These are the words I wrote last week to read at the memorial service for my beloved sister-in-law Peggy. There is so much more I could have said. Peggy was warm and welcoming, conscientious and kind, never critical or dismissive. She gave so much to so many, and among the greatest gifts that she gave us were her smile, her full attention, and her complete, nonjudgmental support of all of our endeavors. To those of us who knew and loved her, she really was “close to perfect,” and our world will never be quite the same…but we will always know that we were so, so lucky.

Just in case anyone here doesn’t already know, I’m Amy. I’m the baby of the Wight family. And even though I may be counting the months until I’m eligible for Medicare, that is not a position I ever intend to relinquish.

As I told Steve last week, I’ve been so, so lucky. All of my life, I’ve been surrounded by competent, loving, responsible adults, so I’ve managed to never really have to grow up and become responsible myself, and I’d like to keep it that way.

Many of you know that I love words—reading them, writing them, and, often, using way too many of them to tell a story. But this week, as I’ve tried about a hundred times to write the words to say what Peggy means to me, words have repeatedly failed me.

My brother Andy suggested that I start with this prompt: “Peggy was an only child. We were a gang of 5.”

So: Peggy was an only child. We were a gang of 5. I was 3 years old the first time Steve brought Peggy to camp to meet the family. Our camp on North Pond, like Steve and Peggy’s camp just down the road, has always been the place where family and friends gathered, so I’m sure that on that first visit, it must have been filled to the rafters with noise—with laughter and arguments and Red Sox games on the crackly old radio, with Steve’s adolescent brothers and little sisters, with our mom in the kitchen, probably roasting a turkey or making a casserole or baking cookies.

I’m also pretty sure that Peggy, the only child, was completely unfazed by the chaotic family she was about to join. I’m sure she gathered me onto her lap and read to me, made an ally of 12-year-old Leslie, put on an apron and washed the dishes. I know that all of us loved her right from the start.

Because I was so young, I don’t remember a time before Peggy was a part of my life. I was 6 years old when she and Steve got married, and 8 when they made me an aunt.

I was 10 the year Steve was deployed to Vietnam, the year that Peggy and the boys lived with us in Connecticut. My best friend Donna and I took on the role of “mother’s helpers”—which mostly meant learning to change diapers, watching a lot of Sesame Street, which was brand new that year, and baking cookies for our charges.

That was also the year that Donna and I circulated a petition among our classmates and won the right for girls, for the first time, to wear pants—but not blue jeans—to school. For my birthday that year, Peggy sewed me a mix-and-match set of school-appropriate clothes: a blouse, a long vest with tan and turquoise stripes and gold buttons, and two pairs of pants, one tan, one turquoise. I wish I had a photo so you could all see how cool I was!

By the time Steve and Peggy bought the Sunday River Inn and moved to Maine in 1971, I was 12 years old. Having vowed, long about third grade, that I would be moving to Maine myself just as soon as I could, I had already been scheming for years for a way to get here for more than just a couple of months in the summer.

So Steve and Peggy’s purchase of the Inn was a dream come true for me. My mother and I started spending every school vacation, and occasional long weekends, in Maine, and it was heaven. Mom would help out with the cooking and the laundry at the Inn during the busy vacation weeks, and I would keep Keith and Eric out of the way and entertained at Steve and Peggy’s house next door during the often frantic hours between 4 and 6 p.m.—that mainly meant many hours of Sesame Street, Mr. Rogers, and The Electric Company, and many, many boxes of Nabisco snack crackers.

A lot of you knew and loved my mother, and you might be surprised to hear this, but for several years of my adolescence, my mom absolutely, positively did not understand me. I mean, she didn’t understand one single thing about what it was like to be a teenage girl.

But, lucky for me, Peggy always did.

I was about 15 when I decided it would be a good idea for me to move to Maine and live with Steve and Peggy—or, more accurately, I planned to live in the backyard of the Inn, in their new 8×10 garden shed. This was well before the tiny-house movement really got going, so I was ahead of my time.

Steve, champion of crazy notions and outlandish adventures, enthusiastically agreed, and Peggy never once voiced the slightest objection, even though my plan included the vague idea that I would be relying on her for food, transportation, and bathroom facilities.

It was my mother, with her oft-repeated mantra, “Oh, don’t be ridiculous!” who soundly rejected my scheme (I told you she didn’t understand me) and in the end, I had to wait two more years to get here.

Within a couple of months of starting college (in Maine, of course), I had declared my legal residency with Steve and Peggy and changed my driver’s license to Maine. When I turned 18, I registered to vote for the first time in Newry.

I came home to Steve and Peggy’s for vacations, worked in the ski shop, and slept on the floor of Sara’s room.

I celebrated my first wedding at the Inn, and it was Peggy I ran crying to when that marriage ended.

Just as I had, my kids grew up on the cross-country ski trails, and playing pool and ping-pong in the basement. Cait got her first lawn-mowing and landscaping experience there, and even though she would probably tell you it was mostly limited to picking up rocks—so many rocks!—she would also probably tell you that it started her on a path in that line of work that has lasted 25 years and counting.

From summer gatherings that spill over between the two Wight family camps on North Pond, to the countless family celebrations they’ve hosted, first at the Inn, and then, for the past quarter of a century, at their beloved Red House, Steve and Peggy have provided not just me, but the whole big, crazy Wight family with a home base for more than half a century.

When our mom died, almost 19 years ago, it was Peggy who helped each of us, in different ways, to navigate our grief. It was Peggy who sorted through our mom’s boxes of mixed-up photos and created special albums for each of us.

And it was Peggy who filled the role of matriarch. We called her our “BBSE”—the Best Big Sister Ever. She was our sister, our mother, our friend, our confidante.

For two nights in a row this week, I dreamed the same dream—Peggy came into my kitchen to return a pie plate, staying for only the briefest second. When she left, I turned to someone beside me and said, “Peggy is as close to perfect as any human being I have ever known.”

And all of us who knew her, and loved her, and shared the incredible light and love and spirit that she embodied—we all know how true that is.

And we are all so, so lucky.