Billie was the cool older sister in high school.

I was a freshman during her senior year, and my friends loved getting a ride home in Billie’s T-bird.

Since Dad was in the loan business, our family often wound up with repossessed cars. We went through a parade of them. When a used,  midnight blue Thunderbird came our way and Billie got to drive it, that repo became hers for good.

The late 1960s sedan had hidden headlights and back doors that opened the other way, hinged in the back. The T-bird was Billie all over — sleek, unconventional and a little on the wild side.

Maybe more than a little.

Breaking ground as the oldest child must be hard. Billie fought curfews and makeup bans. She was forbidden to ride motorcycles with boys, get her ears pierced or bleach her hair. She did it all.

With three daughters and a son, Mom and Dad weathered their share of teenage drama. On the rare occasions when we three girls went out together, we shared an unspoken oath: Whatever happens, don’t tell Mom and Dad.

Those were the days when teens piled into cars and cruised around town all night, checking out who was where and riding past the homes of current, former and wished-for boyfriends — mostly wished-for.

Billie did not complain about having to drag me along — at least not within earshot. Soon enough my own friends got their licenses and we went our way.

Besides, Billie was off at college. I visited her one weekend when I was 16, and she talked me into getting my ears pierced — or did I talk her into taking me? At any rate, the deed was done. I got grounded.

My family lived on a farm, and as children we rode horses. Billie was the best rider among us, winning a flurry of horse show ribbons on her mare, Pearl. She took Pearl over jumps I was too timid to try.

Like the T-bird, Pearl was forever Billie’s. Other horses came and went, but Pearl lived out her days on the farm, not far from the spot where weeds eventually overtook the aged Thunderbird that Billie could not quite let go.

We grew up and moved on. Billie went from cool older sister in high school to busy mom during her son’s childhood, and she became the family standard bearer as we trod through middle age. She baked Dad’s coconut birthday cakes, arranged Mom’s floral centerpieces, attended nieces’ and nephews’ graduations and represented the family at distant relatives’ funerals.

When she heard we wanted to landscape our back yard here in North Carolina, she loaded up Dad’s truck with rhododendrons, azaleas and pieris japonicas and hauled them down from Virginia to get us started.

She came to terms with the naturally curly hair that she’d literally ironed as a teenager, and she kept it long. At some point she decided to wear her favorite pieces of jewelry —  gold earrings, San Marco bracelets and medallion necklace — all the time.

As Dad’s health faltered, she took charge of his doctor’s appointments and intricate medications, sending the rest of us updated schedules that we could hardly decipher and didn’t much try. Billie would take care of it, just as she did when she quizzed Dad’s doctors and critiqued his nurses.

Billie was fierce, passionate and loyal. So it was hard to take in the words my brother was saying on the telephone one December day. Billie was gone, just like that. Heart attack, the doctor said, her first and only one.

I could not believe our indomitable oldest sister was gone.

She was 63.

The shock was softened by nostalgia as we talked with old friends at a Richmond funeral home. One graying man said Billie became his first love when they sneaked a kiss behind Chancellor Elementary School. A high school friend said that every time she got in trouble, it was when she was with Billie.

We even mourned the T-bird a bit.

Her son displayed a framed photo showing Billie, trim and tan on the beach, her hair pulled back from her face in her usual style. She is smiling as she kneels beside a laughing toddler with golden curls — my nephew’s 2-year-old son, I thought.

No, he said. That’s me. Can’t you see how young Mom is there?

I really couldn’t.

In my eyes Billie was always the same — stylish and sharp, with a hint of glamor and truckload of determination.

My sister Sale says Billie is getting things ready in heaven in advance of Dad’s eventual arrival. I don’t usually go for such sentiments, but I’m holding on to that one. I might arrive at the same place some day, and once again Billie can show me around. Maybe she’ll even take me for a spin in the T-bird.

Elizabeth Cook is editor of the Salisbury Post.