Why losing a big sister is an agony like no other
ON EASTER Monday I passed a milestone. I reached it with a mix of celebration and mourning, anticipation and dread. It was the day when I became older than my big sister.
Katie, three years my senior, died three years ago of cervical cancer. a corporate lawyer with a top London firm, she was bright, funny and glamorous — and I adored her. she died cruelly young, at exactly 33 years and one month old. and this is the age I turned on sunday.
as I raised a glass of champagne to Katie — ‘Life,’ she always said, ‘is too short to drink bad wine’ — I was conscious, too, that she had passed me the baton. I must gather all my strength, as she did even when suffering this most terrible of diseases, and grasp life and all it has to offer with gratitude and gladness.
I must be strong for my parents. I must assume now the dual roles of both their elder and younger daughters. I must still laugh and strive. and each day I must put one foot in front of the other and continue, even when a sudden thought sparks a memory of Katie and a tide of tears threatens to engulf me.
For my big sister, in truth, is always by my side. she is in my thoughts and plans. I spent my 33rd birthday in rome with our mum Jenny and my partner Barry – who was to become my fiancé that afternoon when he proposed to me on the spanish steps — and we were there in memory of my sister.
Katie adored rome. she spoke fluent Italian, learned during a gap year there, and loved the country’s food and culture, and it had been our intention to take Mum there for a Christmas present.
But that hope was thwarted by Katie’s death. We knew, however, that she would not have wanted us to forgo the trip entirely — she taught us that life is too fleeting and precious to postpone such pleasures — so, three years on, we savoured the day of crisp winter sunshine and thought of her.
WHEN Katie turned 33 it was the last time our entire family met together for a celebration. Uncles, aunts, cousins and their children all gathered at Mum’s house in suffolk — our parents divorced when we were 12 and 15 respectively — and Katie was her typical smiling and stoic self, even though, it later emerged, she was fighting an infection.
the next day, she was admitted to hospital. six weeks later, in november 2011, she was dead.
she never married although a string of male admirers beat a path to her door. the chance to have children was stolen from her when she had a radical hysterectomy, aged 31, following the initial diagnosis of her cancer. Yet she would have made a brilliant, inspiring mum. so when I think about those rites of passage in family life, the weddings and births we accept as our due, I feel an aching regret that Katie was denied them.
and in October, when my own wedding day rolls around and there is an empty space beside me where she would have stood in her bridesmaid’s regalia, it will be hard to stop my heart from breaking. For these commonplace joys, these mundane privileges, should have been Katie’s, too.
she was a wonderful, exceptional person. We had a family saying, ‘Every day is a Katie day’ because she courted attention. she was amusing and elegant and the most engaging of raconteurs. ‘never let the truth stand in the way of a good story,’ was another of her adages. and for all these reasons we adored her.
We grew up on the suffolk/Essex border with Mum, then a house- wife, and our dad, Peter, a City human resources director, and life was a perpetual adventure. We went to boarding school in southwold, suffolk, and Katie looked out for me, took me under her wing. all was well because she was there for me.
Katie, diagnosed as dyslexic after her a-levels, was also fiercely clever. after graduating with a first- class degree in law from Exeter University in 2001 she was picked for a White house internship, and worked with then President Bill Clinton.
she travelled the world, working for a top law firm in Milan, sydney, then hong Kong and tokyo.
Katie lived her life by certain rules: that a gin and tonic was good for you, that Cadbury’s was the only chocolate you should eat, and that you should never leave the house without earrings. (Our stepmum, Elise, a jewellery designer, ensured that Katie always had a beautiful selection to choose from.)
Cooking was not Katie’s forte and she called in caterers when she had a dinner party; unless, that is, she could persuade me to cook for her, which she often did.
‘this is delicious. What is it?’ asked a boyfriend at one romantic dinner a deux that I’d cooked for her. ‘I’ve absolutely no idea,’ was Katie’s blithe reply.
her life was packed with promise and potential. then it all came crashing down. a smear test early in 2010 revealed she had cervical cancer. she was 31. she was living in tokyo but flew straight home and had a hysterectomy just three days after the diagnosis.
Buoyed by Katie’s strength and optimism, we tried to remain hopeful, for her sake. But within months the cancer had spread to her lymph nodes. she endured radiotherapy and chemo.
For a while, we thought she had the cancer in check, then three months later — on my birthday — we found out it had returned. More chemo followed and Katie lost her lustrous hair, but even when she was bald, and her head was swathed in one of her signature bright, silk scarves, she looked beautiful and her smile lit up the room.
she was treated at the royal Marsden hospital in London, and put on a drug trial, but just as one tumour shrank, another grew.
Yet Katie remained brave and practical, and her trademark gallows humour sustained us all.
although we discussed her plans for her death — she dealt briskly with her wishes for her funeral and the bequests in her will — she did not acknowledge its inevitability.
a well- meaning consultant, glancing at the grim diagnosis — and failing to register that she had no intention of capitulating — suggested she might like to spend her last days with her family. ‘have you met my effing family?’ snorted Katie. It was a typically robust response and the moment was dissipated by gales of laughter.
TYPICAL, too, was her decision, just months before her death, to buy a jaunty convertible sports car. the salesman was keen to tell her that its green credentials made it both economical and eco-friendly. ‘I don’t give a flying fig about all that!’ declared Katie, and the poor chap’s face fell as she said she wouldn’t be around long enough to care.
the car provided her final taste of freedom. We’d zip off in it, savouring the thrill of just being alive.
Katie was capable, too, of great kindness and empathy. I remember her consoling a young mum who had just been admitted to hospital with breast cancer, and giving her a silk scarf that Katie saw as essential.
she knew, too, as soon as she was diagnosed, that if she did not survive — and at that stage she firmly believed she would — she was determined to leave a tangible legacy. she put together a host of fund-raising ideas.
and after she died we managed to fulfil her wishes. to date, funds of the Katie Compson Foundation have topped £135,200 and help the royal Marsden hospital in its efforts to tackle cancer.
she thought of me, her little sister, as her life ebbed away, and in her caring way she left me enough money to put down a deposit on a flat. I knew when I saw it that she would approve. It’s in south-West London and its French doors open on to a sunny, south-facing garden.
Barry, 37, an accountant, and I— a logistics manager — often stand on the threshold of the garden and raise a glass of bubbly to Katie.
and when I reached the age she was when she died, I strove to remember how much she loved laughter; how full of hope she was to the last. In all I do, Katie’s lifeforce, her optimism and her spirit are still there to inspire me.
katiecompsonfoundation.com