London, Sep 28 (IANS): Actress Joan Collins has penned an essay in tribute to her sister, the best-selling British author Jackie Collins, just weeks after her death.

In the essay on her website, Joan describes emotional memories with her sister, including the moment when Jackie waited seven years to tell her she had stage-four breast cancer.

Although Joan writes she spent years nagging Jackie to get "mammograms" due to their mother having the disease, Joan regarded the secret as a characteristic that she said was "typical" of her sister, reports hollywoodreporter.com.

"She always put other people, particularly family, ahead of herself," Joan wrote.

Regardless of the duo's period of estrangement, Joan expressed she "never had a better girlfriend than Jackie."

She recalls their teenage moments wandering through Cannes, favourite characters written by Jackie and their Hollywood adventures - experiences with her sister that Joan said she would rather celebrate rather than mourn her absence.

"I don’t think I will ever recover from the sadness of losing my beautiful baby sister. Someone once said, 'The reality is that you don’t ‘get over’ the loss of a loved one, you learn to live with it.' She wasn’t just a star - to me she was an entire galaxy,” Joan added.

Jackie died on September 19.