road.

Nancy became enthralled with the abundant prickly pear cacti, which were blooming at the time, amidst the grasses.

Wishing to collect some, she picked them and put them in the back pockets of her jeans. By the time we got back to the farmhouse, the barbs of the prickly pears were sticking through the jeans and lodging into Nancy’s rear end.

We spent the rest of the afternoon in the living room. Nancy lay across Aunt Corrine’s lap in the chair by the side window (more light to see). With her mother hovering over the two, Aunt Corrine, with her tweezers poised, was picking each barb from Nancy’s rear end.

She cried then from pain, but we laughed a lot about that incident later.

◆◆◆

Nancy was legendary for wrapping presents, whether it was Christmas, birthday, or other special events. The decorative exterior was not out of the ordinary. But inside, ahh, inside, was a puzzle. Nancy used more scotch tape than most people keep in their household goods. Every seam, every flaw in the packaging, even the tape itself had been covered with scotch tape. It would take extra time just to get inside.

Her scotch tape was a family legend.

◆◆◆

i wish everyone could have seen Nancy and her brother dance. When we visited Red Bank while we were in high school, i went to several of their school sock hops. The two of them could do any dance together. They flowed across the floor. They danced at the hop and were often the center of attention. i wish i could have danced like that.

◆◆◆

i have a special first with Nancy. She had married and moved to St. Augustine, Florida where her husband worked for the telephone company. i was a junior at Castle Heights Military Academy. On spring break, i chose to take a bus to Jacksonville to spend the week with my aunt and uncle. But one day, i went to Cape Canaveral for a day with Nancy and her family.

She cooked her first meal for a guest. Me. It was a six-course extravaganza. She was learning her timing on how to have a meal: first course, the salad; second course, the bread, it had not been ready for the salad, and the rest of the meal wasn’t cooked yet; third course, the potatoes and beans, the meat wasn’t ready yet; dessert was served without a hitch.

It was all delicious. i guess she had grown up. She didn’t cry. But we did laugh that evening and many times afterwards.

◆◆◆

When her mother became ill with Parkinson’s Disease and eventually dementia, Nancy was a saint. She took care of that wonderful woman in spite of many in conveniences to herself. She was with her whenever she was needed. She loved her mother.

There are many other Nancy stories that are part of our family’s lore. i will keep paving those pop into my head at unexpected moments.

Did i mention she was beautiful? She was. Growing up, she resembled a young Elizabeth Taylor.

Nancy was one of my closest relatives. i never spent enough time with her.

i miss you, Nancy.

Rest in Peace. You deserve it.