SIBBS Newsletter, Autumn 2020

SIBBS Newsletter, Autumn 2020 | www.tcf.org.uk 11 own mother is a foreign and daunting feeling, but I don’t mind. We tell ourselves: I will always be a sibling, she will always be the mother of two daughters. Grief is alienating, uninteresting, and just plain depressing to read about for the average person. Your life becomes unrecognisable to others around you because they can’t even imagine what you’re going through. They can’t, and that is fine. We don’t expect them to understand at all. In fact, we’d rather they didn’t try because it won’t be enough and it’s kinder to tell them that. Friends have hugged me and patted my back and asked me with wide, concerned eyes if I’m okay. I appreciate it, because it’s all they know how to do. But it just makes everyone feel awkward. The best thing a friend can do for someone who’s lost a family member is just tell them you’re there to support them. A lifetime of ending up comforting the person who’s trying to comfort me gets quite tiresome. When I wrote this piece for a university course, at the beginning of this paragraph I typed: I’ll try not to make this about bereavement. I figured if I wanted to create a connection with more people than just bereaved siblings then I’d have to self-censor a little; nuance the heaviness of grief. However, the rest of this piece is mostly unedited from the original. And it’s true, it’s not entirely about grief. It’s also about the irreplaceable bond of a sibling. So even if you haven’t experienced the specific pain of sibling loss, you can relate to this. Everyone is either a sibling or an only child. I could find lots of passionate talks or articles on the sibling bond or being the single child of the family. But what if someone has experienced both phenomena? The sibling relationship may be the longest relationship of our lives, and the relationship which affects us the most profoundly. I watched a TED Talk on the sibling bond to gain some insight into a more ‘academic’ perspective on siblings. The speaker said that there is no bond like that of the sibling, no bond which is closer, finer, harder, sweeter, happier, sadder, more filled which joy or fraught with woe. Our sibling is probably the first person of our generation we interact with, our equal to compete with and learn from. This person is either there when you’re born and is therefore a believed constant, or they soon come into your life during your formative years and you can barely remember when they weren’t around. It is a nostalgic relationship of ice-cream and ball games and summers and fighting over stuffed toys and clothes and books. Our parents let us fly the nest and then will usually pass away before us. The other most important familial relationships in our lives, our partner and children, will usually come along long after we’ve formed as an adult. The TED talk drives home the fact that our siblings are the only ones who are with us for the entire ride. That, over our lifetimes, there “ “ there is no bond like that of the sibling, no bond which is closer, finer, harder, sweeter, happier, sadder, more filled which joy or fraught with woe.