When you are an only child, at some point in your life, you think it would be so nice to have a brother or sister.

That thought isn’t always with you, and there are certainly times when you realize that being an only has its benefits. But it does mean there is some loneliness in your childhood, and the bonds you form with others can often take on deeper meanings.

Combine that with the fact that as I get older I am realizing, over and over, that age brings loss. For as I get older, so do those I love, and not everyone will outlive me. The last two years have had a lot of loss for us, but this most recent one is a hard hit.

My mother’s sister had three children, and the three of them are the closest things I have had to siblings. My oldest cousin is four years ahead of me, and if I could have found a way to copy everything she did, I would have. She is beautiful, smart, funny, talented and my idol in my childhood. Her sister is just eight months younger than I am and had we been siblings, I suspect our competition would have been fierce.

My youngest cousin, Jim, was our only boy, and almost five years behind me. I adored him. He inherited my cherished grandmother’s dimple in his cheek and the impish look she always had. Both of them always looked as if they were about to do something that would surprise and entertain you.

You hear about people having a twinkle in their eye, and Jim really did. I do not kid when I say there was always, always a sparkle in his brown eyes.

Like just about everyone else in our family, Jim went to Wake Forest. He went on a golf scholarship, having had a stellar golf career in high school in Charlotte, and the game was his lifelong companion and passion. His father, Jay, was also a golfer, counting a few famous duffers as friends, and I know he was incredibly proud of Jim.

Jim was the guy everyone turned to when they needed to know everything would be OK. He was always calm. Always cool under pressure.

When he was young, he was, like me, very serious in general. But he had a hidden and sharp sense of humor, and an artistic side. Hanging on my grandparents’ kitchen wall was a comic strip he created of my grandparents, and it was not only talented art, but funny. For someone as young as he was when he created it, at about 12 he showed a perception and understanding of adult behavior and humor.

He was also fairly stubborn when he did not want to do something. My grandfather was to take him to catch the bus to summer camp. The entire drive there, my granddad burned out the door locks holding them down to keep Jim from opening the doors. When they arrived, Jim got in line and thought granddad had left. But granddad was watching and didn’t see Jim get on the bus, so he stopped them from leaving and went to find Jim, who had gone behind the building and was hiding, hoping the bus would leave without him.

He got on the bus, and had the time of his life at camp, but it was good that granddad was watching, because Jim was determined not to go. To this day I don’t know how he thought he’d get home afterward, but I’ve no doubt he would have found a way.

He and I spent so much time together in our childhood at our grandparents’ home, and I have so many memories of sweet and funny moments. He made up songs about things he loved, like “Granddaddy’s boat,” and he and my mother teased each other relentlessly. When he was very young, he had trouble understanding that her title was “aunt Anne” and she became “Anne Anne.” He considered ketchup its own food group, and the year he got a case of it for Christmas from Santa, he wanted to take it with him everywhere he went.

He was a marvelous businessman, and he and his wife Suzanne loved their home in Arkansas, where they moved after he completed grad school. They have two children, Caroline and Jed, whom they have always been proud of.

He was always taking the creative route. Jim’s mother, my aunt Nancy, died from cancer while Suzanne was pregnant with their first child, Caroline, and he wanted his mother to experience at least part of the pregnancy, and to know the baby was coming. He visited her in the hospital and the day he told her they were expecting, instead of just telling her what they were naming the baby, he played Neil Diamond’s Sweet Caroline in her hospital room.

Life was good as we grew older, and he and I stayed in touch by text and email to cover the distance. It wasn’t frequent, but it was always warm and loving. And I just assumed, since he was younger than I, that I’d shuffle off this mortal coil long before him. Thought there would be more time to visit.

But nine months ago, he was diagnosed with a rare and very aggressive cancer. He fought it, hard. It was not enough, and three weeks ago, he sent the word out that he was stopping treatment. The meds were no longer working, and the cancer was getting worse. So he said he wanted to just enjoy the months he had left with family and close friends.

Months were not in the cards. Jim died Monday, Feb. 10, with his family by his side, and my world rocked like the boat would capsize.

It’s out of order. He was just 56 years old, with so much left to do. And the house we shared, my grandparents home, burned beyond livability just weeks ago. It feels like a one-two punch to the cherished part of my childhood.

When you lose someone, you always think of the things you wish you’d said, done. You realize, once again, that life is fragile and that nothing is guaranteed. But then as we heal, we forget, and we let time get away from us. We get caught up in the minutiae that is everyday life, and put the important stuff on the back burner, again.

I need to feel like I’m honoring Jim, and all those I have lost in the last year or two. So for the next week, I’m making a point to tell people I love them, to take the time to visit now and not tomorrow or next week. I’m going to eat the good food and worry about the healthy stuff later. I’m going to write the things I’ve been afraid to write, I’m going to dance in the rain and I’m going to live in the moment.

Some will think I’m being selfish, some will say I’m wasting my time. But Jim will know that I’m telling him he made a difference in my life along with the lives of so many others, and I’m paying attention to the lesson he left for me.

Godspeed, Jim. Thanks for the love and the laughter and the example of a life well lived.

Elisabeth Strillacci covers crime, courts, Spencer, East Spencer and Kannapolis for the Salisbury Post.