I grew up in a big, complex, yet incredibly quirky and wonderful family of eight children. Four girls. Four boys. Perfect, no? My mum always stressed how blood doesn't define the relationship in which my siblings and I held. Rather, it's through unconditional love that builds our bonds. Growing up was interesting; I never understood why people thought it was weird my oldest sibling and I have a 34 year age difference. So what? It's pretty cool that I can say they are from the 60s, am I right? Being the youngest of our Swedish/British-Romanian clan, I felt the overwhelming sense of protection, sass and love from my brothers. Especially my brothers Tim and Steve.
Once, Tim agreed to walk me down the aisle, and Steve vowed to destroy anyone who breaks his little sister's heart. I fell in love with animals because of Steve's ranch with beautiful horses, adorable cattle and pack of rescue dogs. I also hold random knowledge about planes because Tim will always be eager to take us to an airshow and be the geek out over it all. We used to take drives in a Ford pick-up truck to get the most scrumptious donuts that put us in sugar comas.
My formidable pillars, my heroes were gone in a blink of an eye. Tim died in April 2011 and Steve in January of this past year. Those two calls will always haunt me. When you lose a sibling, or rather siblings, your entire world shifts. Although this is true of any monumental loss, I will never be able to put into words the way your heart aches for siblings. You can break something, hit something and scream until you cannot breathe anymore, except, none of that will bring him or her back. You can call them, hoping someone will answer, to find the horrifying *beep beep beep* to notify you that the callers number is disconnected. As a reminder that they are, in fact, gone. Every holiday, birthday, milestone or even the littlest of things, gets tougher without your sibling(s)—the ones who knew you more than anyone.
Part of me is lost and this grief has and will continue to devour me from the inside out. I will continuously ask the what ifs; I will continuously find myself fighting back tears in the sight or smell that reminds me of my two wonderful brothers; I will continuously feel the emptiness that was created so deep inside of me, I know it will never go away. Once you lose a sibling, you lose a part of yourself entirely. You don't ever stop missing that person, you, unfortunately, must learn how to live around the hole of their absence.
See, there is no defined word to describe the loss of a sibling. If you lose a spouse, you're a widow or widower. If you lose your parents, you're an orphan. But if you lose a sibling, you just become the girl who lost her brothers. A sibling—no matter their age—is the closest bond you can hold and in my case, my older brothers were the closest bonds I've held.
Siblings have that magical power of growing outside of time. We know all the family jokes, family secrets, griefs and joys. We know each other's hearts with every fiber of our being and we know each other as we always were. Except, how can one hold onto this special, untouchable relationship without the other pieces to the puzzle?
