Reflections on Sibling Loss: A Personal Journey

Standing on the Ledge — Rebuilding from the Rubble. Looking back at the past.

Right now we’re in that mid-to-tail-end stretch of high school exams. Why is that important to me at this moment? It isn’t. And it is.

Certain times of year grab you by the collar. Not because they matter in the present, but because they’re welded to something that changed you. For me, this stretch of winter always drags one date up out of the floorboards: January 25th, 1985.

I was 15. I was in high school. And I wasn’t living under my parents’ roof — I was in a group home. I did a lot of things as a young teenager that I’m not proud of now, and that’s where they landed me. I’d wound up in that system two days before my 14th birthday. That’s the backdrop.

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That day, my older brother was returning home from school. He had one more exam to write, and he was going in to tie up loose ends. He’d met up with some friends to get a ride home — that age where someone showing up in their own car instead of taking the bus meant freedom. Cool points. Options. A little power.

The weather was one of those weird “almost spring” winter days: sunny and windy, with drifting snow and slush and ice all mixed together. Bright outside, treacherous under your tires. The kind of day that looks harmless until it isn’t.

I was at school too — not because I had an exam. I didn’t. I cajoled my group home staff into letting me go on the pretext of cleaning out my locker, grabbing supplies, making sure my courses were lined up for the next semester. That was the official story. The real plan was to go out and hang around with friends.

And I did. I met up with my high school buddy at the time, Jason. I went over to his place and we spent the day puttering around on his snowmobile.

Somewhere in the middle of that day, I saw my brother briefly in the hall. Quick chat. It went well — which is worth noting, because at that point in my life, he and I did not have a good relationship.

I was probably the last person in my family to see him upright, mobile, happy.

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On the way home, in my neighborhood, there was a set of railroad tracks called the Five Mile Crossing. The tracks crossed the road on a diagonal, in a dip, and the road surface over them was uneven. People used to try to “square up” the crossing — instead of taking it diagonally, they’d angle the car to hit the tracks more straight-on, so it felt less rough.

The driver did that that day. Windy, drifted, slushy, icy. They crossed the tracks, spun out of control, and collided with another vehicle. My brother was sitting where the first impact landed.

He didn’t die instantly, but he didn’t make it either. They got him to the hospital. They couldn’t stabilize him. This was around 10:30 in the morning.

People tried to get a hold of me through the school — paging, trying to locate me — but because it was exam season, they weren’t making announcements. And I didn’t go back after I left. I never heard the page.

I came back to the group home to find out my brother had been in an accident. I was being taken to my parents’ place, and from there, the plan was to bring me to the hospital.

I got to my parents’ house and was greeted by my aunt.

That’s when I was told my brother had passed away.

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That event alone had a negative impact on my life for the next two years — and honestly, longer than that. The following semester in school, I didn’t perform well. My mental health went downhill. Because of my living situation, I stayed in the group home. The group home thought it would be best if I moved back home. My parents refused.

I was there twice. Maybe it was a good thing. I don’t know. The jury’s still out in my mind, and I’ll never have a clean, solid answer on it.

What I do know is this: losing an older sibling at that age is earth-shattering. It rearranges you. The grief isn’t a single feeling — it’s a whole environment. One day you’re walking through normal life, and the next day the floor is different.

For two to five years after my brother’s death (and beyond), it had major repercussions. It took me a long time to recover. And I still honestly don’t know if I’ve fully recovered.

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A small lens from the rest of my “field notes”

I’ve written before about how the brain can go into triage mode — how it starts sorting the world into “what keeps me standing” versus “what can wait.” That’s not poetic. That’s survival wiring.¹

I’ve also written about the freeze response — that blank, stuck feeling people mistake for laziness or failure. Sometimes it’s not weakness. Sometimes it’s the nervous system slamming the brakes because it doesn’t know how to absorb what just happened.²

And then there’s the “evidence ledger versus shame ledger” problem: the way grief and guilt can rewrite your memory into a prosecution case against yourself. I don’t want to live in that courtroom anymore. I want to live in facts: I was 15. I was in a complicated situation. I did not choose what happened on that road. I did not choose the collision. I did not choose the aftermath. I am allowed to grieve without turning it into a life sentence.³

The sociological angle (because it matters)

Part of what makes a moment like that so destabilizing is that it isn’t “just” personal loss. It changes your role, your family’s shape, your place in the system around you. It’s the collision between personal biography and the wider structure you’re trapped in — school, institutions, family rules, and the way “normal life” keeps moving while you’re trying to breathe.⁴

Add the group home piece and it gets even messier: when you’re living under an institution’s routine, your grief doesn’t get privacy — it gets scheduled. It gets managed. It gets interpreted. Sometimes that helps. Sometimes it makes you feel like you’re not even allowed to mourn in your own language.⁵

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That’s it. That’s all for this.

Godspeed. Stay safe.

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Footnotes

1. McEwen, B. S. (1998). Protective and damaging effects of stress mediators. New England Journal of Medicine, 338(3), 171–179. ↩
2. Porges, S. W. (2011). The polyvagal theory: Neurophysiological foundations of emotions, attachment, communication, and self-regulation. W. W. Norton. ↩
3. Neimeyer, R. A. (2001). Meaning reconstruction & the experience of loss. American Psychological Association. ↩
4. Mills, C. W. (1959). The sociological imagination. Oxford University Press. ↩
5. Goffman, E. (1961). Asylums: Essays on the social situation of mental patients and other inmates. Anchor Books. ↩