Compassion, Spring 2024

22 tcf.org.uk COMPASSION | FEATURE - FORGOTTEN MOURNERS - SIBLING GRIEF Bereaved siblings have often been called the forgotten mourners, because in the aftermath of a terrible loss they are often the ones whose grief is overlooked. But the sibling relationship is profound, it’s part of how we are formed and who we are, and that loss can be shattering. Here we share the beginning part of a talk given by Rachael Claye, at a Compassionate Friends retreat weekend for bereaved parents, siblings and grandparents held in January 2024. Hello. I’m Rachael. I’m the youngest of three children. I lost both my siblings. My sister died when we were teenagers, by suicide. My brother died aged 32 from a sudden illness just after I turned 30. From being the youngest, I have become the oldest. It’s not a position I ever wanted. I’m going to tell you a bit about my story. Then we can open it up and we can talk, because I know parents worry about their surviving children. I can let you into a little secret, because we’re all friends here: we worry about you too. I’m going to start with my grief as a child, because grief is different for children. Because it has happened to me twice, I understand that now. I was 14 when Nikki died. She was 19. The key thing to say about grief and children, from my experience, is that it’s frightening. Everything you think is certain, disappears. Your parents change overnight, which is perhaps the most frightening thing. Your family changes shape. Your position and your role in the family change. You don’t quite know who you are or who you’re supposed to be. Because for brothers and sisters, our siblings have almost always existed. They are the world, and for us, always or almost always have been. Take part of that away, and it is like someone removing a continent. It’s like Africa goes missing in the middle of the night. You wake up, and the planet has fundamentally changed. And the weird thing is, that nobody outside your family notices. That’s very disorientating. It is also very isolating. And that can be lonely. I found it very lonely, even though I had been quite a happy-go-lucky kid. But I was still going to school, and other people were still talking about hobbies and homework and friendship groups. And I wanted to do all that, and sometimes did, but I wasn’t carefree any more, which my friends could maybe see, but couldn’t understand, or didn’t know how to help. I actually have my diary from when I was 14. Before Nikki died, the voice of the person writing is a fairly cheery kid. And that’s true even though I knew Nikki was very ill, that she had tried suicide several times, and I was very afraid she would try it again and die. There’s a break of three months after Nikki died and the diary starts again. And it’s the voice of an adult. It’s like my childhood very suddenly ended right there. That night. It’s hard to understand all this when it’s happening - I certainly didn’t at the time. I think this is why people bereaved in childhood circle back to grief - something I have done. As a child you don’t have tools to process what’s happening to you. So it sits with you. And you can come back to a moment many years later, when you suddenly understand. That’s happened to me several times. I think it’s not unusual with people who were bereaved as children. There are things that weren’t resolved or understood at the time, and something happens to trigger a memory, and find yourself using your new adult brain to understand it now. We also circle back because of milestones in our lives. So something happens, like having children, that brings a new aspect of the loss that you hadn’t known would exist. It took me a long time to work out how to talk about Nikki’s death. Forgotten Mourners - Sibling Grief