General Category > General Discussion

30, 25 and 16 years later...

<< < (5/5)

Pep:
I became a member on this forum six(ish) months ago to help me deal with my grieving... my emotions... my anger... my pain.

It has occurred to me that I haven't come across anyone else here that has spoken about losing a brother or sister. I mean, I think I have to acknowledge this because losing my two sisters is all I talk about in my counselling sessions. Am I looking for someone out there to talk about sibling loss? Or my delayed grieving (so she calls it)? I don't know.

I'm not really sure about this but is losing a brother or sister different to losing a mum, or a dad? Again, I don't know (i've lost my dad, too, so its all just a jumble in my head). Is the loss of a sister or brother far too complicated or too deep to talk about?

My counsellor asked me.. "What do you need to move on with your life, Pep"? In my head I was thinking "my need is not available to me anymore. I need my sister's to get me through this but they are not here". I just couldn't bear saying it out loud. So is that what would of happened? Saying it out loud would of made me "Accept" they are not here. Is this my fight in life now? That I have to say it accept it?

And then I thought a couple of days later... How do I know what my 'needs' are? Isn't it always a big sister who always tells their little brother exactly what they need? And that's my wish, to just be told what I need from a sister.

Even though I will probably ignore it (as little brothers do).

Pep

Sandra61:
The closest I have come to losing a sister, Pep, was when a close school friend died when we were both sixteen years old. She died of bone marrow cancer. We used to walk home from school together. She was funny, very clever, brave during her illness, which at times was very painful and I could not take in then how someone so young and full of life could be struck down and die that way. I felt angry, scared and did not know how to accept it. I was also full of admiration for her for somehow getting through that time. Her parents were naturally protective of her, so I didn't see her more than once or twice when she was actually in hospital and I missed her, but I remember how broken her family was after she passed. I remember too even now, more than forty years on, how she looked and how much I liked her and how well we got on, how clever and typically sixteen she was too. The tragedy of it still pains me.

I know it's not the same as losing a true sibling and perhaps you haven't heard from anyone here who has also lost a sibling because thankfully, it is so rare to lose someone at such a young age and losing a sibling early is probably quite a rare event, but, for me, I still think of her often and still miss her and it strikes me often too, how I have had all these extra years that she did not, even though we were the same age when she died. So, how lucky are we who survive and get to keep the gift of life and a future that they did not have.

I'm not sure about your counselor's question. How are you supposed to know what you might need to move on with your life? isn't that why you go; to try to help you find out because you don't have the answers to that? I wouldn't have found that helpful. I don't think really that there is anything you need to be able to move on with your own life other than the ability to live with the loss and for me, at least, the pain of that is never far away and always present to a degree, but it's the learning to live with it and, yes, 'accept' that there are some things you will never know about how the loss occurred or why, that makes that difficult, but accepting that there will always be unanswered questions and a hole in your life where those you love should still have been is the hardest thing to find a way to do. So for me, trying to let go of the anger and  bear the not knowing parts have helped make it possible for me to move forward (I would not say move on, because to me that implies leaving those events and the memories of that time behind and I don't think we can ever fully do that), but moving forward in the knowledge that those unknown factors will inevitably always remain and the pain of loss will never really pass, but instead become part of me, is what has helped me to move forward. For me, it's about understanding that I am lucky because I still have my life and it's about learning to live with the person those events have made of me and accept that the new traits they have resulted in, in terms of the changes to my personality and outlook on life, are simply now part of who I am. So if it is a matter of acceptance, for me, I have had to learn to accept myself as I am now and accept the mysteries and questions I have, will never be resolved, in this life at least. That's a hard thing to do.

I don't know if any of this helps, but hope you find your way forward in time. Of course you want your sisters back and that is what you can't have. None of us can keep hold of the past or have the present that we would want, if disaster had not struck, so we have to learn to live with the present we have. I believe the Americans call it 'rolling with the punches'. Maybe we have to learn to do that before we can move  forward.

Navigation

[0] Message Index

[*] Previous page