Shared with permission: On Sibling Loss
In the shock-bitten months after my brother died, I sat on our parents’ porch, chain-smoking and begging for signs.
My parents had morphed into alternate versions of themselves. Several times each day, I’d watch the realization of my brother’s death crash over my dad like an avalanche, blanching his face, battering him. My mom confessed that she sometimes thought my brother was in the witness protection program, alive and in hiding.
When my own grief rose in me, stretching in my sternum, begging for release, I’d escape to the porch. At 24, my brother’s unexpected death had boomeranged me back to my parents’ home. I was a child again, and the porch was my treehouse, my secret space, my respite.
In the dark, shadows of pine trees looming above, I watched clouds drift. I stared at the distant light of dead stars and the space between them. I prayed that my brother’s spirit still existed somewhere, and I smoked cigarettes, tears dribbling down my cheeks.
Sometimes I’d build my brother. I’d close my eyes and exhale and envision his wide frame, shoulders sprawled back in the chair next to me, flicking a cigarette. He’d be wearing his Mr. Clean t-shirt and Carhartt pants, and exhaling smoke rings that would hover and lift into the night. I’d let myself feel his presence, almost as familiar as my own, before opening my eyes again, alone.
I was born first, but Will had been the bold one, the one who made friends easily, the one who ran for class president in middle school. Though I harbored a secret desire to be special, to be seen, I faded into the background when I was scared, which was almost always. It seemed impossible that Will was gone and I was still here in this skin, in the shadows beneath stars.
On the porch, I could be devastated or defeated, secure that I wasn’t adding to my parents’ worries.
I could be furious.
At my brother’s memorial service, people urged me, over and over again, Be strong for your parents. In the shadow of my parents’ pain, my grief seemed invisible.
I scoured the Internet for books about adult sibling loss. I found one; it was out of print.
After we sent Will’s obituary to the local newspaper, they inadvertently left my name out.
I felt excised.
From the porch, above the rusting basketball hoop Will and I used to chuck balls at, I wallowed in a wide pool of nevers: I would never have nieces or nephews from him. He would never know the kids I hoped to someday have. He would never sit here on the porch again with me, gossiping and showing off his perfectly puffed smoke rings. He would never touch the cool, curled moss in the forest behind our house or light another cigarette or eat his sketchy scrambled eggs with cheddar and pepperoni. He would never be with me when our grandparents died.
When, someday, we lost our parents. I spent so much time on that porch that now, more than 20 years later, it’s the image I hold of my raw grief for Will—dark, damp air, tendrils of smoke, scanning the sky.
It was years– no, decades– before I realized the deeper meaning about my porch time.
On the porch, I could feel the enormity of my own grief. Away from the thick, heavy air of my parents’ loss, I could explore the field of my own pain. It could seep into the air. It had no edges. Time would soften and shift it, but it would be with me for the rest of my life.
My grief was huge and fierce. I didn’t have the language to express how much I needed it to be separate from my parents’, to have my loss acknowledged without measuring it against theirs.
There are more books on sibling loss now than there were when Will died. But the death of a sibling is still a loss that often leaves people feeling invisible or shadowed. This bereavement blind spot propelled my co-editor and I to create a collection of essays on sibling loss, sharing their grief stories in their own words. Our hope is that this book allows other grieving siblings the space to see and feel the vastness of their own loss, and acknowledges sibling loss as the uniquely lengthy, painful, complicated, and, so often, unseen brand of grief. It’s the book I wish I’d had when I sat on my parents’ porch, feeling so lost and alone, trying to map out what losing Will meant to me.
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Lynn Shattuck was 24 when her younger brother and only sibling, Will, died. His unexpected, substance-related death reshaped her family and life in innumerable ways. When she turned to the internet, hoping to find books written by others who’d lost siblings, she found more books on pet loss than adult sibling loss.
In 2014, Lynn wrote an essay coining sibling loss “The Loss of a Lifetime.” The essay argues that our relationships with our siblings are unique– there’s almost no other relationship in which we could expect to spend an entire lifetime with someone. And yet, sibling loss remains underrepresented and is the least studied relationship in the bereavement field.
Alyson Shelton’s brother Michael died in 1984, when she was ten years old. In 2021, Alyson and Lynn connected through a writing community online. Upon realizing Alyson had an early experience with sibling loss, Lynn invited her to join a community of writers who would eventually create an anthology on sibling loss. As Alyson began to unpack how deeply she was affected by Michael’s death, she offered to partner with Lynn on the anthology.
From there, Alyson was introduced to Molly, whose brother, Jimmy, died in 2014. Molly, who works in design in healthcare, shared her desire to create more community around sibling loss. Though Molly and Alyson were virtually strangers, they had much to talk about. Their conversations, which evolved to include Lynn, wove through a variety of topics from deciding what to say when someone asks “How many siblings do you have?” to the inherent loneliness of being a surviving sibling. In the process of these discussions around creating community, they inadvertently conceived their own. Now, they’d like to invite you to join them.
These talented people have poured their hearts into their work after they were impacted by the loss of a sibling. Margo Fowkes, my dear friend and colleague is involved with their organization and her daughter has contributed works in their book and website.