It was Labor Day, 1998 when I finally built the nerve to ask my oldest sister how she felt. She was past the 10th anniversary of first being diagnosed with Stage 4 breast cancer, triggering a mind-boggling roller coaster of peaks and valleys that included a double-mastectomy, worldwide trips, and dangerous excursions she wouldn't have dreamed of trying when healthy. There was even, amid it all, an out-of-the-blue romance and marriage with a rock of a man, with the added throw-in of three step-daughters, with whom she bonded almost instantaneously.

There had been periods when her hair grew back, she gained back some weight, and she could taste things, even swig a beer or two. Those fluctuations in health served as my alibis for years, but we were far too removed from that now. The woman who sat next to me on that Monday looked very little like any of her previous incarnations. Too frail from the disease and the endless lost battles to contain or reverse it, she seemed more at ease with her impending fate than those around her were.

So I got up the nerve to finally ask the question I really didn’t want the answer to, the one I now regret not asking years and years sooner.

``What does it feel like?’’ I said. ``What is your day like?’’

``You know that feeling you have when you first wake up here?” she said.

Yes, I said. Of course. Any of the Donnellons or Scannells or Slatterys who spent their summers in this historic Victorian beach town knew it. It was nature’s first big yawn, the morning sun breathing warmth across that cold ocean air. It urged you to remain in bed at least a few minutes more, so as not to waste a drop. You were a fool not to oblige.

"That is the best part of my day," she continued. ``In those moments, when I first wake up, I don't feel sick. That breeze allows me to remember what it’s like to be healthy. It’s not long, maybe a second or two. But I’m so thankful for it.’’

She then made me promise to be appreciative of every aspect of life, big or small. Be awake, she said. Be aware.

Above all, be appreciative.

She died less than three weeks later -- appropriately on the last day of summer.

I still feel some shame when I think about how long it took for me to ask her that simple question and how late it was too. I guess I wasn’t capable of a deep dive back then.

But what I've strived to do since is live my promise. Be that friend to others going through tough times.

The way I wasn't to her.