Photo by Edvard Alexander Rølvaag on Unsplash
By Alyson Shelton
Working on the Sibling Loss Anthology with Lynn, I think and read about sibling loss quite a bit. And I’m struck by how much we all share. How the loss of a sibling marks us in a way that we feel comfortable in each other’s presence. So many questions and thoughts resonate with me, as if they are ones I’ve been considering for years. And I have been, secretly, in between the “important” bits of life, feeling absolutely sure I should be over my brother’s death by now.
I’m very grateful for Lynn and her writing. I still remember reading an essay she shared on social media and feeling a connection with this person I didn’t even know. And feeling like she knew me. I shared her pieces on social media and we’d message each other from time to time. She asked me if I ever wrote about my brother and I said,
“I haven’t written much yet. Only one piece. That I coincidentally am very proud of.”
I didn’t feel I’d grieved him right or that I deserved the space to write about him, to own the importance of him in my life, publicly or privately.
On the hierarchy of grief, siblings are low on the ladder and as a half sibling, as the youngest, and the only girl, I didn’t believe my grief merited any space at all.
Through my friendship with Lynn, Molly and all of the siblings I’ve come to know and call friends, I’ve begun to accept that my grief, and all of our grief, matters. And yet, when Lynn asked me to write a newsletter, I balked. Me? Are you sure?
But I felt I could write the August newsletter because my brother Michael died 40 years ago this month. Something important to say!
But then, I paused again,
I don’t know the exact date.
Everyone knows the death date of their sibling. Right? I feel like it and yet, I’m not sure. Was it August 6th, 1984? 8th? I know it was early August, during the Olympics, an event we would have shared for the rest of our days, the sports obsessed family that we were. And we did talk about it on the phone that last time, sitting in the kitchen, on our little cafe chair, the phone cord wrapped around my finger, the TV on in the den just beyond. Brothers, other brothers around, on their way to Mexico for a surf trip. Cracking open beers, ruffling my hair with rough hands. Pulling me close, their little sister, their only sister, the sweetly sour scent of their breath in my nostrils.
That last time I we spoke, I said,
“I love you.”
Before I said good-bye, before I hung up or handed off the phone to another brother or my mother or father, I said it and he said it back.
And I knew he meant it, because he always meant it.
I held on to that and let the day of his death go. It was more aggressive than that, I pushed the date of his death away. I didn’t want to remember. None of us did, and so we didn’t.
It speaks to a larger arc of our grief, pushing it away and willfully forgetting and as we all know that doesn't work, not really. The grief doesn’t go anywhere, it stays.
So then I traded willful forgetting for shame about not knowing the date. If I really loved him, I’d know and I’d mark its significance. Every. Year.
But then, I realize how I say to others all the time, there is no “right” way to grieve. And it’s worth taking the time to remind myself, to treat myself with as much care as I treat others. However I’m honoring Michael and our relationship is right. For me.
The world doesn’t feel comfortable centering sibling loss. But I’m beginning to feel some ease in writing and speaking about my loss and the significance of it.
Thank you so much for joining us. I’m so grateful I’m no longer alone.
Sibling Loss Book Club
These last weeks of August can be a whacky time. Still, we hope you’ll join us for our book club with the amazing Annie Sklaver Orenstein to talk about her book, Always a Sibling. We hope you’ll join us, even if you haven’t had a chance to read her fantastic book. We’ll talk to Annie about her journey of writing this book about sibling loss, how she managed to incorporate humor into her writing, and what it feels like to have written and published the book that so many of us wished for when our brother or sister died.
Monday, August 19th @ 7PM ET/4PM PT, on Zoom
To sign up, scan the QR code on the image below or click here.
We hope to see you there!
Love,
Lynn, Alyson and Molly
You don't get over the loss, you get use to it.
There is no right way to grieve—that’s what we learn as we go through it.