Mothering and fathering means nursing a child, spiritually, back to health after a part has been severed. Parenthood now becomes walking and talking and listening and hearing someone else at a time when it takes everything just to think or function for yourself. Unfortunately, many surviving children suffer because their parents were unable to fulfill this responsibility, and the effects of their inability can be lifelong.

A woman in her late forties said, "I kept looking for some help from my mother after my brother died." "Although he died when I was sixteen, I'll never forget that feeling of aloneness ~ or how frightened I was because neither my mother nor father seemed reachable. I really don't remember them trying very hard to help me. They were too busy with their own grief." The woman, now married and a parent, made her statement without condemnation because a quarter century had elapsed since her brother's death. "I was angry with them because they made me feel I was being shoved aside when I needed them the most. I see now they were incapable of giving me any more than they did," she said. "Years later, my mother and I discussed that terrible time and it was kind of funny. She could only recall what a maximum effort she exerted to try to console me. She claimed it was the only effort she was able to put forth for anyone. Her recollections may be true, but if she did reach out and try to help me, she obviously did not succeed because I only remember being very alone."

This woman was not alone in feeling a sense of parental abandonment at this terrible and crucial time. In a three-person interview conducted with teenagers, a boy, twenty, and two girls, sixteen and eighteen, said substantially the same thing in recalling just what happened when their brothers and sisters died. We discussed the emotional upheaval created by a dead sibling. The answers I received saddened me because most people would dearly have profited from them at the time they were most pertinent. The three used such words a "disgusting," "unreal," and "phony" to describe their dead siblings' funerals.

"It went on forever," said Cathy, sixteen. Her twenty-five-year-old married sister, with whom she was very close, has been dead four years.

"I wanted to be alone with my mother instead of in a family room filled with crying relatives," said Kelly, eighteen, and now an only child whose fifteen-year-old brother died two years ago. Her father had died six months before that.

"The whole funeral was just to see a bunch of people make a buck and it was phony," said Jack, twenty. And he reiterated what Cathy said: "I wanted to be quiet and be with my parents and my sister; instead, there were so many people."

The grieving process for a surviving brother or sister is, in many ways, like that of a parent, but there are differences. The three teenagers who come from different backgrounds showed a surprising degree of similarity in this process.

"I never slept at home, and all I wanted to do was run, run, and run from my mother because after the funeral all she did was cry. I always ended up comforting her instead of her comforting me. I still dislike her for it," said Kelly.

"I was gone a lot of the time," echoed Cathy. "No one seemed to care about me. Suddenly there were no rules and no strictness in my home. It was the first time I saw my father cry. I felt very frightened and very alone. My mother was practically incoherent and worse than useless. She seemed to want comfort from me when it was my sister, my older sister whom I could always talk to, who was dead."

"I felt like I had been pushed aside and I used to cry in my bedroom. I wanted to be talked to as a person, but instead I felt like a burden every time I tried to speak to my parents about Glen. The thing I wanted most was my parents' time so we could talk, but that rarely happened. Instead, our home seemed like it was always filled with people," Jack stated.

One emotion generally felt by a bereaved parent was not experienced by the three young people. None of them underwent the awful feeling of powerlessness to save the dead that most parents endured. Their load of pain was great enough without that, however, when they discussed guilt.

Jack couldn't remember the time when Glen wanted to play on a little league team and his doctor said absolutely not. Glen was so dissappointed...he wanted to wear a little league uniform so badly. Jack was playing on a little league team at the time and went to his coach and asked him if Glen could be their batboy (a job which included a uniform). When Jack came home and told Glen that he had the position of batboy the joy on Glen's face would have lit up the whole world, but Jack could not remember that. He also couldn't remember when he would stay home and play interactive games with Glen rather than go out with his friends. How he used to ride him on his bicyle on days when Glen was too tired to pedal his own. No all Jack could do was think about the arguments and bad feelings...many of which he made worse than they really were.

"I used to have nightmares that he died because I punched him," said Jack. "It took me years to understand that I had nothing to do with his death."

Cathy's guilt took on an entirely different form. She felt God had dealt this terrible blow because she was jealous of the attention her dead sister had given her own children. That attention and affection had once been Cathy's. "I used to go over there and see her playing with the babies ~ they were two and three ~ and she suddenly had no time to talk with me. It seemed like I was being shut out of her life. I would go home sometimes hating the babies because I wanted all of my sister's attention. Then she developed cancer and died. I never told anyone, but I felt God had punished me because of my jealousy. There was just no one I could tell."

Kelly had her own misery. She and her brother had been very close until the year of his death in an automobile accident. "Things started to go bad that year between us. We were only a year apart in age and we used to do everything together. Then my father got sick and died. My brother seemed to go into a shell and he excluded me. I was very hurt because we had always shared feelings as well as fun." "The farther he went into his shell, the more I decided to ignore him. If he couldn't communicate with me, well, I just would not pay attention to him. In the space of six months we grew to be almost strangers. Then came the car accident and he died. I never had a chance to patch things up and now I never will."

The three were of different faiths, but, sadly, their view of organized religion were completely shared; none of them wanted anything to do with it although their parents practiced some form of worship.

"If there is a God how could he let my brother die?" asked Jack.

Cathy, while still believing in God, said she would hesitate to put her trust in Him if someone else she loved were near death.

Kelly said since the two deaths there is very little religion in her home.

The three said that a great deal of the explanation by their parents of their siblings' deaths was God-related. "It was God's will" and "Now he belongs to God" was the general tone set in all three homes. It evidentally was a mistaken method of handling. All were left with no one to ask for help at a time that such aid could have helped them immeasurably. They agreed that, properly exercised, religion might still have remained a part of their lives. But, strangely, all three sets of parents somehow gave the impression, however inadvertently, that God had made a bad decision and was therefore to blame for the tragedy. Or else that God was persecuting their family.

The three also felt death touched every phase of their lives. In the time after the tragedies, home represented sadness rather than sanctuary. Nothing in their houses, it seemed to them, had any positive meaning and so they were gone a great deal of the time.

I always went out to my friends' homes," said Cathy. "I would go hoping to have fun and above all to get away from the atmosphere at home, the sadness and emptiness. My parents were always angry because I was constantly making plans to stay overnight or have dinner at some friend's house. I couldn't explain to them just how much our house meant death to me and nothing more."

Kelly's efforts to find some pleasure in life were frowned upon by any number of well-meaning aunts and uncles. "I hated our house, but they would come over and say, "Be with your mother. Try to help her." They just never understood. I didn't have enough strength to help her. I needed all my energy just to go to school. There is one aunt I no longer speak to at all. She came over one Sunday and began yelling about my going out all the time. She finally said, "Don't you think of your brother at all?" I told her to go to hell and I left the house. We have never said a word to one another since that day."

The three shared another common factor ~ their dislike of visiting their siblings' graves.

"I wouldn't go unless I was dragged," Cathy said.

"You get there and it's nothing," Kelly said.

"Going serves no purpose other than making me sick," said Jack.

Carol has not gone to the cemetery since her brother's death. "Sometimes, I think about going but I never do, and if I did it would be by myself. Not with my parents. I resent their insistence that I go. Their loss is not my loss. By the same token my loss is not theirs. If and when I visit my sister's grave it will be by myself. It will be a very individual and personal thing for me. I'll be there someday. Not yet, though. And certainly not because my parents badger me about it."

The sadness I felt as an interviewer was very real at the end of this session. The parents still do not know what their children's thoughts were and are. There is another tragey when a child dies. Somehow, and I suspect it's true in nearly all families, there is no depth of communication about feelings surrounding the dead sibling. It would be a rare child that could face his tear-stained bereaved mother and tell her "I hated my brother sometimes. I even used to wish he was dead. Is that why he died?" Yet this sentiment is often felt by a youngster who has been tattled upon, beaten up or just infuriated by a sister or brother.

Certainly, of course, there are children who emerged from this tragedy with less anger and more of a feeling of being understood, but social workers say that generally children who survive the death of a brother or sister find a focal point for their anger. Frequently, that focus is their "mistreatment" by authorization figures like parents, relatives, teachers, and even God. Perhaps the real lesson a child learns from having a brother or sister die is that not everything in life is fair or good. Some things are tragic. There is no getting around that. It is one of those things that cannot come out all right. To be young and faced with the magnitude of that truth can be awesome.

Children who from infancy turned instinctively to their parents to ease hurts suddenly and in the worst possible light see another side of a mother or father. They see their parents in roles of impotence. They see them overwhelmed by death and they too are overwhelmed. They expect solace from people who themselves need consoling.

Another problem siblings sometimes face is the almost inevitable comparison with the dead child. In most households there is a natural rivalry between brothers and sisters whether for the parents' attention, school grades, or a winning at games. Parents, depending on the circumstances, favor one child at a given moment and another child at a different time. This goes on in all homes and is a maturing phenomenon.

When a child dies, parents have an obligation to the surviving siblings; they must see to it that once healthy sibling rivalry does not become an unwholesome memory or emotion.

A suburban elementary school teacher told me of an instance where she had in her homeroom a bright and popular boy who died of leukemia in the middle of a school year. "Brian was delightful. Just delightful. He was an outstanding math student. Was the class president. And, above all, had a marvelous sense of humor. I remember him now and I still feel like smiling even though I am saddened by his death." The teacher said Brian had a brother, just a year younger, who apparently was destined to follow in his popular brother's footsteps. "When Brian died, Craig's fourth-grade teacher told me that much of Brian's pleasantness and scholastic aptitude was also present in his brother. I remember thinking what a consolation this would be for their parents.

"By the time Craig reached my class the following year, any likeness to Brian was undetectable. Craig was a surly, aggressive boy who obviously exerted no effort in his studies. The situation deteriorated to the point where Craig was becoming a bully, and finally, reluctantly, I called his mother to school. "She came into my room and there was the same niceness about her I had seen in Brian. When I explained the problem she told me she had noticed the change at home and just couldn't understand it. She said she and her husband had any number of times spoken with Craig. They had even told him he had something worthwhile to live up to ~ Brian's memory." The teacher said that, as Craig's mother continued to tell of how his problems were handled at home, the reason for his behavior became quite evident. Craig could think of only one way to escape an impossible rivalry with a dead brother. He would not compete. He would be as different as possible. The similiarity between them created comparison, and in that comparison the living child paled before the memory of the dead.

"I recommended counseling and took the plunge by telling the mother forthrightly how I viewed the problem. She was shocked. At first, she seemed to reject what I had said. Then she agreed. By the end of the school year, the surly class bully could laugh and play well again. There were times, though, when I caught a faraway look in his eye, and a certain sadness would overtake him. I am sure these were the times he thought of his dead brother and missed him," said the teacher.

There are, of course, no limits to the individual problems parents and siblings face when trying to cope with a child's death. Even as adults, very few people have completely worked through their philosophy of not existing any longer. Because of this, there is always a certain awkwardness in trying to help another human being through the enormity of an immediate family death. If a parent has unresolved feelings about death, whether they be fear, uncertainty about an afterlife, or just a negative view generally, these feelings cannot help being transmitted to children ~ especially young children. Psychiatrists generally agree that very little by way of an explanation is helpful to a child under four years of age because the concept is just too enormous to be grasped by one with so limited a life experience.

There was a four-year-old girl whose mother tried to explain to her that her brother was dead. She asked, "For how long will he be dead?" The mother replied, "Forever. He will never be back." But a four-year-old, no matter how astute, just cannot grasp "forever." The mother could see how puzzled and frightened she was. She asked what happens when a person dies. Here the mother used extreme care, consciously avoiding the dangerous pitfall of saying "he went to sleep." The mother believed that such a statement could induce a fear of sleep that could last forever. Instead, she said he stopped breathing. The mother heard her daughter take a deep breath and try to hold it. She said she couldn't do that too long. The mother agreed, and said it was because she was a healthy child. Up to the point of the inevitable "Why?" things went well. The mother answered as simply and honestly as her four-year-old level and the mother's personal horror permitted.

The came the toughie. "Why?"

The mother began by saying he was very sick and she countered with she had been sick many times. The mother said Dale was a different kind of sick. "Dale was good. He played with me. He'll be scared not to be home. Why did he die?" Again the mother responded with "He was very sick." Although she used the phrase repeatedly, it held absolutely no meaning for the daughter. The mother's answer just was not penetrating. This was evident. She could only relate his never coming home again to how fearful she would feel if that happened to her. Finally, perhaps more out of desperation than judgment, the mother told her he had been in a great deal of pain and that we must be grateful he no longer was hurting. Although it was not true, it had at least the virtue of being tangible. Something she could understand. After all, hurt was a bad thing and she did not wish this for her mother. After that, the "why" stopped.

Whether or not telling a lie is always wrong, I will leave up to psychiatrists and moralists. The mother only knew that she needed something. Some explanation. The mother offered her one that she was able to grasp. When she was ten the mother told her that she had lied. At first she was angry. But when the mother explained why she had done it, her daughter told her she understood. Normally the mother deals truthfully with any of her children and the daughter knew that. The daughter has since said she was grateful for an explanation that at least "made sense."

At a seminar for social workers, psychologists categorized what they considered the proper information to be given a child according to the youngster's age. They maintained children of seven, at the earliest, can understand death is final. Generally by that time they have seen small dead animals and the like. They caution that if the child wants to know the time, don't build him a watch. Tell the truth simply and with a minimum of elaboration unless questions are asked. Whether or not you wish to include God in your explanation is an individual thing. Remember, though, not to make Him appear a culprit to be hated at some later time in your child's life.

They claim children of six have been found to be generally quite emotional about death, so the need to tread lightly is great. Be gentle and try not to invoke fear by allowing your own fears to come through.

A child of seven, especially in this television-oriented society where even cartoon characters die, is at a stage of curiosity about death although not yet ready to face up to it. By the age of eight, a youngster is more sophisticated, and, from that age on, explanations can be on a more mature level.

Psychologists at the seminar stressed the importance of knowing your own child and using the age breakdowns merely as guidelines. To allow very young children to attend the funeral of a dead brother or sister is an individual judgment. As a rule of thumb, nothing constructive can be gained by taking a child under six to such a tragic rite. Psychiatrists, for the most part, agree with this. Yet, from time to time, some children under five expresses anger because they did not attend their siblings' funeral. Most children even years later say, "He/she was my brother/sister and I should have been there." When many parents tell their children that they were too young the child disagrees because they weren't young enough to know that their sibling wasn't at home anymore.

William Cowper said, "Knowledge is proud that it knows so much; wisdom is humble it knows no more." This principle becomes pronounced when trying to guide children through the tricky quicksand of grief. Your child should not have been allowed to feel alone. Your child should have been able to attend the funeral. In later years, some of the difficulties can be remedied, but not entirely corrected, by the parents. It takes great energy, effort, and striving for companionship to fill the void created by a dead child. But it is a goal worth groping toward.

At the time a child dies, surviving children must become the uppermost concern ~ almost beyond a parent's own grief. Properly handled and rectified soon enough, this concern can mean the continuation of the family as a companionable unit. It requires an enormous strength to deal with others' hurts at such a time, but it is important not to allow a living child to feel alone. Use any reserve you have to take time through the initial grieving process to switch roles from the comforted to the comforter. That means sitting and talking with your child quietly or reading or listening together to music. The need for your individual situation is great. Do not allow a breakdown of discipline in your home. Discipline and order mean security to a child. Don't pull the rug out from under him/her during this, the worst possible time. Allow this discipline, however, to be of a calm, relaxed variety. Heavy-handedness is rarely good handling. It is even less so in this situation. Instead, allow good sense to be the order of the day. This is not easy when faced with a senseless situation, but in working to salvage what is left of your family it is imperative. In taking time to talk separately with each living child, ask enough questions to help reveal then any feelings of guilt that could be harbored by your youngster for years. Remind the child of the good acts ~ and there always are some good acts ~ performed for the dead sibling. Explain that a reasonable amount of quarreling is normal between brothers and sisters. Explain to a child aged seven or older that wishing a person dead, a very natural thought when angered, does not create a dead person.

Tread carefully about religion if you wish your child to remain observant. "God's will" is less than consolation to a youngster who sees a brother's roller skates sitting in the closet never to be worn again. Do not condemn children for laughing and playing during the early stages of bereavement. No living person, regardless of age, can handle healthily such grief in one lump sum. Do not push children to go to the cemetery. Let them take the lead. Some adults need more time to work things through than do others. The same applies to children. Do not turn your normal good-bad child into a saint just because he is dead. No one can compete with a ghost ~ especially one who no longer possesses any bad qualities. Living children may react opposite to all the "goodness" in order to gain attention. Remember, your children are suffering just as you are suffering. They also fear the strength of their grief. Try to explain as naturally as possible that there are things we don't understand about death, and repeatedly emphasize that death is beyond anyone's control. Do not avoid talking about your dead child. He or she existed. Let surviving children remember that.

Not all life is happy and, unfortunately for bereaved siblings, they will carry a certain sadness with them for all time. Let them at least have an honest memory to hold. Above all, it is not necessary to hide your own grief. Encouraging a child to air his sorrow can be the greatest gift ~ other than your time ~ that you can give. Remind him, though, you share a loss that, although not identical, is at least mutual.

For many children, the early stages of bereavement will be the first time youngsters will see their fathers cry. And certainly the father should cry. Handled with care this does not have to create panic in children. One father said that he was startled at the look of fear in his eleven-year-old son's eyes when the boy saw him crying. "He may have other bad feelings about his sister's death, but he did learn one thing from that time. He learned men feel pain and cry." "When I saw how afraid he was, I took him into his bedroom and put my arms around him and explained how sad I felt about his sister's death. I told him crying is not just for girls and mothers. Boys and fathers also have the right to show how bad they feel." "We sat there, then, the two of us and cried with our arms around each other." This was a lucky father in one sense ~ his son did not get lost in a crowd of well-wishers.

Perhaps the greatest and saddest lesson I learned from interviewing teenagers and men and women who endured the death of siblings in their childhood is that no one remembered a positive interplay with parents during the grieving period. Prod as I would and question as I did, I was unable to come up with any situation in which parents had been able to put aside their own mourning to comfort these children. Take this lesson to heart and examine your dealings during the grieving period. It is not too late to undo some of the mistakes you have made.

If explanations were muddled, feelings hurt, sorrow ignored, tears left unshed, by all means open the subject again and honestly discuss what mistakes in handling have been made. Any number of families with whom I spoke viewed this as the hardest hurdle in coping with grieving.

"I hate to bring it up," said one mother.

After all, the kids are going about their business ~ why make them cry or unhappy?" agreed a father.

"I don't know what to say," said another mother. "We have never talked about it."

Well, perhaps it's about time it was talked about. That is the beauty of dealing with surviving children. It need not be too late.

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