Joan Collins, 93, spent October 4 the way she has spent it every year for a decade. She reached back into the family album for a photograph of two little girls and wished her sister a happy birthday in heaven. Jackie Collins, the novelist whose stories sold hundreds of millions of copies, would have turned 89.
“Happy heavenly #birthday to my dearest #sister @jackiecollins – always in my heart,” the Dynasty star wrote on Instagram, adding heart and feather emojis, according to Hello!.
Joan Collins And Jackie Collins In A Childhood Snapshot
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The black-and-white picture shows the sisters standing side by side outdoors, with palm leaves and a stone building behind them. It was taken long before Joan became Alexis Carrington and long before Jackie became the queen of the Hollywood novel. Hello! noted that it is one of a series of childhood photos Joan has shared over the years, each one a small reminder that the glamour came later and the bond came first.
Jackie was born in London on October 4, 1937, four years after Joan. She wrote 32 novels, every one of them a New York Times bestseller, and her books have sold more than 500 million copies worldwide, according to her official biography. She died of breast cancer on September 19, 2015, at 77, just weeks short of her 78th birthday.
A Loss Joan Still Carries
Jackie kept her diagnosis private for more than six years, and Joan has said she learned how sick her sister was only three weeks before she died. She has described weeping for months afterward and has said more than once that losing a younger sister is not something a person gets over. In an earlier post, she wrote that everyday moments still trigger the urge to call. “Today, I think, ‘Oh my God, that I must tell Jackie,'” she said. “And of course, I can’t tell Jackie.”
Joan has returned to that theme on Jackie’s birthday and on the anniversary of her death, and she wrote a deeply personal note to her lookalike sister on one of those occasions. The feather emoji in this year’s caption is a quiet touch. For many people a feather is a sign that someone who has passed is close by.
Two sisters from Hampstead grew up to conquer Hollywood in different ways. One of them is still here to remember the other, and she does it every October 4 without fail.