Anyone lost a sibling as a child?

[spinachmonster]

I was just about 4 when my younger brother died aged 9months. I didn't think it was a big deal at the time really as it was all I knew. Only when I got older did I realise it's (very luckily) quite unusual in our country- U.K.)

Now I'm in my 40's it somehow seems bigger than ever. I don't think I processed it at all at the time and I can see now how much it has affected my life and behaviour.
(Especially since becoming a parent in my 30's, the significance of it really sunk in.)

Just wondered because I don't know anyone else this has happened to. I wondered if anyone else has experienced anything similar and if so, have any tips about how to process/ deal with it. Remember him.

Thank you.

[mellongoose]

Slightly different but my second daughter died before she was born when my first daughter was four.

She knew I was pregnant and we explained that that baby wasn't now coming home. We used the analogy of planting seeds. Some grow into flowers but others cannot. She accepted it.

She is now seven and I'm terrified of mentioning it again. I don't want her missing sister to be a spectre on her childhood.

I don't know if I'm doing the right thing. 😔

[FirstAidKitNowPlease]

@mellongoose

Slightly different but my second daughter died before she was born when my first daughter was four.

She knew I was pregnant and we explained that that baby wasn't now coming home. We used the analogy of planting seeds. Some grow into flowers but others cannot. She accepted it.

She is now seven and I'm terrified of mentioning it again. I don't want her missing sister to be a spectre on her childhood.

I don't know if I'm doing the right thing. 😔

@mellongoose
I am sorry for your loss.

It's your family after all so your choice but I think not mentioning it is a big mistake.

She will likely remember what happened and if you never talk about it she won't either.

Can you mark the anniversary somehow this year. Doesn't need to be big but something small. Make a special cake maybe? Make it something fun, an annual event.

My experience is parents ignoring it totally and now I can't speak the name of the sibling and the whole thing marred my young years much more as silence than as healthy commemoration of the sibling who died.

[Fridaandhouses]

ive never posted on mumsnet before but this post has really resonated with me. OP I’m so sorry you lost your brother. My sister died when she was a toddler and I was eight, she drowned and decades later I still get flashbacks and can hear my mum screaming/feel the rising panic in me. Like others have said, I think about it much more in adulthood and particularly since becoming a mum. I feel a desperate sadness for my own parents, I try not to dwell on how it must have felt for them too much as I feel I can’t breathe. We never really talked about what had happened and like another post said, it felt a bit like we were all in different worlds afterwards. I would love to talk about her more but am not sure how to initiate this and feel it shouldn’t still feel so traumatic as it was so long ago. I’d like to find ways of remembering my sister with my own children, maybe have a tradition of doing something small on her birthday- has anyone else done anything like this? Thanks everyone for making me feel less alone x

[BereavedYoung]

<name changed>

Yes OP. It happened to me. I was 3. It was 1980. One of my younger twin siblings died shortly after birth. Mum came home with only one of the babies I’d seen at the hospital. It was never explained. He was never, ever talked about (to this day). It shaped my entire life (without me knowing for a really long time). I don’t blame them - did what they thought was right and I can only imagine the utter torture of grieving a child whilst having the twin to care for. But an acknowledgement would be nice.


I had no relationship with my mother in my teens because she only had eyes for my surviving sibling. I had therapy in my teens, 20s and 30s and without that DD would not be here. More counselling afterwards as my marriage struggled under the pressure of parenthood and all of these repressed emotions that surged up during DD’s early years. (It’s still utterly shit years on. DH has given up caring or even trying to understand how this has affected me. He thinks I can live as though it never happened.)

I need more therapy now as my sibling’s circumstances mean my parents supporting her in a way they never did me, and my Inner Child is screaming how unfair it is. I guess it’s progress that I recognise it, at least. Still my mother refuses to talk to me about it (but she has suggested changing her will in favour of my sibling (who owns a £1.5m house)).

Even Ronaldo’s situation had me doubled up in tears for days.

You’re not alone, OP. I hear you.

[BereavedYoung]

@Roseau18

@blocker. I think most of the damage with me was because of the secrecy. When I did ask a question about him when I was around 9 or 10 I was made to feel absolutely terrible about having asked and have never dared ask again, although there are things I would really like to know.
What brought things to the surface again for me was a late miscarriage (two days later it would have been a still-birth[ in quite traumatic circumstances. The therapist helped me see a link between this and my baby brother's death and how both have caused high anxiety levels around my living children.

This. There was a photo album my parents kept at the very top of a very tall wardrobe. At about 12 I took it and took one of the pictures out and kept it.

When she found it in my room that was the end of the world as far as she was concerned. She said I had no right and called me evil and sent me off for counselling to see what was wrong with me. 😭

It was a congenital blood issue for my brother. I was terrified through my early pregnancy that I would have a boy and it would happen to me.

My sister did have a boy. She named him after our brother. I suppose he’s a mythical being to her, but for me it’s agony.

[paulaparticles]

😪💔

[minmooch]

Not a sibling, but as a mum who lost her eldest child. I had already lost twin girls in late pregnancy (second marriage) when a couple of years later my eldest son was diagnosed with a brain tumour. He was just days from turning 16. My youngest son was 13 at that time. My eldest died 2 and half year later aged 18 so youngest son was 15. It is now just over 10 years since eldest was diagnosed with cancer. Youngest son has 'coped' all this time but is now falling apart. He hasn't felt happy in many years, he feels anxious and sad. I feel terrible for all that happened to him too.Although he wasn't ill , didn't die he feels a very heavy burden of being the surviving child, a pressure to succeed. Not pressure from me, I have always told him he has his own path to walk. We talk about his elder brother often but I know I haven't always got it right. We have tiptoed around each other over the years trying to protect each other from our individual pain. He's home briefly with me and my partner before he moves into his first flat. He is seeking counselling on his own and I think is ready to try and find his way to happiness without the burden of grief.

I would say we have always been close but one day all was normal, the next his brother was in hospital and I had to live in the hospital with him. We were in hospital for 6 months before coming home. I know he felt abandoned but we had no choice in all of this. I hope he's finally on the road to finding some peace with what happened to his brother and finds a way of living his life fully. We can talk to each other about his brother but there is still that sense of shock and horror at witnessing what he had to endure. Everyone else (me, his brother, his Dad, rest of family) also endured varying degrees of trauma whilst my eldest was I'll, when he died and the years since.

I'm not sure anyone ever gets over something like this, I hope to god my son finds his way through his feelings. He deserves nothing but happiness and I often feel paralysed that I can't help him either.

The ripples of grief are still ongoing.

Love to all whose lives have been touched this way.

[Algarythmnmadness]

@minmooch

Not a sibling, but as a mum who lost her eldest child. I had already lost twin girls in late pregnancy (second marriage) when a couple of years later my eldest son was diagnosed with a brain tumour. He was just days from turning 16. My youngest son was 13 at that time. My eldest died 2 and half year later aged 18 so youngest son was 15. It is now just over 10 years since eldest was diagnosed with cancer. Youngest son has 'coped' all this time but is now falling apart. He hasn't felt happy in many years, he feels anxious and sad. I feel terrible for all that happened to him too.Although he wasn't ill , didn't die he feels a very heavy burden of being the surviving child, a pressure to succeed. Not pressure from me, I have always told him he has his own path to walk. We talk about his elder brother often but I know I haven't always got it right. We have tiptoed around each other over the years trying to protect each other from our individual pain. He's home briefly with me and my partner before he moves into his first flat. He is seeking counselling on his own and I think is ready to try and find his way to happiness without the burden of grief.

I would say we have always been close but one day all was normal, the next his brother was in hospital and I had to live in the hospital with him. We were in hospital for 6 months before coming home. I know he felt abandoned but we had no choice in all of this. I hope he's finally on the road to finding some peace with what happened to his brother and finds a way of living his life fully. We can talk to each other about his brother but there is still that sense of shock and horror at witnessing what he had to endure. Everyone else (me, his brother, his Dad, rest of family) also endured varying degrees of trauma whilst my eldest was I'll, when he died and the years since.

I'm not sure anyone ever gets over something like this, I hope to god my son finds his way through his feelings. He deserves nothing but happiness and I often feel paralysed that I can't help him either.

The ripples of grief are still ongoing.

Love to all whose lives have been touched this way.

I’m so so sorry for your loss. The loss you must all feel is indescribable. I really hope your son finds his way through his grief.

I have lost a niece (at 15 months old) and I have 3 year old twin girls. All of our family are still massively affected by her death (which is now 4 years ago to sudden infant death syndrome). It never leaves you and it’s affected the way I parent my children. I still have video monitor for them and often wake in the night and have to check that they are ok.

we often talk about her, she’s most certainly not a taboo subject but it’s desperately sad.

sending big hugs to you all xxx

[Mytortoiseisbetter]

Minmooch, I hope you don't mind me commenting. You posted very sensitively whilst I was waiting to find out what had happened to my older son, I was grateful to you for your discretion. (this was under another name) .

Your story does not feel particularly indescribable or unimaginable as it reminds me of the stories in my husband's grandparents' generation (auschwitz, belsen) and of the impact this had on their child (my mother in law - born in a displaced persons camp).

My MIL has had a good life but it has been a very heavy burden.

I think this heavy burden of suvival and the pressure to succeed is very well known to the children of jewish camp survivors and of course it is not unique to them, in many ways I suspect it is universal.

You're obviously a terrific mum focussing on freedom for you son. MIL did not have that as her parents relived their PTSD without insight into its effect on her.

[Badlifeday]

My sister, in a road accident, when I was 10. No one talked about it really, no one at school tried to help etc. Had grief counselling as an adult.
Am so scared for my own dc, that is definitely a result of what happened, though I try to keep it from them.

[Matildatoldsuchdreadfullies]

My sister died when we were both adult. If I’m asked about my siblings I simply say I have one brother and one sister. If I’m never going to speak to the person again, I tend to just act as if she was still alive (e.g., “she lives in x,” rather than “she lived in x”), which allows me to talk about her without the inevitable awkwardness. Otherwise, I tend to avoid talking more about her, unless I feel the need to acknowledge her death, as well as her life.

[Blocker]

It's so hard, I imagine to be a child in the terrible of losing a a sibling as a child.

I have recently had to have conversation with my eldest (now 7, 5 when her brother died) where I've had to tell her that "yes we do love you as much as him, even if you think we don't"; and also when she has told me that I don't understand and I've had to say "No I don't know what it's like to have your little brother die. It didn't happen to me".

I don't want her/ them to worry but I know they will. We talk about their little brother but I am so worried about making them feel like he is more important to us.

I know it's just because we only have a finite amount of memories with him so we have to cherish them, whereas I get to make new memories with my other children every day.

I love them all, but knowing I will never see one of them again is awful. And then I have to a balance that by trying not to fuck up my other children when I desperately want them to have as much "normality" and "happiness" as I can. Which is hard when I can't even face a birthday party these days.

I feel so sorry for everyone on here - those who lost siblings, who grew up with a "missing" sibling that died before they were born, and the other parents

[Kezzie200]

I lost my cousin, she was a best friend too, when I was 12 and she was 9. 1970s.

She had cancer and told me when it hurt so much, she wanted to die. At that point, I didn't find it so hard to process, especially given what she had told me.

When I married, I put my bouquet on her grave. That was the first time it was dreadfully hard.

The second time was when I had my first child and, when my kids were about the age when she had been ill, grief came again, in waves.

More recently, I've lost my Mum to cancer, and we talked before she died about my cousins lost years. And since losing Mum, Dad and I went through old photos snd found some of her....before she was ill, then with her wig. Then, no more photos with her in them....just me, my brother and her brother. Sadness again, another wave.

And now again, as I type this. 43 years after having lost her.

[RockStarMartini]

My sister died in an accident in the 80s. She was 8 and I was 10. I was the only person with her and it wasn’t my fault but it’s taken me years to realise how the guilt has affected my whole life.

[Pl242]

I lost my older brother when I was 5. He had a disability and died from complications associated with the condition.

As a PP said, it is the most traumatic thing that’s happened to me but I’ve had difficulty acknowledging it as that. Because my grief always felt in minor order compared to that of my parents. As many of you have said, it’s a forgotten grief. I still feel it cannot be compared to the loss and impact on my parents. I say that both logically and emotionally, and thought it both before and after having children of my own. Yet my grief is there, it’s valid, it’s different. it matters. It’s taken a lot of unpicking for me. Therapy helped.

I can remember the day he died vividly. It was awful. I also remember other moments of grief as a child, but I gather moving on fairly swiftly. I had a happy, “normal” childhood. Then it hit me all over again when I was old enough to understand its significance. Then felt so conflicted and guilty about how to talk to my parents about it. He’s never been a secret in our family, but I had so many difficult questions about his life and death and didn’t know how to go about asking them. It’s tough.

Condolences to all who have lost a sibling. Condolences also to those who have lost a child and are navigating their own loss whilst parenting a bereaved child. It’s incredibly tough. Be kind to yourselves. From my experience, never make the lost child taboo, and make sure your other child/children feel
they can ask you about what happened. If they were young when it happened there will so many things they don’t know and may want to ask, but will feel awkward about doing so. Make sure they know the door is open to ask. Also look after yourselves. My parents were so focused on moving on and providing us with normalcy that they neglected to grieve properly. All these years later that still shows.

[Badlifeday]

It's so hard to read these posts and I am so sorry for all your looses
Is it wrong to say it's quite comforting though too? I spent years feeling my loss was nothing compared to my parents - well it wasn't, but that doesn't mean I wasn't grieving!
I too have a moment frozen in time in my head, of being told the news.

[Badlifeday]

losses
even while grieving I do like to keep my spelling standards up

[ChateauMargaux]

Thank you all for sharing your thoughts, feeligs and stories.

The messages I am reading and holding on to are... waves, recognising all grief, not just the 'worst' grief, the fact that we never get over it, sometiimes we need help to find a way through the next wave. The realisation that we have not 'worked through it' when the next wave hits, is always so so difficult.

What stands out for me is my Dad saying, well, that's life, we just have to get on with it, underplaying the trauma that we experienced, the ripples and how they reverberate when we are faced with or hear about other trauma and other death which paralyses us because we can't talk about the one that impacted our own family. He brushes over my Mum's longterm depression as being chemical because not everyone who has experienced her trauma is depressed.

[Fridaandhouses]

Like others have said, I am so sorry for everyone’s losses but thank you all for sharing your experiences - it has made me feel much less alone. ChateauMargaux. My dad found it difficult to understand a family members mental health struggles in relations to my sisters death - I remember him once calling it ‘a convenient peg to hang it on’ - it felt almost self indulgent to talk about it. I think people are much more open now x

[dalmatianmad]

My brother was knocked over and killed by a drink driver when I was 16.

I went to the mortuary with my parents to identify him.
They never got over it either. Mum died last year so just me and dad left now. We talk about my Brother alot more since Mum died.

I feel bitter towards the drink driver
He showed no remorse, he was a middle aged business man. He's got no concept of how this had destroyed our family.

It's so shit.

[SurpriseSurprise]

Not quite the same, but my mum had a late abortion when I was 17. It was unplanned and a surprise, coil failure, so she didn’t find out until she was quite far gone

For a long time I struggled to get over it and I would mention “her” as a sibling who died. I’m sure I imagined it but I think I heard my mum on the phone saying the baby was a girl so to me it was a sister I lost. My brother got married on her due date (although many years later) which was probably a coincidence but I always remembered the dates for some reason

Now I’m older I don’t think about it much, and I feel for you all who lost siblings

[Abouttimemum]

Yes I was 10 and mum went into hospital to give birth and the next thing we knew our gran was there to take us to hospital as he was going to die. He lived maybe 6 hours. It was all a bit of a blur although I do remember the lead up to it vividly and I remember feeling terrified for my mum. I used my pocket money to buy her a gift which seems to futile when I look back. I have older siblings and they looked after me. After the hospital my oldest took me to my hobby as usual and I just got on with my day. It all just felt so strange. It was the early 90s.

However, we always talk about him, and every year on his birthday we get together to remember him, so our grief as a family has definitely been acknowledged and dealt with, and we’ve worked together to remember what happened on that day so there’s no wondering.

Since my son was born it’s come to forefront for me again, mainly because I have no idea how my parents put one foot in front of the other after losing a child. I don’t know how people do it. I ask more questions now and they like to talk about him.

[ihatebojo]

Oh goodness. I have been so worried about a child I know whose alcoholic mother smothered two babies whilst passed out. One ages 6 weeks, one aged 5 months.

Everyone keeps telling me that she is ok but I am waiting for it to happen. What you wrote in your original post OP, is exactly what I fear for her in the future. And I don't know what to do to help her at all.

Stay strong. Xx

[ReviewingTheSituation]

My younger brother died in an accident when he was 17 and I was 19. I was about to start my 2nd year at uni and had to go back less than 2 weeks after it happened. So i saw my parents' very raw grief, but things were very different when I went home for Christmas (in that they almost seemed to have worked out a new normal).
I have always felt siblings are overlooked when another sibling dies. Of course it's horrific for the parents, but the course of my life changed too, and 25 years on, I probably still haven't really processed my feelings.

Now that my parents are older, I hate being an only child (I've always hated it - I'd have loved to have more family), and I so often wonder about what things might have been like.

[felulageller]

@surprisesurprise

My DM had a late abortion when I was 13. They thought I was too young to figure it out so they don't know that I know. I worked out the approximate due date, guessed they were a boy and had an imaginary world where he grew up.

I was an only and always wanted a sibling.

I developed depression soon after and have had MH difficulties all my life.

When I tried to talk about it to friends they didn't get it.

I wrote about it a lot in my diary.

I became quite anti abortion after it. But now I'm more mature I can see that it isn't so black and white. Given DM's age I imagine he would have been high risk of disabilities and my DPs didn't have a good relationship and were abusive to me. But I can't actually get to the point of saying it was right he wasn't born.

I became very broody, desperate to fill that void. I had a DC too young, on my own and ruined my life.