Disenfranchised Grief

At Martha’s funeral, many people said to me, “Your poor mother!  Losing three children!”  Only one or two actually thought to venture anything about how it must be hard losing all my sisters.  It was as if I was there just to support my mother.

Sibling grief, I’ve learned, is considered “disenfranchised grief.”  Mostly this refers to young children losing siblings and being more or less ignored while everyone attends to the distraught mother, and of course, the father.  The brother or sister’s grief is often invisible.

I’m a big girl now and I had plenty of loving support from my friends back home, so I didn’t crave the acknowledgment from old acquaintances in Illinois who I hadn’t seen in, oh, 30 or 40 years.  But I was surprised.  I admit the phrase “What about me?” came to my mind.  Those well-intentioned people weren’t present when I walked into the funeral home for the family viewing, and saw yet another sister in a casket across the room.  I grabbed onto Jeanie’s husband Rod, who had so kindly come up from Atlanta to offer whatever support we needed. “Too many sisters in caskets!” burst out of my mouth.  It had only been a year and a half since I had stood gazing at Jeanie’s body in Georgia.  Fifteen years before that, it was Lois.

A month or so later, back at home, I suddenly started laughing and told my daughter I had just realized something good about the last one being gone:  “No more sisters in caskets!”

Now you know how good I am at finding a silver lining.