SIBLING GRIEF

As I get older and life and death happen, one grief runs into another sometimes and creates a whole new type of experience. They blend together in a way that lets me know life goes on, time goes on, and yes, I am getting older since so many I loved and cared about are no longer living.

But the loss of a sister has been an immeasurable loss to me, a sister just one year older. I had hoped with the car I bought in my retirement to be able to take her many places with a nice heated seat for her aching, aching spine.

Today while organizing emails, I found some voicemails from my sister that I had emailed to myself.  I cannot listen to them—why is that? But it is urgent to me to keep them. Why is that?  She is gone, and I know that.  I cannot let them go, but I cannot listen to them. 

My sister had been gone two years and I was developing fond memories and warmth when I thought of her.  And then my brother, one year younger than I am, died a sad awful painful death, spurred my poverty.   Anger, outrage and grief and this mixed somehow with my sister’s death. 

With the purchase of my first all-wheel-drive vehicle, I was hoping to be able to go to Northern Michigan and see my younger brother not just in nice weather. Sadly, he did not survive. He had an awful death, driven by poverty. He died way too many years early because of poverty, and that’s a kind of grief too.

I have saved voicemails from my brother as well, but I cannot listen to them.

So, I drive my heated seat all-wheel drive little vehicle other places. I make new memories, meet new people, have a meaningful life with meaningful connections. I embrace nature, and those who are left I love.

But sometimes it mixes together in strange ways. Sometimes 1+ one is more than two and it becomes a whole new thing, this grief over siblings in general.

I cannot speak about the latest sibling grief yet. I’ve been going a month with just not even facing it. Just trying to pay attention to this gorgeous spring.

I fear the pain of this final loss. I pretend. I cannot talk about it, cannot pick up the phone.

Is this some type of compounded grief?  Like an added dimension?  I wonder how people survive wars with multiple deaths and no time to grieve—is that what created such coldness is some of my grandparent’s generation?  I wonder.

Social media can be helpful if you are careful, I’ve found.  I follow a number of kind and wise people who discuss grief. One is a neuropsychologist whose writing has been extremely helpful. One is a middle-aged man who lost his identical twin to suicide; the surviving twin was taken to his knees and years later you can see the grief on his face.

He wrote the other day that he has to remember that love came first, before grief. The shock of suicide remains. All the many times he wants to call his brother and share something. And then he remembers, and wonders. The mixing of anger and pain. The shock of suicide and a shock of the loss of an identical twin he thought would be with him until the end

Love came first he said. He borrowed this expression from somewhere, I’m not sure from where. I believe it comes from writer/ poet Donna Ashworth.  https://donnaashworth.com/.  I see others give her credit for this profound term.

Yet sometimes it is not love that came first but a dream… Dream of family, togetherness, activities, events, holidays, celebrations. I grieve those. I believe I’ve been grieving family for decades, since I was aware of horrible dysfunction created by violence and addictions, illnesses of different sorts.

Life goes on and is meaningful and joyful and full of love. I have a spouse; I can barely breathe when I mention his name because he’s still here. I’m so afraid… knowledge of the steep decades, long connection because of the fear of losing that.

I should not grieve somebody still living for that is not fair. That is not fair to him or to me.  We are together loving life and each other.

But as for the siblings? That grief changes often and becomes a new beast sometimes. Sometimes it’s a gentle feeling of love and fondness when I remember just one sibling. But when combined it becomes something different, something that stabs.  I miss them so very much.