Recalling sandcastles of yesteryear and a sister's life

B.G. Kelley

is a Philadelphia writer

She built a sandcastle on the 25th Street beach in Wildwood when she was 10 years old. "I'm going to live in a castle some day," she said to me, her big brother. I just smiled.

My sister Joan loved the Shore. But she had dreams to chase - and so, years later, she pulled away from her rowhouse in Philadelphia in a beat-up Chevy Impala on her way to Los Angeles. She never came back.

The dream she harbored building that sandcastle on the beach in Wildwood came true. She married well, and her husband bought her a magnificent house - a castle, truly, with a pool designed by the Walt Disney Corp. The house sat on the highest point of Beverly Hills, overlooking the City of Angels.

She didn't harbor her wealth. She shared it.

She gave money to the poor, to animal-welfare organizations, to Catholic Charities agencies. And she was extremely magnanimous with her family and friends: treating them to all-expenses-paid vacations, sending them home with suitcases stuffed with clothes she only wore a couple of times, and regularly picking up the tab in restaurants.

Her inner beauty was matched by her outer beauty. She was often mistaken for the actress Natalie Wood.

My sister treated my wife and me to a week in Maui with her and her husband. One night, we were dining at a restaurant where the tables laced the edge of an indoor pond inhabited by live flamingos. Suddenly, three of the hot-pink birds sidled through the water, ignoring all the elegant, bejeweled women seated around us. They stopped at our table - and stared at my sister.

Her generosity was unconditional. She didn't have a Machiavellian bone in her too-short-lived body.

When she was in her 20s, she sustained a crushed pancreas in an automobile accident in L.A. For the next 20 or so years she suffered terribly with pancreas-related problems. Then, in 1990, at the age of 46, she was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer; it spread to other vital organs.

She didn't have much more time left here.

I thought of her next stop.

She didn't always attend church regularly - sometimes she was too sickly, other times she simply didn't go. At times I sensed her absence from Sunday Mass was eating her up like termites - when I was visiting her one summer, in more halcyon times, we went to the Santa Monica beach and there she built a sand church that resembled the parish church she attended in our old Paradise neighborhood in Philly.

Still, she remained steadfast in her faith in God. Often, on a weekday, she would sneak off to a church and light a candle for someone in need.

As death was approaching, she called a priest, a Jesuit, who went to her bedside and administered the sacrament of the sick.

Afterward, with a surge of energy, she said to the Jesuit, "You had garlic for lunch." Caught off-guard, the tall, distinguished priest instinctively covered his mouth.

"Oh, I'm sorry," he replied.

Joan simply smiled at him and whispered, "You're cute."

The Jesuit blushed.

Not long after that my sister shut her eyes.

I reflected on this, looking at a sandcastle washed away by the tide on a beach in Wildwood.