I can not remember a time when Sharon Kirby was not in my life. She has just always been there, always. My earliest memories include her and her family. Every birth, death, marriage, milestone, celebration, and loss, she has been there. I remember my mom asking me about making new friends in Kindergarten and telling her, “not like my friend Sharon.” She has been a fixture in my entire family’s life since the beginning.

I remember crying when my dad gave my pony, Lady Bug, to Sharon, as her first horse. She offered to let me ride her anytime I wanted, and I did, until we were teenagers! I remember us kids taking turns hand cranking ice cream on our carport in Hibiscus Park the night my baby sister was born. We had an ice fight on that hot July evening, which totally unnerved my normally unflappable mom. We didn’t know at the time she was in labor! All we knew was the Kirby’s were over for dinner and a good time was to be had. Her daddy entertained us eating pencils in his artificial leg! Her brother Arty was catching fireflies with my brothers. And Sharon and I were probably fighting over taking turns holding my cat! She always wanted everything I had!! As though sharing my name with her was not bad enough, it was doubly complicated by my brothers calling me Sis and hers calling her Sissy. And if you knew Sharon Kirby, you knew her middle name was not an option to tell us apart. More than 45 years ago she even further complicated that by marrying my big brother Jamie and taking my last name as well. She even took my first hospital paycheck that was deposited into her checking account instead of mine! Our small town bank, rarely confirmed details like account numbers and just credited the deposit to the first Sharon Hedden account they noticed. I had hot checks all over town and she thought it was hilarious.

Her mom made our cheerleading uniforms when we were Little League Football cheerleaders for the Port Salerno Panthers. If we weren’t at practice or games together, we were in the barn together caring for animals. We rode bareback on horses together into the orange groves and carried all the oranges we could stuff down our shirts home. We rode motorcycles through the woods to rival any of our brothers. We could shoot rats in the barn as well as any of the boys too. I remember swimming in the muddy stock pond as kids in our underwear when we were still too young to be bothered my modesty. I remember recording our favorite songs together on the radio onto cassettes tapes and introducing each song on the tape like we were DJs! I remember never knowing if my clothes were in her closet or mine. I remember swimming in Roebuck Creek behind her house all summer being entertained by her Uncle Pruney. When we got older, we drag raced against each other with her driving her prized Monte Carlo and me in my Mustang! Really, we just revved the engines a lot! I knew better than to actually race her because she was fearless and a little crazy! I remember raising money together for Tiger Shores when we were at Martin County High School to Save our Beaches. I remember fishing with her and her dad when we were kids and spending the night at her house drinking her mommas sweet tea. When her parents divorced, she lived with us for awhile and my mom became her mom too. My mom nicknamed her the ‘Varmint’ because of the obvious confusion with names. When she worked for GMAC she gave me the family discount claiming I was her sister, then spun some bizarre wild tale about why our momma named both of us Sharon, when the salesman questioned it. She was there the day my sister, Theresa was born and I remember her not leaving my house for days when she died. She loved my little brothers Donnie and Billy as though they were her own.

She was my Maid of Honor and I was hers. Later that year I remember her disappearing upstairs in the bathroom at the grocery store after lifting a 30 pound turkey and having to go look for her. She said, “sis, I can’t stop peeing. Every time I stand up, it starts running down my legs again.” Her water had broke and we spent the next 24 hours in the delivery room together waiting on her stubborn first born, Joshua. But first we had to race home for me to shave her legs because she said, “sis, you can’t let people see my overgrown hair!” My city kids and her country kids spent summers together for years playing in Fort Walker in our back yard and camping at the ‘Yake Yot’ as her daughter Amber called it. I remember car pooling our daughters to Charm School together when they were little. When my sons burned a pasture to the ground shooting off fireworks on Fourth of July during a visit, she just laughed when she called to tell me.

She was honest to a fault and sincere to her detriment. Don’t ask her what she thought unless you were prepared for that truth. She was often generous beyond her means, and would share the shirt off her back. And she always gave the best gifts! I still have some from hers from 50 + years ago. She has made me Hello Dolly’s every year at Thanksgiving for as many years as well. She had a way of endearing herself to those around her by remembering things that were special to you. Long after my brothers stopped calling me sis, she continued… until our last goodbye and hug yesterday. And last night at the hospital I made sure they clipped her chin hairs before family came in to say goodbye, because that’s what sisters do. I love you Kirby.