Trying to find out about my late brother

[As8ly4yn]

Hi everyone,

I have a brother who passed away before I was born. When I was told, which was only a few years ago, I was extremely shocked and buried my emotions for years, until last summer when I finally realised the magnitude of the situation and started thinking about how different my life would be if he were still alive.

My mum did not tell me anything about him at all (I am not too sure if he is even a full sibling) and I would like to find out more information about him. I've tried to talk to my mum about it, but she's seemingly traumatised by the situation as she thinks of every possible reason to try and get out of it, telling me my kids in the next room could overhear, and that she's so happy with the life she has now, which is the most important thing etc.

So understandably it's extremely difficult to find out information from my mum, and I have looked on ancestry, myheritage and other family history sites to find his name, birth date and death date, but I haven't yet found anything. I was wondering if you had some ideas as to how I could go about this? Thank you

Do you know any information at all about him OP? Was he born in the UK?
I’ve been doing to research on the findmypast website recently. If you search by your mothers maiden name and rough dates you should be able to find him on there.

How old was he? Can you ask a relative?

Do you know where’s he buried? Is there a gravestone?

Have you tried freebmd? It is excellent for checking birth marriages and deaths.

What do you know? Name, year of death, age?

Do you know anything? E.g. if you don’t know anything about him then could it be that your mum had a stillbirth but essentially still talks about him as your brother, in which case there would be very little information out there.

At the end of the day, your mum doesn’t want to talk about this, and there is likely little to be achieved by finding out what will essentially just be the details of his birth and maybe a short life before his death.

I’m guessing he wouldn’t have been much older than you? So at best still a child when he died.

Order a death certificate.

Hi, thank you so much everyone, all I know about my brother is that he was a child when he passed, I'm thinking maybe 2-3 years older than me due to family dynamics. Although he lived a very short life I would still like to hear some memories of him and see his pictures. My plan has been to look through birth and death records and then order a death certificate when I've found out his name. It's worth mentioning my mum has stress issues and other complications making it especially hard to talk about this.

There may not be anything much to find out.

You don’t mention your own age, but here is what happened 50 years ago.

My brother died before I was born, at a few weeks old. He was severely disabled (not clear whether a birth injury or something else) and my shell shocked young parents were encouraged not to visit while ‘nature took its course’, so they have no photos. They were told to forget this baby, go home, have another when you’re recovered. I doubt they were the only ones.

Try: birth and death records.
Other family.
Newspaper reports.
Please stop asking your mum.

I think you should let this go. This is your mother’s real child, and she doesn’t want to talk about it. Yes, he’s your brother but to you he’s really nothing more than an idea or a piece of knowledge and you shouldn’t be doing something that will bring her, the bereaved mother, pain. This is her loss, not yours.

I think you should let this go. This is your mother’s real child, and she doesn’t want to talk about it. Yes, he’s your brother but to you he’s really nothing more than an idea or a piece of knowledge and you shouldn’t be doing something that will bring her, the bereaved mother, pain. This is her loss, not yours. agree with this.

Also, it’s IMO insensitive to put this in bereavement when you haven’t actually been bereaved.

On FreeBMD you can search by just using your parents surnames, then add a date range which will bring you up a list. Then you can filter by gender which will allow you get get the details for a death certificate. There also maybe a story or death notice in the Newspaper so check the British Newspaper Archives.

Your mum obviously still has massive problem talking about it, so I’d leave her for now and not bring it up. Children’s treatments and deaths were sometimes handled really badly in the past, she’s probably traumatised.

I disagree with those saying you’re not bereaved. You’ve had a shock, and learnt about a significant family loss, and I would guess this would affect anyone.

My son died age 8, and we went on to have another child. They are very curious about their brother, feel his loss, and talk about his life in relation to theirs. I’m glad we’ve been able to be open about our family story.

This is your family history, and it matters.

Your Mums age probably has something to do with how she talks about him. Until recent years, severe illness, grief and loss were dealt with very differently, quite badly in my opinion. Being able to express my grief for my little boy, and share his story openly, has definitely meant that my MH didn’t tank completely (although our loss has been tremendously difficult).

I do hope you find some answers. Take very good care of yourself.

@As8ly4yn

Messaged you

OP, I don't want to be too specific, but sometimes children die in extremely tragic circumstances, and at times their parents or siblings are even responsible for those deaths. It's happened to people I know, and the death was similarly hushed up within the family as it was too painful to speak of.
The cases I know of where children died young of natural causes, by contrast, aren't secret, although people may be too sad to talk much about them. Even talking 50 years ago.

I do empathize with the need to know more about your brother, but as your Mum doesn't want to discuss it, don't press her. Ask more distant relatives and dig around in archives instead.

Be prepared - the story might be as bad as it could be.