Sibling Loss: The Forgotten Grievers

At a child's funeral, everyone watches the parents. The casseroles, the cards, the careful questions all flow toward the mother and father. Standing slightly to the side is a young man or woman who has just lost the person who shared their childhood bedroom, their inside jokes, their entire history. Researchers call siblings the forgotten grievers. In our community, we refuse to forget them.

What sibling grief looks like

Surviving siblings carry a strange double load. They grieve their brother or sister, and at the same time they watch their parents break, and most of them quietly decide the same thing: I cannot add to this. So they perform being fine. They go back to school or work quickly. They field questions about how their parents are doing, while almost nobody asks how they are doing.

Under the surface, siblings often carry survivor's guilt, anxiety about their own mortality, a changed position in the family, and sometimes the crushing sense that they must now live two lives, achieving enough for the one who is gone. Years later, many describe their grief finally surfacing long after everyone assumed the family had healed.

If you are a surviving sibling

• Your grief is not second class. You lost your person too. You do not need to earn the right to mourn by comparing your pain to your parents'.
• You are allowed to be a mess. Protecting your parents by hiding your grief helps no one, least of all them.
• Find a witness outside the family. Someone whose grief you are not managing while you share your own.
• Keep the relationship. Say their name, keep the photos up, carry the jokes forward. The bond continues.

If you are a parent

Your surviving children are grieving in the shadows, and they are almost certainly protecting you. Ask them directly, and keep asking. Better still, grieve openly enough that they learn it is safe to fall apart in front of you.

"No parent or sibling should feel isolated in their grief."

Jonny's Angels was built for siblings too. They sit in our Thursday circle as full members of it, because a family's grief heals best when every griever in it is seen.

Keep reading:

• Surviving the First Year After Losing a Child
• Why Marriages Struggle After Child Loss, and How Couples Survive