A shared universe › Blog › When your brother or sister dies · Español
At the funeral home, almost every question goes to someone else: “How are your parents?”, “And his wife?”, “And the children?” Rarely does anyone stop in front of you and ask how you are, you who have just lost your brother or sister.
In studies of bereavement, siblings are often called the forgotten mourners. It is the family relationship that has been least researched, and also the one least recognised outside the home: condolences and attention tend to go to the parents, the widow or widower, the children.
The researcher Mikael Rostila, of the Stockholm Centre for Health Equity Studies, gave the title “The Forgotten Griever” to a 2012 study that followed the records of the entire Swedish population aged between 18 and 69, from 1981 to 2002. It found that, after the death of a sibling, those left behind had a somewhat higher risk of dying in the following years than those who had not suffered that loss, at every age studied and especially after the first year. That finding does not speak about you in particular. It speaks of a grief that deserves more care than it usually receives.
When a sorrow is not recognised, it is harder to bear. That is what The griefs nobody sees is about, and many siblings find it hits them squarely.
A brother or sister is often the person with whom you share the most years: they have been there since childhood, before your partner and your children, and you counted on them still being there when your parents were gone. In 2025, a team at De Montfort University, in Leicester, reviewed ten studies of adults who had lost a sibling to illness or accident. Among the challenges particular to this grief, they highlighted three:
The authors conclude that this grief needs support designed for it, because it has features of its own that general bereavement help does not always take into account.
When a child dies, the parents go through one of the hardest griefs there is, and their other children know it. Many adult siblings spring into action: they organise the funeral, deal with the formalities, ring their parents every day, look after the nieces and nephews. Their own sorrow is left for later, and sometimes that later never comes.
Thoughts that are hard to say aloud can also appear: guilt at still being here, anger over something left unresolved, the feeling that your grief counts for less. If this happens to you, it says nothing bad about you.
Losing a brother or sister in childhood is more common than people think. Jason Fletcher and his colleagues calculated in 2013, using United States data, that between five and eight in every hundred children with siblings experience the death of one of them.
Children grieve too, in their own way. In 1994, a study published in a nursing journal asked 140 teenagers who had lost a sibling what had helped them and what had not. Their answers came down to one simple idea: it helped to feel that there were people at their side, and it hurt to feel that there were not. A 2006 review of bereaved siblings also reminded readers that children go on keeping a bond with the brother or sister who died, and that adults can help them look after it: talking about them, keeping their photos where they can be seen, mentioning them at celebrations.
If there are children at home, How to talk to a child about death has ideas for doing it truthfully. And if you lost a brother or sister when you were small, it is possible that this grief will return years later, with questions nobody let you ask then.
If, after months, the sorrow still takes up everything, or if the death was sudden and you cannot come to terms with it, asking for professional help is a good decision. In Spain you can talk to a person at the Teléfono de la Esperanza, 717 003 717, at any time. If you are thinking of ending your life, call 024: it is free and answered 24 hours a day. If you are in another country, call your local emergency number or a helpline there.
With a brother or sister, a lifetime of conversations is left unfinished. If there is one on your mind, write it on a “For someone who is gone” star. Nobody there will ask you for explanations: they will leave you a word of remembrance and go on their way.