Podcast #160 Always a Sibling: The Forgotten Mourner’s Guide to Grief – Annie Sklaver Orenstein, Author

When Annie Sklaver Orenstein’s brother died, she looked for books that would help her to understand her experience as a surviving sibling. While she encountered a fair number of books about grief, she found nothing that began to touch on her experience – so she set out to write the book she needed. Part personal story, part interviews and surveys  with hundreds of siblings, and part a collection of important material on trauma, grief and families, this book rocked my world and my understanding of the importance of siblings and grief.

⁠www.instagram.com/anniesklaverorenstein⁠

Transcript:

Diane Hullet: Hi, I’m Diane Hullet, and you’re listening to the Best Life, Best Death podcast. I’m excited today to have someone with me who I’ve been sort of dancing around this book for a few months. The book is called Always a Sibling, The Forgotten Mourner’s Guide to Grief. And my guest is Annie Sclaver Orenstein.

Hi, Annie. 

Annie Sklaver Orenstein: Hi, thank you so much for having me. 

Diane Hullet: Yeah. Did I get that right? Sclaver Ornstein. I think I got it. You got it. You nailed it. It sounds like a great combination of names.

Thank you. A lot there. So this book really attracted me because it is about the death of a sibling. And then at the same time, as I said, I found I had this kind of like reluctance to open it up. Like it really took me a while. And once I opened it, I could not put it down. Annie, you captured so much here, not only your own experience, but also research and then also hundreds of people that you interviewed and their experience with the loss of a sibling.

So tell us a little about yourself and how you got into this particular book. Yes, 

Annie Sklaver Orenstein: absolutely. So, um, I’m a, I’m a researcher by training. I’m a qualitative researcher and, and during the day I lead, um, the research on YouTube shorts. So I work in, in big tech and, you know, do qualitative research and run those research teams.

And outside of work, um, you know, I think kind of my, my first, like, you know, Identity, defining piece of my identity was that I was a little sister and that’s, you know, it was very much who I was and how I identified myself. And when I was 25, my oldest brother was killed in Afghanistan. And. You know, that shook everything.

It, it, it shook my identity, but also just what I thought my life would be and who I was and what I thought my future would look like. And at that time I went looking for a book that could help, could help me kind of understand what was going on and, and process this. And I couldn’t find anything. There were no books for siblings, you know, there were books that More broadly about grief, and then there were a lot of books on losing parents or spouses or children and, but there was just nothing for siblings and, uh, you know, eventually through a, a series of, I don’t even really know, uh, creative ideas, I guess, I kind of stumbled upon this idea of writing the book that I needed.

You know, writing the book that I thought I needed and the book that I went looking for when I lost my brother. And while I wanted to write that book, I also, you know, I thought a lot about the fact that there are no books for siblings. And if I was going to write a book for siblings and, you know, the book that I needed, it couldn’t be only my story.

Because my brother and I got along very well. Um, you know, we did not have a traumatic childhood, you know, we didn’t. I had no experience with a lot of that stuff that other people, you know, would be a big part of their sibling loss story. Um, and also I lost my brother serving in Afghanistan, which meant that the response and the reaction and the support that we got in the aftermath of his death was wildly different than, you know, people who had lost siblings.

To addiction, to mental health, you know, even chronic illness. And so there were all of these reasons why I knew that my story wasn’t enough. You know, my story was not universal. None of our stories really could be universal, but I wanted this book to be able to help anyone who lost a sibling who went looking for a resource.

And so that was when I kind of put together, okay. I know how to do these interviews. I know how to do this kind of research. This is what I do. This is what I’ve all I’ve done for, you know, 15 years at this point. Um, and so I kind of put on my researcher hat, and that’s when I started doing these interviews and surveys of surviving siblings and, you know, really trying to make sure that I had a Diverse enough sample where I could talk about all of these different causes of death and I could talk about, you know, uh, people who had kind of been through trauma with their siblings and some of those other experiences and that’s That’s really what filled out the book.

Diane Hullet: It really does because, and I think you even talk about towards the end, or maybe it’s even in the acknowledgements, you kind of, there was a point where you considered not including your story, you considered writing it more as a straight researcher. But one of the things I think is my, favorite thing about this book is that it is so much your personal story held in such a way as you just said that you absolutely realize it’s not universal.

And so you’ve got all these other stories and voices and quotes from people that fill it out. And yet there’s this thread of you running through it. And just as an aside, the other thing I love about it is you’re very funny. And so there’s all these great like asides to the reader in the book. Which just added this, like, breaking the fourth wall kind of quality to it, right?

Like, oh, let me just address you, dear reader, and have this little note, which managed to kind of, uh, connect me to you as I’m reading about these deep losses. And, uh, I thought that was effective and then just if that wasn’t enough, then you throw in like trauma researchers and grief authors and all these important kind of studies on how this impacts people and why, you know, why grief in general has become so huge and how siblings are often kind of almost overlooked.

And it’s, it’s talked so eloquently in a chapter about parents, about what a conundrum it is for the child, whether it’s a young child, teenager, adult child, the parent has lost a child, and so the sibling has this particular relationship to that, um, that just makes it a little bit different. And that’s where I think you’re, you know, your secondary title of the Forgotten Mourners Guide to Grief really talks.

So, wow, where to begin? Let me read this one, this one quote, because I thought this was so beautiful. You also kind of frame the book as like, this is your manual. Like, this will help you, uh, take this as you can, read it as you will. It doesn’t have to be linear. And then this little section is called writing your manual.

And you say, there would have been no way to write your mum, your mourner’s user manual, before your loss. Thanks. Even if you saw it coming, if you’d been preparing yourself for weeks, months, years, there is no way to anticipate what you will feel once your sibling is gone. In a, in that way, grief is similar to becoming a parent or falling in love.

There is no way to anticipate the depth of emotion or your physical and emotional reaction to it until it happens to you. No amount of reading, preparing, anticipating, or hearing the experience of others can fully prepare you for deep grief. This is partly because each loss is unique, and thus each evokes emotions we’ve never experienced, and partly because we each grieve a little differently.

This is beautiful in a way, a very distant beautiful in theory kind of way. In practice, it makes everything that much more complicated. If we all grieved the same, it would be a lot easier to help and understand one another, and it would be easier to understand ourselves. Wow. The whole book is like that, just beautifully written.

What comments would you make after that? You know, I think 

Annie Sklaver Orenstein: it was really interesting for me to talk to people who had lost siblings in so many different ways, because I did talk to siblings who, you know, had sat next to Their siblings hospital bed for weeks on end at the very end of their life. And, you know, as someone who, who lost their sibling very suddenly and, and, you know, through the traumatic violence, um, I was curious to hear, like, you’re bracing yourself where you’re preparing yourself for it, right?

There’s anticipatory grief. A lot of people do start grieving before the death. And what was that like? And it was that kind of consistency time and time again. And it’s one of the things that was really interesting, I think, in the research for this book, is that while there were a lot of things that were very unique, There were some things that were so consistent, you know, and it was like, even for people where they knew the death was imminent and we knew the death was coming and then it happens and they still felt like they weren’t prepared, you know, they still felt like, um, there was this, the shock and surprise and, and I think there’s often a feeling of, The grass is greener, right?

This would have been easier if I had time to get used to the idea. Or, on the flip side, maybe this would have been easier if I hadn’t had any time and it was just sudden and I didn’t have to see my sibling suffer, right? People feel like one thing would be easier than another and it was yet another example of none of this is easy.

There is no easier way. Knowing that your sibling is going to pass doesn’t make it easier. Having, you know, no warning, but knowing that they didn’t suffer also doesn’t really make it easier. It’s, it’s, they’re all different ways to experience something terrible. 

Diane Hullet: I was struck by how fully you explored the impact on the surviving sibling, right?

It’s, it’s not only a change in your status. Status isn’t quite the right word. Your um, birth order in the family. Like maybe that’s status. I don’t know. We’re both youngest. I think that’s status. Like your, your status in the family, the makeup of the family changes. But you even go so far as to say for some people it’s like this fundamental shake of how they view the world like they model themselves on their siblings in some way or they model themselves in relationship to siblings.

And when the sibling is gone, your, your whole worldview shakes in a, in a, it’s almost even different than the death of a parent, which is a different experience. 

Annie Sklaver Orenstein: Yes. And I, I did speak to people, you know, I’m, I’m fortunate in that I have not lost a parent. Um, but I did talk to some people who had lost both sibling, a sibling and a parent.

Um, and, and very consistently, you know, they talked about those just being two very different losses. Um, and I think a big part of it is that. You do expect that you will bury your parent at some point. Now, for a lot of people, it was much earlier than they would have ever hoped or anticipated, but it followed the natural process.

Flow of things, right? Um, and you don’t think that about your sibling. You, you know, your sibling is your peer. And so if you are going to grow old, your sibling is going to grow old. And so for a lot of folks when their, when the sibling’s life is cut short, which really, if they die. at all before you, it feels like it’s cut short.

Um, you’re suddenly left feeling like, well, wait, so am I gonna, am I gonna also die? Because we’re, we’re peers, we live the same, you know, the same time. Um, and so that loss, Did feel very different than like the loss of a parent for a lot of those people. 

Diane Hullet: Yeah. That makes sense. That makes sense. It’s a reorganizing of who you understand yourself to be because siblings are so fundamental to how we grow up.

And I really appreciated how you laid that out. Like whether it’s a positive experience, whether it’s a negative relationship, whether you’re estranged, even people who hadn’t spoken to their siblings and were very much out of relationship with them are hugely impacted by a death. 

Annie Sklaver Orenstein: Yeah, you know, I think that there’s, um, part of why I needed to do that was it became very clear in my interviews that while, you know, society as a whole, kind of diminishes the loss of a sibling, um, and there’s a lot of disenfranchisement there, people also are very quick to do it to themselves.

They’re very quick to diminish their own grief, um, often because, you know, your parents are grieving and, and, uh, there are all these other people grieving and you don’t want to make anything harder, but people were very quick to kind of, you know, Dismiss their own loss or talk about how, like, I don’t know why I’m so upset.

You know, they felt like they shouldn’t be grieving or they shouldn’t be grieving to the extent that they were grieving. And so I knew very early on that for the book to be successful, the first thing I had to do was convince people that they were allowed to grieve this loss because if they continued to dismiss their own grief or, you know, kind of belittle their own grief, there was no way to.

Really process it. So number one was you are allowed to grieve this person, even if you weren’t close, even if you whatever, you know, all the qualifiers, um, because people would start their conversations with these, you know, just by saying things like, well, they struggled with addiction. And so, um, we always knew this could happen.

It’s like, oh, so you had to live through years of watching your sibling struggle with addiction and you’re trying to tell me that was easier? I don’t believe you, you know, and, and people were just very quick to kind of dismiss themselves. And so I knew that that validation was going to be really important and that it had to be kind of like the first thing that anyone did.

Diane Hullet: There was one woman you interviewed who said, um, I probably won’t cry and you kind of commented like you just thought it was interesting that she even, you know, felt like she had to rationalize that or speak to it in some way. Right? Do you remember that part? Right. Yes. 

Annie Sklaver Orenstein: Say more about that. Exactly. You know, it was, it was exactly that.

It was just like people. Who felt like, um, their grief was so quickly diminished or brushed off that, like, you know, this woman had to make it clear. Even though I’m not crying, I’m still grieving. I just don’t really cry very often. And, and just the fact that she felt like she had to, you know, Qualify that and she had to warn me, you know, as if I would think that she wasn’t grieving her brother, right?

And and it was a lot of that. It was a lot of people, you know, giving an excuse or Something before talking about it. And I think a lot of it comes from like, you know in sibling loss When people find out that you’ve lost a sibling, they will often ask, before they say sorry, before they, you know, say anything, they’ll say something like, oh, were you close?

As if that will determine the end. If you’re grieving, should they give you their condolences, right? Like you, you have to like pass this test. And I think that’s what we all got used to. We all got used to having to pass this test to prove that we are allowed to grieve because what, if I say no, we weren’t close.

Then I’m not allowed to be sad, which, you know, I would argue if you, if you weren’t close at the end, there might be a lot to be sad about there. Um, and so it just never really made sense to me, like what are these qualifiers? Um, but I think that people got so used to them that they just started to lead with them.

Diane Hullet: Yes. The qualifiers. Yeah. Oh shoot. I’m flipping through the book and trying to find this other section where you, you You have a couple examples of how one might respond. You said because the other thing that’s so difficult is almost always the first thing people ask is how did he or she die? How did they die?

Right? And You’re such a champion, I think, for grievers in saying you get to hold that story however you wish and you get to tell as much or as little as you wish. And I really value you. You talk to people through that in the in the way you gave some examples of what you might say or not say it. And you said you yourself.

Sometimes you tell the whole story. Sometimes you tell a part of the story. Sometimes you say I have one brother. Sometimes you say I have two brothers. It just depends what you need and who that audience is. And I think that’s an interesting line for siblings to have to walk this question of this innocent question.

Oh, how many siblings do you have? Or do you have siblings? And for the griever, especially in the freshness of it, that’s a really loaded question. 

Annie Sklaver Orenstein: And your answer. People say things to you that they would not say to a grieving parent. And so, you know, saying that my brother was killed in Afghanistan could spark someone to tell me, you know, their opinions on the war in Afghanistan or politics or something like that, which they’re not going to say to my mother.

They’re not going to say that to her. Um, but they’d say it to me, right? And so I think That once you figure that out, you’re like, all right, I, I will decide if I want to hear this person’s opinion on the war in Afghanistan before I reveal that information. Right. Whereas like, if my mom were to answer that question of, of how Ben died, you know, no, one’s going to try to turn that into a political debate with a grieving mother.

And so I did feel pretty early on, like, All right, I’m going to decide if I want to give you fodder for this conversation or not. 

Diane Hullet: Yeah, yeah, and I think for the general population, for people listening, to be aware, like, there are reasons that people, uh, dissemble and back up and don’t want to answer your innocent but nosy question, right?

And there were 

Annie Sklaver Orenstein: other people who I talked to who felt like, you know, didn’t want to make someone uncomfortable. Like there was someone I talked to whose brother was murdered and you know, she felt this similar to me where it felt weird to say he passed away because that feels very peaceful and what happened was not at all peaceful.

Um, but she was also saying, you know, she kind of has to walk this line of like, you She’s worried about making other people uncomfortable. But then at the same time, is it really her responsibility to make sure someone else is comfortable? Or if they’re asking the question, is she allowed to just be honest and know that they’re going to be really uncomfortable, you know, someone else I was talking to, um, whose brother died by suicide was saying that it’s like.

When he answers the question, honestly, it’s the fastest way to end a conversation. You know, he, he equated it to that meme of, um, Homer Simpson slowly backing up into a hedge. I don’t know if you’ve seen this one, but he’s just like backing out. Um, and he was saying, you know, if I want to be honest, it’s a very quick way to end any conversation I’m in and make someone visibly uncomfortable.

Uh, but also they asked me the question, what did they think it was going to say? You know, but, but sometimes you do have to feel that out. If you’re, you know, you might be in a place where you don’t want that to be the outcome. And so you have to decide how you’re going to handle it. And I think that everyone needs to be empowered.

to make that decision. 

Diane Hullet: Yes. And I like you kind of walk people through like think it through ahead of time. Like, you know, you’re going to a party where you’re just meeting people. What do you want to say to this group? You know, you’re going out to lunch with some new coworkers. What do you want to say to this group?

Like, what’s the, what’s the, um, you know, what’s the statement that feels comfortable to you in that day in that situation and, and stick with, um, and know that people will push. I think you’re right. I think. Especially these complex deaths of overdose, suicide, murder, domestic violence, right? I’m hearing more of those pieces.

The number of women murdered in domestic violence is just staggering. So what do you do if you’re the sister of that person and you have nieces and nephews? How do you hold what’s said in the obituary? How do you hold what’s said at the service when you’re trying to respect the deceased, respect those who are still alive, and move forward in this very, very tangled, difficult situation?

Absolutely. Absolutely. It’s 

Annie Sklaver Orenstein: not easy. 

Diane Hullet: Not easy. Not easy. There’s a beautiful quote also that you read that is a quote by Anderson Cooper talking with Stephen Colbert. And Colbert says grief is like living with a beloved tiger. And it’s that feeling. It’s that grief. When I say I’m grateful for it, I don’t want to say that it’s no longer a tiger.

It is, and it can really hurt you. It can surprise you. It can pounce on you in moments that you don’t expect, or at least that’s my experience with grief. And I can’t speak for everybody, but it’s my tiger. And I wouldn’t want to get rid of the tiger. I have such a relationship with it now, I want to be clear that it’s painful and it’s going to live as long as I do, but that there’s some symbiotic relationship between me and this particular pain that I’ve made peace with, so I don’t regret the existence of it.

Then again, that does not mean I wish it had ever become my tiger. And you say, y’all listen, I’m not there yet. I’m trying every day and I know I’ve made huge strides. If you’re not there yet, not even close. That’s okay. One day at a time. So I think that, um, that’s another great example because he kind of has said, I’m, I’m grateful for my grief.

And it’s, it’s a little bit like, what? But I love this metaphor of it being a tiger and he has no choice but to live with it. So how do you live in this wary, respectful relationship with it? 

Annie Sklaver Orenstein: And that’s the thing is, I think that for a long time, the message around grief was that you’re supposed to heal it and move, you know, move forward from it.

But what I feel like is, you know, grief has left this hole in me, but that hole is, is where Ben lives. Now, right. He used to live the physical presence in front of me and now he lives in this hole within me. And if that hole is Heals up and it closes and the scar is gone. Then he is gone in a way. And I wish that what I had of him was him standing in front of me and his physical presence.

But, but I don’t, and I’m not going to have that. And so at least I now have this little pocket in my heart where I can carry him around with me. And I don’t want that to go away. I don’t want to heal from my grief. In a way where there is no trace of it anymore, because I do believe very strongly that grief is love.

It is the love that is left after a physical death, you know, and. And I don’t want to get over that, you know, and, and I don’t expect to like, I, I, I write about this in the book, but the whole kind of like healing and it going away doesn’t make any sense to me because there’s no world in which I would have stopped loving then in my life.

And so I don’t know why I’d stop loving him now, you know, and if I’m going to keep loving him, then he’s gonna. There’s always going to be that hole and that piece of him. And so I, I don’t know that I feel grateful for it. Yeah, not there yet. Y’all not there yet, not there yet, but I do appreciate it. And I’m not trying to get rid of it.

You know, I, I think that that’s, if that’s what I have of him, then I, then I’m going to cherish it and I’m going to cling to it, you know, but I, I’m not going to try to make it. Disappear, but I wish he was just here, you know, I, I wish I never had to write the book. I wish I all of those things, but that’s not, unfortunately, it’s not the reality, 

Diane Hullet: right?

Right. One of the book reviews on the back says, I hope you don’t need this book, but if you do, here it is. And yeah, no, you know, to, to people listening, I, for me as a younger sister with one older brother. I found it really powerful to read ahead of time. Honestly, I don’t, I don’t know why, maybe because I I think about end of life and I think about relationships.

And so to kind of go into the sibling angle, which impacts me, cause I have a sibling, I found it really powerful to read ahead of time. And I feel like it gave me a much bigger understanding of friends who’ve lost siblings, which I think I’d kind of been glossing over like, Oh, that was a lot of years or whatever.

And, uh, and it just opened it up for me in a whole new way. And if you’ve lost a sibling. Even if that loss was years and years ago, I think this would be a really powerful read because it just, it puts some pieces in place that maybe you hadn’t thought of before. 

Annie Sklaver Orenstein: I think so. And I think for, you know, no one really talked about sibling loss for a long time.

So, you know, I’ve spoken to people now in their seventies who lost, Sibling decades ago and never processed it. You know, it’s still, it was something that happened to their parents or it was something that happened to their families, but they hadn’t really taken their turn to, to process and deal with it.

And I think it’s never too late. And, um, one thing that I, that I have heard, that’s been really incredible is that, you know, people who like what you’re saying, where it, They haven’t lost a sibling, but they are close to someone who has lost a sibling, and it has helped them know how to support that person or understand that person better.

Um, and I’ve also, you know, heard from parents who have lost a child that it has been very helpful in understanding what their surviving children are going through and how to help their surviving children, and that Um, you know, that to me is incredible, like that, that people can find that help in the book and it was something I hoped, but didn’t even necessarily bank on, you know, but, but hearing that has been really heartening as well.

Diane Hullet: That’s fantastic. Well, Annie, how can people find your book? Always a sibling. 

Annie Sklaver Orenstein: Yes, they can find it anywhere books are sold. Your, your independent bookstore, bookshop. org, Amazon, anywhere. Uh, and they can find me on Instagram at Annie’s Flavor Orange. 

Diane Hullet: Awesome. Well, I so appreciate you, um, chatting with me about this book and we’re going to do another episode about different types of grief, which I’m very excited about.

So we’ll, um, say goodbye for this episode and move into that one. Awesome. Thank you so much. You’ve been listening to the Best Life Best Death podcast, and as always, you can find out more about me at Best life. Best death.com. Thanks for listening.