The Older Sister
Sometime this weekend, while she is playing, or reading, or sleeping, or eating, or attending that second live concert in one weekend, or having tea with a real live writer (her aunt knows the coolest people), or working hard at improving her full turn or her free hip or her tuck, sometime in this weekend packed with so.much.fun she will cross a threshold she is not aware of, but I am. Sometime this weekend my daughter will have lived more than half of her life as a bereaved sister. I could calculate it exactly, down to the minute, really. But I don't let myself. I don't want to know that precisely.
This is a kind of thing my mind gets hung up on. I remember coming up on living (then) half my life in this country, and it seemed a big deal. My sister, who's eight years younger than me, and so reached the same point that much earlier just sort of shrugged-- she was so far past that place herself that it was no longer a thing for her at all. Thinking about that I wonder whether this will ever seem like a big deal to Monkey. I know she is not thinking about it now, and I don't know whether she ever will. She is, by nature, a storyteller, not a mathematician or scientist. And so it is not clear to me that even looking back from any place in her hopefully long and eventful life this invisible line will matter a diddly to her. She was so very marked by her brother's death itself that it might never matter to her that there was a time before it, or how much time that was.
She grieved. Oh, she grieved. Out loud and quietly. In her first language, the one we speak at home, and then, as she started school and her English improved and they started learning Hebrew, in two more. Like all of us, she is no longer in that acute all-encompassing phase of early grief. But neither has she dispensed with it. Which is, of course, as it should be. And, at the same time, as everything about this, it's too fucked up for words-- the kid's not yet ten, and she's lived with grief for half her life.
There are things about her that are undoubtedly shaped by her experience as a bereaved sister. It's not that she is somehow an expert at other's grief. But she has a fine sense of what is and isn't about her. She understands the shades of sad. When a beloved teacher in the school died suddenly and unexpectedly in December, she was sad, but she also understood with piercing clarity that hers was a sadness from a distance. She and a couple of classmates spent some time that afternoon writing letters to dead people, including the teacher. She let me read her letters.
She wrote four letters total-- one to the teacher who died, one to her brother, one to my grandfather who died before she was born and in whose honor she is named, and one to my grandmother who died in May and whose funeral was the very first Monkey ever attended. There is no sentimentality in any of these. There is no cuteness. There is no mixing of her issues in with the sadness of others. And that is why these letters (I kept them) get me still. She is not even ten, and she has this understanding that we all wish more adults around us had.
To her brother she says that she misses him still and loves him. She notes the age he would've been, and how she thinks her younger brother would've liked to have an older brother too. And, still, still, still, she says she wishes she could see him. Me too, kid, me too.
To my grandmother she says that she didn't really know her (true-- dementia is a horrible thing, and by the time Monkey could remember things well, my grandmother wasn't herself anymore; they did have a lot of fun earlier in Monkey's life, though, and for that I am glad), but that she knows how much her daughters miss her.
To my grandfather, and I must say that it surprised me that she wrote this one, she says that she is named after him and tells him that though it is very sad, his wife has died recently, and also that he is still very missed.
To the teacher she says that she is now very sorry she never really knew her. She was a middle school teacher, but she also had been involved in many things at the school. It was remarkable to me that Monkey understood the difference between how she knew the teacher and how the teacher's students knew the teacher. Monkey says that she is sure her daughters miss her (of course), but then she doesn't say that about the students. She describes, instead, what is happening near the teacher's room in the school-- there is a bathroom across the hall, and Monkey writes that the lower school kids are not allowed to use it because her students are in there-- they are crying and washing their faces, and crying, and washing, and on and on. I cried when I read that. I have tears coming up now as I write about reading that.
The mindfuck of this is that it's not that she is naturally fearless in the face of pain. She is sweet and she's always been kind, and she has a good deal of empathy. But she is not, and I know it is strange to say about a kid who hurls herself at the vault table and flies to execute her bar dismount, she is not naturally the most courageous person you've ever met. She is cautious and risk averse. And as we all know, death is a scary thing, and raw pain of a grieving person is perhaps scarier still. So the fact that Monkey is better than most at handling other people's grief is mostly about her own biography, her own story. It sucks. I am glad she is the way she is. I hate that she is that way because her brother died.
I heard it said about the senior rabbi of our congregation that because his father died when he was very young, he is drawn to comfort the grieving. Like a proverbial firefighter, he runs towards the grieving family when others are tempted to run away. Monkey is not like that. She doesn't run towards the grief. She might even hesitate, as she did about whether to attend my grandmother's funeral or about whether to visit her kindergarten teacher recently as she mourned the loss of her own elderly mother. (This was the teacher who helped Monkey find her voice in both English and Hebrew, the latter because at the time she was saying kaddish, Jewish mourning prayer, in the classroom every school day for her father, and entirely without prompting and without telling us Monkey joined the ritual.) But even in those cases, it takes but a short conversation, a few sentences really, for her to change her mind and be there for the grieving.
On the way back from the visit with the kindergarten teacher Monkey asked why the teacher'd said that visiting the grieving was one of the most important and difficult mitzvot (good deeds). As I think about the conversation that followed now, we focused mostly on the "important" part, discussing how visiting with the grieving lets them tell you about the person they are missing and about how that itself brings comfort. We kinda skipped the whole "difficult" part of the statement. I guess we both know there are harder things than that.
If you were lucky enough to have older children when your baby died, have you marked any significant grief-related milestones in their lives since? Do you see them as bereaved siblings? Do they see themselves that way? If you have younger children, are there things about them that you see as grief-marked? Are there other children in your life that are connected to your baby who died for you? How do you see their milestones?
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Reader Comments (17)
V is 4. He cried all through our Christmas service at church. He told me he thought Eva would come home for Christmas and get her presents. He often comes to me and tells me he is sad and misses Eva. And our youngest living child, T, who is 2. He latched onto a bald baby doll and takes this doll everywhere and calls her his Eva. It's sweet but heart-breaking to watch.
We were also given some windchimes. When they chime we say that Eva is laughing in Heaven...often the boys will touch the chimes to 'make Eva laugh'. It's amazing, really, how much they love and miss their little sister. S has already decided to name his future daughter Eva.
Since Eva's death the have not experienced any other losses but they know now that people really die. Sometimes they talk about wanting to die to go see Eva...but mom would be really, really sad so they stay here instead.
My 7 year old was old enough to know what death meant, and she went through a grieving process that was, as I understand, fairly typical. She cried for her sisters and talked about them to others and to us. She's also pretty resilient in many ways and I feel like in the long-term (this was almost 4 years ago) she did not change in any really major ways.
But my 4 1/2 year old... oh boy. She's always been an intense and sensitive child. I do not want to detail the ways that her grief manifested over a period of 18 months. It was so difficult to go through that with her and know that we had caused it in a way, and that nothing we were trying to help her was working (and we tried many things, had professional help, etc.). I am so grateful to the loving and understanding people in her school who were so supportive even as her behavior was incredibly difficult to deal with. There are clear long-term effects on her, in her understanding of death and her empathy for others. The mother of a child in her class died a few weeks ago, and we had a very moving conversation about how she could try to help this child as she goes through this. In certain ways she is a socially immature child, but in other ways she is wise well beyond her 8 1/2 years. I know that some of that is because of the twins.
Obviously I wanted to protect Sári (4 years old) from that. But I couldn't. She were really enthusiatic about her little sister: first I belived she thought she would be a toy or something... When we found out, that Eszter was not alive, one of my first thoughts were that how I would tell it to Sári.
When we told her that her sister died, that was one of the worst moments of my life. I arrived home from the hospital with completely empty body, Sári looked at me, touched my belly and asked when Eszter would be born. I cried and told her that Eszter was born, but she also died, and now she was an Angel in Heaven. First she laughed and told me that I had joked. I had to say: No darling, this is unfortantely true. Her face turned from laughing to crying in a second. She was screaming, crying, and she didn't want to see me. She hided in her father's arms...
Later she asked many times about Eszter. We always answered the questions. Sometimes I initiated the talking, because I was afraid that she was too small to understand her feelings. Once she said that she was not sad about Eszter anymore. I think it's good, though I belive that Sári is not completely ready with grieving.
However, death and Eszter has became a common topic in our family since then. I am not sure what Sári understood from death, but Eszter is not a taboo for sure. Eg. we made snowmen this week. One snowman was Sári, one was me, one was my husband, and Sári wanted to make a small one for Eszter.
So I belive that though Eszter is not with us, Sári will also keep her in her hearth. And this is all I could teach her about death and grief.
He's never talked about it, not then and certainly not now. He's never mentioned the twins at all and quickly changes the subject the very few times I've mentioned them. He's like me -- hyper-rational and not especially emotional. We didn't really know them, I imagine him saying.
It's hard to use up a limited capacity for grief for a baby who barely lived at all and existed mostly as a hope and an idea. I imagine that my son, like me, wants to keep that grief for when he really needs it.
And he will. Someday he will.
well, i seemed to have an enormous capacity for grief, for my two babies who "barely lived at all and mostly existed as hope and idea". probably because, to me, they were more than *just* hope or ideas, to me they were real, and the grief was enormous, still is- probably because they continue to be real to me, even though they are long gone. and, wouldn't you know it, when we went on to lose more loved ones, ones who lived long lives, i still had a great capacity for grief, for mourning their loss in my life. i don't particularly think that grief is like a pie, all sliced up and then done and gone. grief is a process of living, like breathing, and joy, sadness and laughter. for me, it is, anyway.
i didn't have a living child when mine were born. i do have a living child now, and i imagine one day he will know about his siblings who died, hopefully we will be able to frame this family history in a way that will feel normal to him, and not make him feel like he never would have existed had his sister and brother not died before him.
The four year old is now 6 1/2 and the other day he told me that sometimes he cries "in his head" for Florence, I think we all do.
My nephew, who was barely 4 when Natan died and has never mentioned that pregnancy, never even saw me pregnant, recently got excited when he found out I'm expecting another boy this time around. He said, "Oh good! Now the boy cousins will outnumber the girls!" It was an enormous shock to me, that he'd been doing that math. Children are separate people, with so much going on in their lives, hearts, and minds that we can only glimpse. I think it's a reminder of how we can't assume to know everything about how grief works for other people, and how it should work for anyone.
We haven't told our 4 year old son about Natan, who died a year before he was born. In the year between their births and in much of the time since, I thought I'd tell him. But I find my desire to protect him from that hurt and confusion is really stronger than any other inclination. But I know other people who've done differently, because it was right for them.
While no one's comment has violated these policies, we are trying to remain ever mindful that those lines are crossed unintentionally and quickly when discussing something so close to our hearts. We are a space that is inclusive of all approaches to grief. We try to work with the adage that one way of grieving is not a reflection or judgment of another way of grieving. Thank you.
I did not have any other children when the twins were born. I do think of J, my surviving daughter of the twins, as being bereaved. Occasionally I think that she is more bereaved than I am. But I hope that isn't really true. I want the loss to be mine, my life to be the marked one. Not hers. The romantic side of me says that there is something particularly irreplaceable about the bond between twin sisters. Interestingly I don't consider her younger brother to be bereaved to the same extent. Perhaps that is something I need to reflect upon? I'm worried that I might press my own grief upon my daughter.
I did feel that protective instinct, to pretend that her sister had never existed. But it would have been too difficult to hide, her premature birth, scars, early baby photographs of a tiny baby wearing tubes ('nose tubes' as she calls them now) . . could I explain all of that away without mentioning the 'other' baby? I just don't know. I decided not to go down that road but I can completely understand why others choose to. Completely.
I don't think she is grief-marked as yet as she is too small to understand. She knows that there is a baby G. She talks about her occasionally but I think she is a little confused as to who she is. I suspect that she believes she resides in my necklace, which is a piece of memorial jewellery.
Obviously my daughter is, in my thoughts at least, still connected to her twin sister. I don't know how she herself will feel as she grows older. I hope she will think of her occasionally, fleetingly. Fondly I hope. Wistfully perhaps? But not with the gut wrenching sadness of her mother. Reading the reflections here from parents with older children I feel almost privileged. The type of privilege that nobody would wish to have but still. Sigh. But privileged to have the opportunity to let the explanations and realisation dawn slowly upon my two living children, to let their understanding grow with them. To have the gift of time, to modulate my own feelings rather than having to explain and comfort when my own pain was still screaming and raw?
Thank you for a thought provoking post Julia and for sharing your sweet, kind daughter's experiences with us. I'm sorry that she has had to become so brave.
My older one is 6 now, she's the quiet one. She is like her dad. She would observe and hold it all in. From time to time, she will fall apart and wish for her brother. She's more mature now and thinks and spks of him more than she used to. She is calm and gentle with our youngest and I can only imagine what she would have been like with her other brother.
Our younger daughter is 4 now and she is precocious and constantly asking questions. It was hard to explain everything to her. She had just stopped nursing about a month before her brother came and left. Her babyhood was over and I was just about to say goodbye to another. That was hard. Now, she is very nonchalant and open about her brother's death. That helps us keep him alive in our memory.
Since we lost our boy, we have also experienced two other significant deaths in our family. They have reopened some wounds, but unfortunately, our girls are old pros at the death thing and have far more understanding of it than I did when I was so young.
We have not marked any grief-related milestones yet and I'm not yet sure how we will do so when the time comes. I do know that I don't want A to be forgotten and I don't want E to forget what a good big sister she would have been. We have yet to have had any kind of memorial for A and E never saw her sister; I think E needs some kind of tangible reminder of her sister, some physical marker that represents A to her, but I'm not yet sure what that might be.
The thing I worry most about is how my grief marks E. I am so incredibly sad and so exhausted and so angry with the universe. I have very limited reserves of patience. I snap at E more than I ever thought I could have and I become frustrated - and even enraged - so easily. Things that are normally somewhat annoying - like the day-to-day tussle over toothbrushing and getting dressed and out the door - send me over the edge. So, this is my biggest fear: that it is not E's grief that will mark her forever, but mine, and that it will not only mark her, but forever mark the relationship we have to each other. That she will fear me, or feel she has to be good for me; that this terrible grief of mine for my second girl will drive a permanent wedge between me and my first.
Over the next months, she amazed me again with her compassion. As I would cry over my breakfast, she would put her arms around me, head leaning on my shoulder, and say, "It's ok mama. Shhh...it's ok. We'll make another baby." Sadly, over the months, she learned to associate tears with her sister, and whenever she or I would cry, she would always say it was because of her sister, even when it was clearly unrelated.
One day she told me she doesn't like her sister anymore because she always makes me cry. Another she said she was going to put on fairy wings and fly to find Margot to bring her back to me, and that then she would say "does that feel better?"
The most surprising thing to me has been how stable she has been in the face of death. She has not really seemed too phased by it. I hear her talking to her friends about it. It's as if she is too young to fear death, so she simply accepts it, wanting to play with Margot's ashes and pick rocks for her jar.
I grieve for her though. I grieve for how good of a big sister she was going to be, for how much would have loved her sister. I grieve when she kisses my now growing belly and when she talks about all she wants to do with her baby brother, due in May.
And I comfort myself with the thought that most the world, and for most of history, has had to learn how to live with death at a young age. So while it is so sad, it is also part of being alive, and I'm so grateful that she is alive and learning and growing, even though her sister is not.
i am sorry for my comment to have come across as warning-worthy, and that this infringes on the topic of this post, very sorry to julia.
this is the time of year that brings my grieving back like it was yesterday- although many years have passed. reading and commenting here has been very soothing and helpful for me during this trigger-time. a certain sentiment expressed about grief triggered my own memories of what was considered appropriate and acceptable for me all those years ago (from others who did not suffer the loss i did)- and i felt the need to comment with a different perception- but i realize we are all on different paths and experience life differently. i apologize and will remember to keep mindful of my words if i choose to share them in a comment.
I realize that I (and my son) grieve differently than most people, that my sadness is just not as intense, that, as a general matter, I lack the emotional range (both positive and negative) that most people seem to have.
A long time ago, I wrote an entry for Glow about comparing my grief to that of other people's. It ended like this:
"I lift your grief in one hand, mine in the other. I balance them against each other, gauging their heft. I lay them side by side and measure carefully. Mine always comes up short."