tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-85928517284087891322011-12-19T19:18:31.841-08:00Notes on my brother, families, siblings and griefElizabethhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06830680868671437204noreply@blogger.comBlogger371100tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8592851728408789132.post-39491067351327557952010-04-08T13:55:00.000-07:002010-04-08T13:55:24.660-07:00

The general thinking, as far as I can tell, is that sibling fighting--something I've yet to witness in my two little guys, but dread, if only for the noise--has a function. They're learning how to resolve conflict. They're becoming proficient in something called theory of mind, i.e. learning to intuit what others think and feel. And probably some other things we're not sure of. But a new study 

Elizabethhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06830680868671437204noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8592851728408789132.post-2182764776064473632010-04-06T13:54:00.000-07:002010-04-06T13:54:11.061-07:00

As usual, I'm way behind on New Yorkers. Fortunately--or unfortunately, depending on the kind of day/week/month I'm having--my husband tries to flag articles he thinks I'm going to want to read, so there's really no guilt-free tossing to be done.  Last month, while on vacation, he set the February 1, 2010 issue on my night table, folded to O'Rourke's piece, and said that I should take a look at,

Elizabethhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06830680868671437204noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8592851728408789132.post-43497070081738337772010-04-06T09:39:00.000-07:002010-04-06T09:39:22.303-07:00

Today I was supposed to have a shrink appointment, the first since our extended vacation in Florida. My shrink, however, seems to be somewhat schedule-challenged, because she wasn't there. (We've had one schedule glitch already--a double-booked session.) When I told my husband, Paul, he said: "What does that say, that she thinks you don't need it anymore?" Good question. I don't really know the

Elizabethhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06830680868671437204noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8592851728408789132.post-5466295892294066022010-04-05T14:09:00.000-07:002010-04-05T14:22:57.296-07:00

When I was writing The Empty Room, and doing a considerable amount of delving into the scientific literature on siblings, I, of course, encountered the notion of birth order, i.e. the theory that the order of your birth in a family affects your personality, your intelligence....basically everything about you. It's a theory that isn't thought to have all that much import, as far as I can tell. I

Elizabethhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06830680868671437204noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8592851728408789132.post-81442158953850684852010-04-05T09:20:00.000-07:002010-04-05T09:28:13.300-07:00

Awhile back I posted about the fact that I was expecting another little boy, and wondering what it would be like to have two. Luke is now almost five months old. Henry: Yes, there's been some jealousy on Henry's part, and some irritation (mainly due to the noise Luke makes when he cries or whines in the car....part of his going to sleep process). But there's also been a lot of interest, for

Elizabethhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06830680868671437204noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8592851728408789132.post-37884193335163181642010-03-12T06:04:00.000-08:002010-03-12T06:05:14.251-08:00

This is a pretty harrowing story. What would you have done?

Elizabethhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06830680868671437204noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8592851728408789132.post-91444776523970502652009-10-25T11:52:00.000-07:002009-10-25T12:13:28.415-07:00

Bob and Mike Bryan...I have no idea which is whichThe August 31st issue of The New Yorker features an article called "Perfect Match" by Burkhard Bilger. The topic: a pair of identical twins--Bob and Mike Bryan--who are professional tennis players, specializing, not surprisingly, in doubles.The ESP twin thing they've got going makes them a nightmare for non-related doubles players. They play

Elizabethhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06830680868671437204noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8592851728408789132.post-16766720375805271342009-10-25T11:35:00.000-07:002009-10-25T11:51:20.381-07:00

Tom Hanks in "You've Got Mail"...his Aunt Annabelle is the little girl on the left...all part and parcel of a modern family......So we were reading Henry one of the few new sibling books we've picked up that we actually like, and I said something flip like, "Do you think you'll like being a brother?" And Henry said: "I'm already a brother."I don't know if he meant that he already felt like one,

Elizabethhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06830680868671437204noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8592851728408789132.post-44067435937852968122009-08-13T11:01:00.001-07:002009-08-13T11:01:42.153-07:00

When I realized I was pregnant again, I figured I had nine months to adjust to the news and the new reality—and that Henry, then about two-and-a-half, who we planned to tell much later in the game, would have lots of time, too. I figured he really wouldn’t have to start dealing—whatever that was going to mean—until the new guy was born. Wrong.We told him when I was about five months pregnant, the

Elizabethhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06830680868671437204noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8592851728408789132.post-55135905462876550152009-08-07T19:45:00.001-07:002009-08-07T19:47:23.431-07:00

Wow. Check out this article about a Hindu ritual honoring the relationship between brothers and sisters. “The brother-sister relationship in Hinduism is quite unique. It is so pure you can’t describe it in words,” says one person quoted in the article. Very cool. More later.......

Elizabethhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06830680868671437204noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8592851728408789132.post-85197048911690107802009-08-07T13:10:00.000-07:002009-08-07T13:11:17.765-07:00

I kept seeing this one—a Japanese movie which won the Academy Award for best foreign feature film—in The Quad listings and trying to get to it, but the timing during the day (my usual movie-going time) just wasn’t working. I was so happy when Paul noticed it, too, and suggested we use some sitter time to check it out.Departures is the story of Daigo Kobayashi, a passionate cellist, with a dream

Elizabethhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06830680868671437204noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8592851728408789132.post-40332785424594986212009-08-07T12:10:00.001-07:002009-08-07T12:10:43.830-07:00

All I needed to hear about this movie was that it explored the aftermath of grief and loss and, of course, I was interested. (To anyone unfamiliar with my history, the loss of my brother when I was 14 left me with an apparently life-long interest in these topics.)So, last Thursday, on a pre-school day when we should have been working, Paul and I caught the 1 p.m. show at The Quad. Ghosted is the

Elizabethhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06830680868671437204noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8592851728408789132.post-26545383963722059702009-07-23T19:27:00.000-07:002009-07-23T19:35:30.545-07:00

You really must click here to hear my friends, mother daughter pyschologists, Gloria and Heidi Horsley, being interviewed about why we mourn when celebrities die. I must confess, the parts I love most are when Gloria decimates the five steps of mourning myth (Go Gloria!) and Heidi demolishes closure.There's nothing more validating than hearing people who get grief talk about it. Love it.FYI,

Elizabethhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06830680868671437204noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8592851728408789132.post-27757664300482605012009-07-17T11:29:00.000-07:002009-07-17T11:55:37.053-07:00

I promised them, and then I forgot. Here's one sibling loss related excerpt from Catcher in the Rye. It's Holden, talking about not liking to go visit his brother's grave."When the weather's nice, my parents go out quite frequently and stick a bunch of flowers on old Allie's grave. I went with them a couple of times, but I cut it out. In the first place, I certainly don't enjoy seeing him in

Elizabethhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06830680868671437204noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8592851728408789132.post-85813736042491201362009-07-17T04:10:00.000-07:002009-07-17T04:19:21.719-07:00

I received this astonishing poem in the mail, along with a letter from the author, Robin Standish, in 2005. Unfortunately, it got lost in the pile of papers on my desk. A couple of weeks ago, I was cleaning up (finally), and came across it. I can't tell you how moved I was, how blown away by what Standish captured, about early sibling loss.Standish was 7 when her 2-year-old brother, George, died

Elizabethhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06830680868671437204noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8592851728408789132.post-81535284897999374372009-07-17T03:44:00.000-07:002009-07-17T03:52:47.098-07:00

Well, my uneducated response to a question like this would be, "Duh." But, I have to admit, I would have no idea just how they'd be affected. A new study in The Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry has tried to come up with some answers, though. British researchers followed 52 mothers who'd had children after a stillbirth, to see if they could discern any effect. Basically, the kids were

Elizabethhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06830680868671437204noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8592851728408789132.post-66587213633522681762009-07-08T04:20:00.000-07:002009-07-08T04:48:46.123-07:00

So, again, I’m flipping through my sibling loss file, and I come across something amazing, in this case, a profile of Alison Malmon. When she was a freshman in college, Alison’s 22-year-old brother, Brian, who was on leave from college, committed suicide.After his death, Alison realized that Brian, who was a star on campus, both for his accomplishments (sports editor of the paper, president of an

Elizabethhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06830680868671437204noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8592851728408789132.post-86404946318184995682009-07-08T02:56:00.000-07:002009-07-08T03:21:17.037-07:00

I don't usually comment on books unless I've read them, for obvious reasons. But in going through my "Ted is Here" folder this a.m. (way too early this a.m.), I came across a review of the book Apples and Oranges by Marie Brenner. In it, Brenner, a high profile writer for Vanity Fair, explores her relationship with her brother, Carl, who couldn't be more different. "Our relationship is like a

Elizabethhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06830680868671437204noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8592851728408789132.post-83758170264743489162009-07-07T10:56:00.001-07:002009-07-07T11:19:59.750-07:00

First off, I love J.D. Salinger and all of his books. So I was surprised when, as my step-kids went through that particular reading phase in high school when they were assigned Catcher in the Rye, they reported that they kind of hated it. Whaaaat?One big problem, they said, was that they couldn't really relate to Holden, the teenage, trash-talking, car-wreck of a main character. As I thought

Elizabethhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06830680868671437204noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8592851728408789132.post-62161799541213094522009-07-06T12:13:00.000-07:002009-07-06T12:19:21.150-07:00

If you poke around in sibling loss literature, one unanswered question you come across is—does losing a sibling make sibling survivors more or less likely to have children? And do they tend to have “extra” children, just in case they lose one?FYI, I don’t have an answer to this. In my case, I simply had too much baggage to deal with to have children earlier in life. (I had my son, Henry, at 40.)

Elizabethhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06830680868671437204noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8592851728408789132.post-13367288595154552432009-05-11T08:45:00.000-07:002009-05-11T08:50:19.911-07:00

Here, gratis of my friend and fellow sibling survivor, Heidi Horsley, is a clip from another video you must see. It’s called “Darius Goes West,” and it tells the story of 15-year-old Darius Weems, who was born with Duchenne’s Muscular Dystrophy, a progressive and uniformly fatal form of Muscular Dystrophy--the most common genetic killer of children in the world.What’s the sibling link? In 1999,

Elizabethhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06830680868671437204noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8592851728408789132.post-55617583775058986532009-05-08T12:33:00.000-07:002009-05-08T12:34:31.785-07:00

So, a few months back, I gave a talk about sibling loss at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center. As you might imagine, there tend to be quite a few bereft siblings in the audience at these things. And they all have stories. Amazing, sad, beautiful ones that both elate me—because they’re a celebration of the bond—and make me want to cry.This particular evening was no exception. After the talk, a

Elizabethhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06830680868671437204noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8592851728408789132.post-64137500467748206402009-05-08T12:32:00.000-07:002009-05-08T12:33:01.972-07:00

Okay, I talk about “carrying” a lot, with regard to sibling loss. What do I mean by that? I mean the tendency we surviving siblings have to find a way to “carry” our lost siblings forward into our present-day lives. It’s a way of continuing the relationship with some one who is gone—in fact, grief-speak for this phenomenon is “continuing bonds.” How people do it varies, but why we do it is more

Elizabethhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06830680868671437204noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8592851728408789132.post-7858546720326420582009-05-07T15:23:00.000-07:002009-05-07T15:28:52.214-07:00

Yesterday I posted on a new study that looked at the impact of losing an infant sibling when you were very young, or even before you were born. I commented that, though understudied, the stories I’d heard from people suggested that this was a huge—huge!—life event.Then last night, my friend, psychologist Heidi Horsley, PsyD, who also lost a sibling, and who now specializes in grief, called my

Elizabethhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06830680868671437204noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8592851728408789132.post-24797979760275814392009-05-06T08:36:00.000-07:002009-05-06T08:39:57.101-07:00

When I was working on my book, The Empty Room, I interviewed a couple of people who either lost siblings very early in that sibling’s life, i.e. in infancy (and were thus very young themselves) or who were born after the death of an infant sibling. I didn’t have enough people to make a huge case, but it was very clear to me that these were very significant losses.Sadly, however, because these

Elizabethhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06830680868671437204noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8592851728408789132.post-49175810895792565522009-05-06T07:46:00.000-07:002009-05-06T07:57:01.045-07:00

Aplastic anemia, the disease my brother had, is a rare bone marrow disorder (it strikes 2 out every million people) that hasn’t been on the receiving end of much research funding. But there’s new legislation in the offing that might change that. On February 25, 2009, Representative Doris O. Matsui (D-CA), whose husband, the late Congressman Bob Matsui, died of a bone marrow disorder, introduced

Elizabethhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06830680868671437204noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8592851728408789132.post-48047854299394102172009-04-21T20:29:00.001-07:002009-04-21T20:32:49.654-07:00

I stumbled on this write-up of a new sibling loss memoir, Invisible Sisters, by Jessica Handler, thanks to Google Alerts....I haven't read it yet, so I can't really weigh in, but it sounds interesting.

Elizabethhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06830680868671437204noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8592851728408789132.post-6606019036691719062009-04-15T20:01:00.000-07:002009-04-15T20:09:05.631-07:00

I didn't know of Dan Miller, an anchorman on Nashville's WSMV-Channel 4 evening news. I learned about him, and his recent death, from a heart attack, through Google Alert. (My good old Sibling Loss alert at work again.) I was reading a little item about his memorial service, though, and came across a nice graph about the words spoken by Miller's brother, Lynwood."Lynwood Miller said losing a

Elizabethhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06830680868671437204noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8592851728408789132.post-13103520835938718382009-04-15T12:43:00.000-07:002009-04-15T12:52:37.913-07:00

“What causes Down syndrome?”“Why do people stare at my sister in public?”“How do you deal with people who use the word ‘retard’?”“Where will my brother live when he gets older?”A new book, Fasten Your Seatbelt: A Crash Course on Down Syndrome for Brothers and Sisters (Woodbine House, February 2009), answers these questions and more. Aaccessible to kids as young as 11, the questions in the book

Elizabethhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06830680868671437204noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8592851728408789132.post-39539139387509947032009-04-15T11:16:00.000-07:002009-04-15T11:17:56.410-07:00

I have my Google alert set to send me newspaper articles and mentions of sibling loss. Often, what I get is a pair of banks or companies being described as siblings, i.e. Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae. But recently I got a letter to the expert type of piece that appeared in The Connecticut Post. It touched on an area I’m interested in—and that’s very under-studied: Sibling loss at an older age.I

Elizabethhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06830680868671437204noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8592851728408789132.post-36686516587257358392009-02-11T20:10:00.000-08:002009-02-11T20:12:19.505-08:00

What's worse--the loss of a sibing, or the loss of a parent? That's not my question, incidentally. It's something I found while googling around with the phrase "sibling loss." Read more here.

Elizabethhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06830680868671437204noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8592851728408789132.post-69871839960479292032009-02-11T14:01:00.000-08:002009-02-11T14:11:59.190-08:00

It turns out two horror flicks--no doubt, TERRIBLE horror flicks--have a sibling theme. The Friday the 13th remake set to open, yes, Friday the 13th, features a man searching around Camp Crystal Lake (site of Jason's massacre) for his long-lost sister. I don't know any more details than that, but she must have been one of the randy counselors that so offended Jason's sensibilities. The other is

Elizabethhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06830680868671437204noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8592851728408789132.post-78158817486034833182009-02-11T13:24:00.000-08:002009-02-11T13:42:27.807-08:00

I just started doing the Open to Hope Foundation's sibling loss blog. Click here to see a new post on the subject of disenfranchised grief, i.e. losses that, for one reason or another, tend to be overlooked and/or ignored. If you're on this blog, you won't be surprised to hear that sibling grief is often disenfranchised.(The picture, incidentally, is Timothy Hutton in Ordinary People, one of the

Elizabethhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06830680868671437204noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8592851728408789132.post-17229554489459246072008-12-11T11:53:00.000-08:002010-01-12T06:23:27.730-08:00

"That Ted, he hasn't done anything wrong in twenty years." That line came from Paul, in response to some issue in which my parents' were aggravated with me, and the spector of my brother's perfectness hung in the air. Paul managed to be funny and totally sum up the situation with that one line, something he manages to do a lot. (My brother, for the record, was amazing--but not perfect.) I don't

Elizabethhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06830680868671437204noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8592851728408789132.post-65703420525747160262008-12-01T04:45:00.000-08:002008-12-01T04:52:44.512-08:00

"I like to browse the G's with confidence."-That's Buddy Glass in J.D. Salinger's Franny and Zooey, explaining why he won't cancel the phone number he and his dead brother, Seymour, shared when they lived at home together.I totally get it. It's hard to think that someone that is permanently imprinted in your cells and your psyche has disappeared. It's nice to have a tangible reminder that they

Elizabethhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06830680868671437204noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8592851728408789132.post-79017016752393148502008-11-21T04:14:00.001-08:002008-11-23T12:08:34.328-08:00

This article, in the Des Moines Register caught my eye the other day:Southeast Polk students, staff mourn another deathThe death of a Southeast Polk High School senior this week marks the community’s fourth teenage suicide in seven months. A younger sibling found the body of Jeffery Raymond, 18, at their Altoona home after school Monday, school officials confirmed Tuesday. Raymond’s manner of

Elizabethhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06830680868671437204noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8592851728408789132.post-18167240995363268792008-11-18T19:47:00.000-08:002008-11-18T19:50:05.435-08:00

A few years ago, I ended up at the American Folk Art Museum quite by accident. A friend was visiting from out of town, and we’d intended to go to the newly opened MOMA. But the lines were insane. Next door, at the AFAM, however, there were no lines at all. So we thought, what the heck? It’s a great museum. But what very much caught my attention was an exhibit on prison art.To be honest, I don’t

Elizabethhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06830680868671437204noreply@blogger.com0