Sibling Grief Quotes

Not only had my brother disappeared, but--and bear with me here--a part of my very being had gone with him. Stories about us could, from them on, be told from only one perspective. Memories could be told but not shared.

When a long, long time later, he stares down at the silent blue marble of the earth and thinks of his sister, as he will at every important moment of his life. He doesn't know this yet, but he senses it deep down in his core. So much will happen, he thinks, that I would want to tell you.

Sometimes it’s heartbreaking to see your siblings as the people they’ve become. Maybe that’s why we all stay away from each other as a matter of course.

I'm not prepared for Rue's family. Her parents, whose faces are still fresh with sorrow. Her fiver younger siblings, who resemble her so closely. The slight builds, the luminous brown eyes. They form a flock of small dark birds.

Dr. Webb says that losing a sibling is oftentimes much harder for a person than losing any other member of the family. "A sibling represents a person's past, present, and future," he says. "Spouses have each other, and even when one eventually dies, they have memories of a time when they existed before that other person and can more readily imagine a life without them. Likewise, parents may have other children to be concerned with--a future to protect for them. To lose a sibling is to lose the one person with whom one shares a lifelong bond that is meant to continue on into the future.

If you were a truly dedicated brother Thomas, you would be at Babara's side,” Anna said. “I would hope that if I collapsed, Christopher would weep inconsolably and be incapable of consuming meat pies.

What can I tell you about the alchemy of twins? Twins are two bodies that dance to each other’s joy. Two minds that drown in each other’s despair. Two spirits that fly with each other’s love. Twins are two separate beings conjoined at the heart!

The gastliness of nothing. Because I was nobody's sister now.

She could see that to lose a sibling was hard: it could only seem unnatural:out of time, out of order, a vicious re-run of your own departure into nothingness.

Coming back last time to the house she grew up in, Isabel had been reminded of the darkness that had descended with her brothers' deaths, how loss had leaked all over her mother's life like a stain. As a fourteen-year-old, Isabel had searched the dictionary. She knew that if a wife lost a husband, there was a whole new word to describe who she was: she was now a widow. A husband became a widower. But if a parent loss a child, there was no special label for their grief. They were still just a mother or a father, even if they no longer had a son or daughter. That seemed odd. As to her own status, she wondered whether she was still technically a sister, now that her adored brothers had died.

But how can I learn to live in a world that doesn’t include my brother? All my life, I’ve always been my brother’s sister; it’s part of my identity, part of who I am. My brother is part of my past; we share a common history. And we had plans for the future.

All I can say is, it's a sort of kinship, as though there is a family tree of grief. On this branch, the lost children, on this the suicided parents, here the beloved mentally ill siblings. When something terrible happens, you discover all of the sudden that you have a new set of relatives, people with whom you can speak in the shorthand of cousins.

To lose a sibling is to lose the one different from you. There’s no one now against whom to say: But I am like this. I am this.

At morn we buried Melanippus; as the sun set the maiden Basilo died by her own hand, as she could not endure to lay her brother on the pyre and live; and the house beheld a two-fold woe, and all Cyrene bowed her head, to see the home of happy children made desolate.

NEWT shuffles over awkwardly to the bereft THESEUS. NEWT hesitates, struggling to find words of comfort. Then for the first time in his life, he puts his arms around his brother. They hug. NEWT: I've chosen my side.

That is, the full impact of our brother's or sister's death begins to seep into our consciousness at precisely the same time when others might expect us to be feeling better.

The ice cold fear I’d felt, not knowing if Wyatt was alive, pressed into the wall with other girls and surrounded by guys who were unspeakably brave, hit my body again in a wave. This was trauma—the gift that keeps on giving.

Wyatt told me once that if tenderness were a disease, I’d be terminal.

My mom told me once that Wyatt loved her the way a boy will love his mother, but I loved her the way an artist loves another. Jo taught me what that meant.

The light in that room was a glow; I seem to remember the color green, or perhaps flowers. A pale green sheet covered his inert body but not his head, which lay (eyes closed, mouth set in a tense and terrible grimace) unmoving. Gianluca. Barely able to see, barely able to stand - my knees kept buckling – and breathing so quietly I thought that I, too, might die; that out of shock, I would just drift away, the shell of my body cracking open. No longer anchored by my brother’s love, I would be reabsorbed by sky. Gianluca. If there was never another sound in the world, I would understand – yes, that would be appropriate, it would be fitting. This was the antithesis of music, the antithesis of noise. My brother’s death seemed to demand silence of all the world. Gianluca.

Whenever something scary happens or I want to comment on something, like Joyce and Hopper’s constant bickering, which is getting annoying, I glance toward Adam’s side of the couch. And each and every time I do, the pain of his absence pierces my chest. That’s the thing about losing someone: there’s one major death followed by a million little deaths.

You wish there was an adequate term for what you are—like orphan or widower—a term that says 'I once meant something to somebody.

We bumped into other silent lines of kids going in the same direction. We looked like we were much younger and our lines were headed to the cafeteria or recess or the carpool line. Or it could’ve been a fire drill. Except for the stone-faced police officers weaving between us with rifles.

At one hundred, surely you learn to overcome loss and grief—or do they hound you till the bitter end? At one hundred, siblings forget, sons forget, loved ones forget, no one remembers anything, even the most devastated forget to remember. Mothers and fathers have long since died. Does anyone remember?

Is it any wonder, given the volatility of sibling love, that we might feel anger at a brother or a sister for dying? How dare they die and leave us! We feel angry, but there is no recourse, so we usually end up feeling guilty. We

My heart was my brother. And I no longer believe in a world that says he was too weak to deserve life.

We grow stronger together.

I'm bored of it all being miserable. I just want something to change. There's nothing wrong with that is there?

Mother's gone so who can I cry to about you? There’s no one else alive. I have no one to tell me how I was as a child. Was I really one?

We are the voices in the shadows, Between the light and shade, Betwixt life and restful death, In the dark periphery of the unseen. We’re here, At the edges. We are the villainous punished, The innocent murdered or abandoned, Our lives ended by foul means, or unspeakable deeds. We are your lovers long gone; your siblings forsaken. Can you hear us? At the edges From the Foreword of Cautionary Tales - by Emmanuelle de Maupassant

Shen Qiao did not move for a long time, in these moments, the glint and noise around him faded, he held the slowly cooling body of Yu Ai, his head bowed, no one knew what he was thinking. Maybe it was a scene from all those years ago, he and his martial siblings on the mountain eating and sleeping in sync, training together. And yet past dreams sought, people departed, what has passed will never return. Just like some errors have no way of being remedied, some cracks will forever persist, and death, impossible to wake from.

At one hundred, surely you learn to overcome loss and grief—or do they hound you till the bitter end? At one hundred, siblings forget, sons forget, loved ones forget, no one remembers anything, even the most devasted forget to remember. Mothers and fathers have long since died. Does anyone remember?

At one hundred, surely you learn to overcome loss and grief— or do they hound you till the bitter end? At one hundred, siblings forget, sons forget, loved ones forget, no one remembers anything, even the most devastated forget to remember. Mothers and fathers have long since died. Does anyone remember?

Kingsley used to tell the following anecdote about sibling rivalry – how he found me, when I was four or five, lying on the stairs in an ecstasy of grief, how he worriedly knelt at my side and, after several minutes, managed to quell my hiccuppy gaspings, my heaving chest. Then he said, ‘Easy now . . . What is it?’ When at last I could find and shape the words, I said, ‘Philip had a biscuit’ . . .

Many people experience the loss of a pet as a more painful experience than the death of a family member or friend. For many of us, the love we share with animals is simple, pure, and unconditional, whereas our love for another human being reflects the history we have shared together--the good times and the disappointments. For many, love for a parent, a sibling, or a spouse is complex and conflicted.

I thought Cradle Island would fix us. I did. That the waters would heal us, just the way Mom said they could. But here we are, and everywhere I turn, I see grief. I see it in the strange actions of my siblings and the dead silence at the dinner table and the hushed voices of my parents in the hallway outside my bedroom door. Grief didnt't leave; if anything, it burrowed even deeper in. Took the place of the one who left. Grief sits in Henry's chair at dinner, sleeps in his bed at night. The island, which once seemed ready to burst from all the life packed onto its shores, has become a colorless place.

The child shifted and stretched, then at last her eyelids fluttered open. She had kicked off the blanket in the night and Helen felt a small smile come as she looked at the girl, buried in the nightgown that was three times too big. “Look at you.” Helen let the smile spread a bit. “You’re like a person, but smaller.” She remembered how her brother Paul would tell her the same thing as he leaned against her head. Then Will would chime in as though to stick up for her, saying you had to hand it to short people—because they generally couldn’t reach “it” themselves. How strange, it seemed in that moment, that all their stories started here, that they’d had years of teasing and banter and laughter, then had grown and life took them to where they were now. All that laughter was gone.

With our father dead and our mother lost, we surviving siblings became unmoored. Unusual behaviors revealed themselves at inauspicious times. Simmering beneath the surface of our loneliness was a kind of inarticulable fury, reducing each of us to a meanness we despised. We longed to reach out to one another, but at every turn this instinct was thwarted, tangled in a web of suspicion and resentment. As much as we had loved one another in the fullness of life, we hated what we had become when that wholeness was eclipsed by loss. Mendacity, jealousy, and rage percolated on the back burner while egoism masqueraded as generosity. In our confusion, we second-guessed one another, and because we never learned to confront each other with frank vulnerability, we fell back into the roles assigned to us at birth.

They entered the summer parlor, where the Ravenels chatted amiably with his sisters, Phoebe and Seraphina. Phoebe, the oldest of the Challon siblings, had inherited their mother's warm and deeply loving nature, and their father's acerbic wit. Five years ago she had married her childhood sweetheart, Henry, Lord Clare, who had suffered from a chronic illness for most of his life. The worsening symptoms had gradually reduced him to a shadow of the man he'd once been, and he'd finally succumbed while Phoebe was pregnant with their second child. Although the first year of mourning was over, Phoebe hadn't yet returned to her former self. She went outdoors so seldom that her freckles had vanished, and she looked wan and thin. The ghost of grief still lingered in her gaze. Their younger sister, Seraphina, an effervescent eighteen-year-old with strawberry-blonde hair, was talking to Cassandra. Although Seraphina was old enough to have come out in society by now, the duke and duchess had persuaded her to wait another year. A girl with her sweet nature, her beauty, and her mammoth dowry would be targeted by every eligible man in Europe and beyond. For Seraphina, the London Season would be a gauntlet, and the more prepared she was, the better.

Twas brillig, and a mortal's tones Did stretch a day beyond the braced; A princess slain, dead to her bones, A word distraught, a knight disgraced. Portentia, Queen of Wonderland, A crown of grief upon her soul, Vowed to repay the world of man, With mother's tears and pain untold. Addison, keeper of the realm, Now plagued with guilt from duties failed, Swears to uphold his Lady's whelms, Unyielding faith, but conscience veiled. And so, they two a war will wage, The Black Queen and her trusted Knight, For all to know a mother's rage And all to feel her daughter's plight, While sibling girls of white and red align against their mother's will. They share her pain, their sister dead, But they would not innocents kill. The Queen's defeat is at their hands. They strip her of her powers black, then bind her to the Nightmares' lands and split her crown and all it lacks. Behold the Heart! Behold the Eye! For here the Black Queen's power sleeps. Leave them to rest, and by and by The world will mend the broken deep. For if these artifacts awake, Surely then, too, the Queen shall rise. And all will suffer in her wake Beneath the blood-soaked screaming skies. Beware the Heart! Beware the Eye! Beware the Blade so Black! He left it dead, and with its head He went galumphing back.

The Funeral of Sarpedon Zeus is heavy with grief. Sarpedon is dead at Patroclus’ hands and, right now, the son of Menoetius and his Achaeans are setting out to steal the corpse and desecrate it. But Zeus will not allow it. He had left his beloved child alone and now he’s lost – for such the Law demanded. But at least he will honour him in death. Behold: he sends Phoebus down to the field with orders to care for the body. Phoebus lifts the hero’s corpse with reverence and pity, and bears him to the river. He washes away the blood and dust and closes the wounds, careful not to leave a scar; he pours balm of ambrosia over the body and clothes him in resplendent Olympian robes. He blanches the skin and with a comb of pearl straightens the raven-black hair. He lays him out, arranging the lovely limbs. The youth seems a king, a charioteer, twenty-five or twenty-six years old – relishing his moment of victory, with the swiftest stallions, upon a golden chariot in a grand competition. Phoebus, completing his assignment, calls on his two siblings, Sleep and Death, commanding them to carry the body to Lycia, land of riches. So the two brothers, Sleep and Death, set out on foot to transport the body to Lycia, land of riches. And at the door of the king’s palace they hand over the glorious body and return to their affairs. As they receive him into the palace they begin laments and tributes, processions and libations flowing from sacred vessels and everything that befits such a sad funeral; then skilled craftsmen from the city and artists well known for their work in marble arrive to fashion the tomb and the stele.

I probably won’t be seeing you again, will I? I mean, I know the others might come back, but you…” He trails off, but picks up the thought again a moment later. “Just seems like you’ll be happy to leave it behind, that’s all.” “Yeah, you’re probably right.” I look at my shoes. “You sure you won’t come?” “Can’t. Shauna can’t wheel around where you guys are going, and it’s not like I’m gonna leave her, you know?” He touches his jaw, lightly, testing the skin. “Make sure Uri doesn’t drink too much, okay?” “Yeah,” I say. “No, I mean it,” he says, and his voice dips down the way it always does when he’s being serious, for once. “Promise you’ll look out for him?” It’s always been clear to me, since I met them, that Zeke and Uriah were closer than most brothers. They lost their father when they were young, and I suspect Zeke began to walk the line between parent and sibling after that. I can’t imagine what it feels like for Zeke to watch him leave the city now, especially as broken by grief as Uriah is by Marlene’s death. “I promise,” I say. I know I should leave, but I have to stay in this moment for a little while, feeling its significance. Zeke was one of the first friends I made in Dauntless, after I survived initiation. Then he worked in the control room with me, watching the cameras and writing stupid programs that spelled out words on the screen or played guessing games with numbers. He never asked me for my real name, or why a first-ranked initiate ended up in security and instruction instead of leadership. He demanded nothing from me. “Let’s just hug already,” he says. Keeping one hand firm on Caleb’s arm, I wrap my free arm around Zeke, and he does the same. When we break apart, I pull Caleb down the alley, and can’t resist calling back, “I’ll miss you.” “You too, sweetie!” He grins, and his teeth are white in the twilight. They are the last thing I see of him before I have to turn and set out at a trot for the train.

I held back from seeing Jacob much during those weeks. He wanted only his mother, and I wasn’t sure I could handle seeing him like that. I stopped by to pick up his siblings and take them away, but I rarely went inside the house. After several days of this, I knew I must face the sight that my daughter faced daily. Inside, I approached the couch tentatively. Would I upset him? A few times when I had visited, he’d hidden his face in a blanket. I reached out hesitantly, touching his thin arm, the skin hot and dry as paper. He didn’t move, but I could see the rise and fall of his swollen chest. Suddenly, my legs gave way, and I dropped to my knees in front of the grandson that I loved so dearly. My hand shook as I lifted it to his soft, fuzzy head. I felt as though I was in the presence of someone very holy. “I love you,” I whispered, and when he didn’t respond, an even softer whisper, “Tell Grandpa that I love him and miss him.” And then, with a groan, “Dear God, don’t let him suffer.

Miss Foxe's other passion was fairy tales. She loved the transformations in them. Everybody was in disguise, or on their way to becoming something else. And all was overcome by order in the end. Love could not prevail if the order of the tale didn't wish it, and neither could hatred, nor grief, nor cunning. If you were the first of three siblings, then you were going to make a big mistake, and that was that. If you were the third sibling, you couldn't fail.

I should love him more, like he’s my favorite, which is hard to do, because he was my only brother, and already my favorite

Hamlet doesn't fully see that his metaphysical miseries constitute a subliminal symptom of grief; and this was exactly my case. I thought I was sick, I thought I was dying (maybe that is what bereavement actually asks of you). Literature gives us these warnings about the main events, but we don't recognize the warnings until the events have come and gone. Isabel, my senior in the loss of a sibling, told me that you just have to take it, like weather—yes, like sleet in your face.

Three years ago!” he yelled, and all of the emotion seemed to hit at once. “You sent me one letter in four years, Dinar! And I defended you! I defended you to all of them – Mother, Father, Tomaas, even the other families in Parejon that came asking. I told them you were well and happy and doing great, important things. Convinced them it was all for the best. But I have no idea why, because you hurt me worst of all.

Why had it taken finally seeing her again for him to realize just how much it had hurt watching her leave?

You have always looked at me like I hang the cursed stars in the sky and that was sweet when we were young – but now, Ely, it’s too hard! It is too hard to be perfect for you because when I am wrong you assume that I meant to hurt you – that it was all part of the plan because I am too smart and too good to do something badly.

The only one you protected was yourself,” he snapped, the words choking out before he could stop them. “Yes,” Dinar hissed back. “I did protect myself.” Something dark and angry flickered in her eyes. “It was about damn time I learned to do that.

Was she the one who had changed, or had he? Or had both of them stayed too much the same in a world that was shifting faster and faster around them? Maybe they were too old to be what they had been. The problem, Ely thought, was that he wasn’t quite sure what they were supposed to be now.

They say losing a child is the greatest grief of all. If it is, then I can’t begin to fathom its depths, because I can’t imagine a grief greater than losing a sibling, someone you were supposed to have in your life longer than any other, someone to reminisce with, to grow old with, someone who’d understand you more than anyone. Someone who just got you.

Not even for a moment would I trade my pain to erase Del's life.

I'm outside my parents' home in the aftermath of their deaths, waiting for my three siblings to arrive so we can go through it, room by room, object by object, memory by memory; decide what to keep, what to discard. Stepping out of my rental car, part of me feels like a trespasser now, while another part feels like I never left. (7)

In addition to the physical aspects of the work, I'm here to recreate my own personal story, my own narrative. For years—a lifetime, really—when I thought about my life, I saw it through the lens of other people, usually my parents, sometimes my sib-lings. If they told me I was this, that, or the other type of person, I usually took their words at face value, even when the descriptions sounded negative, even when I fought their pronouncements. But translation is all about making decisions, hundreds, even thousands of decisions. Maybe a new way exists to look at myself, at my life. At long last, I’ll take those same words and events to come up with different meanings, different interpretations, ones I've reached on my own, stripping away others' interpretations of who I am. (9)

But people do not exist as individual units separate from human relationships and groups. A great deal of the cost of committing suicide faced by a person wanting to die is social and empathetic: it is resonant in the loneliness and grief that his death will cause, or at least hasten, among parents, children, siblings, a spouse, or friends. As social creatures, we begin forming bonds at least as soon as we are born; these bonds, while often no more voluntarily chosen than our own births, are powerful motivations. Those with whom we have formed social bonds rely on us, imposing a significant cost on suicide even for a miserable person who genuinely wishes to die.

How soon is too soon to date? I heard about a woman in England who lost her husband and began dating his best friend four weeks later. People were shocked at how quickly her new romance started. Her mother-in-law cut off communication with her and many of her friends did too. "Blame me if you like," the woman said, "but grief hits people in different ways and I have no regrets." When you are widowed, people pity you and want your sorrow to end. But if you start dating, sometimes they judge you and think maybe your sorrow ended just a wee bit too soon. A childhood friend of mine who is now a rabbi told me that in the Jewish religion, mourning for a parent, child, or sibling is a year, but mourning for a spouse is just thirty days. "The rabbis wanted people to move forward," he said.

Hawthorn waved that aside. “My sister…” He grimaced. “She was a little like you.” “Really?” “I would have followed her anywhere,” he said. “Into any battle.

You wish there was an adequate term for what you are—like orphan or widower—a term that says “I once meant something to somebody.” When you were a little girl, you went mute from lack of need, but now you are mute with grief.

Another reader wrote this so perfectly Hannah Greendale "Reasons to adore Jason Reynolds' books: Authentic narrative voices. Well-drawn child protagonists with equally well-drawn parents, each with their own rich backstory. Characters who respect their parents (especially mom) and are kind & caring towards younger siblings. An approachable introduction to difficult issues: illness, injustice, bullying, etc. Seamlessly delivered messages on life's really difficult issues: gun violence, drug addiction, death, grief. Promotion of finding healthy outlets for anger/frustration and timely warnings against toxic masculinity. So much heart, enough to manifest as an ache in one's chest and tears on one's cheeks".

Kalaupun Mama mau bilang ke orang-orang punya dua anak, seenggaknya Mama bilang sama mereka kalau anak Mama yang pertama udah meninggal!

I say it over again- when I lost my brother. A back road I knew once and now can't find.

I add him to seventy-two-thousand and subtract him from me.

All through his childhood, he had wished he had brothers instead of, or in addition to, three sisters. That wish, too, had died in the war.

We have a very simple belief that everyone involved in a divorce is a griever. That includes children, parents, siblings, and friends of the couple. This attitude makes it easy for us. We always know that the primary issue is unresolved grief.

How can you be happy when you are sad? Good Question there. Happiness and sadness are not opposite states. Your intrinsic, natural, state is happiness. Sadness interferes with your being happy when you get what you don’t want or when you don’t get what you want. A break-up, a pink slip, a health challenge, death of a loved one – all these, and more, will naturally make you sad. To feel sad when sadness arises in you is neither abnormal nor avoidable. In fact, don’t even try to escape sadness. Hold it, observe it keenly. When you understand the futility of being sad, you will let go of your sadness – on your own. Sometimes, you may need help, from a friend, a parent, or a sibling, or a therapist. But unless you understand that your feeling sad endlessly is what is ruining your happiness, you will not bounce back. Happiness is, therefore, an intensely personal choice.