Editor’s note: On the fifth anniversary of the late icon’s death, Cynthia McFadden remembers her longtime close friend Katharine Hepburn.

Five years ago, on June 29th, Katharine Hepburn died at her rambling brick home on Long Island Sound. It was Sunday. I don’t remember much about the weather. Seems to me it was sunny. Warm. Breezy. I do remember vividly what was happening inside, as the final chapter of that last long good-bye was written.

She was 96 years old and, after decades of the finest health and most indomitable spirit, the last years had been difficult as her health failed and her world grew smaller. It was hard to know how to help, what to do.

Since the 1980s, she and I had been the best of friends. She was a loner who wanted company. And I was lucky enough to be standing in the right place at the right time and became that company.

She was 50 years older than I but I don’t think either one of us much noticed. I could barely keep up with her as it was. For years I stumbled through compelled marches through the Connecticut woods in search of exotic plants (butterfly weed was one of her favorites) and shivered through February swims in the sound.

She loved nature and she loved extremes. She especially loved things other people hated and would frequently say, "Let’s do such and such; it will drive them mad!" I wanted to please her. I tried to keep up.

She adored exhausting herself with exercise. She played tennis through two hip replacements and a variety of shoulder surgeries, and long after her foot was nearly amputated from a car crash. She loved to win.

If it was blowing a gale, she would demand a walk on the beach. If the sidewalks of New York were burning up with the heat, she’d light the fire and turn on the air-conditioning. She was not like other people. She did not bend and break as they did. She did not play by the rules. "If you obey all the rules you miss all the fun." She said it, she lived it.

She often joked about death: "Death will be a great relief. No more interviews." And so, I suppose, I thought maybe she would figure out a way around that final exit. As I look back, I realize how unprepared I was for her to die. I knew it was coming. The doctors were clear. But even now as I write this, it is hard to believe she was unable to use that extraordinary charm and enormous wit to wiggle out of death’s demand. It took me a long time to admit how angry I was with her for dying.

She was born on May 12, 1907, "despite," as she wrote in her autobiography Me, "everything I have said to the contrary." Until she wrote her book, well into her 80s, she had publicly claimed November 8, 1909, as her birthday. The date was actually her beloved brother Tom’s birthday, the boy who at 16 died by hanging, whether by intention or accident I think she was never certain. She was 14 when she found his body. She was never the same after that. She stopped going to school, tutored at home and became terribly self-conscious. She felt, she said, that people were talking about her family’s tragedy and so she withdrew further into herself.

The year 1907 was neither real nor a tribute to Tom. Rather it was Kate’s successful effort to shave two years off her age, the better to play the ingenue. When I was about 25 or so she said to me, "It’s time." "Time for what?" "If you are going to lie about your age you need to start now."