Sibling Grief

My ten-year-old son, Nash, woke up one morning crabby as can be. He had been a bit off the night before too. Overly sensitive to things that normally roll right off him. His dad is a nickname guy.  And man oh man does Ryan come up with some dumb nicknames. Normally, Nash rolls his eyes and says, “That’s not my name!” or “Where do you even come up with this stuff?”

That night, when Ryan spouted off a new one, Nash didn’t play along like normal. He slammed his fist on the dinner table, shoved his chair back and stood. Angry, tears in his eyes, he yelled. “You never listen! My name is Nash!” And stormed off down the hall to his bedroom, the slam of his door ending all discussion. 

I turned in my seat to look at my husband as he shrugged innocently. “What?” he asked. 

The next morning was more of the same. His emotional responses were out of proportion and he struggled to regulate. When I accidentally bumped into him passing him in the kitchen, his temper flared. He had turned to storm off when I caught his arm. “Honey,” I said. “I didn’t mean to bump you. What is going on with you?”

“It hurt,” he replied, glaring at his feet. “My hip hit the counter.” 

I knelt in front of my son and pulled him into a hug. “I didn’t mean to hurt you, baby boy.  It was an accident.”

Nash has been in therapy for over a year now. First, we brought a new baby home and disrupted his place in the family. And now? Now he is mourning the loss of his twin. Medically complex and always fragile, Nash’s twin Declan passed away just four months prior. Luckily, Nash had therapy that very morning. 

“He does seem to be less regulated than normal,” his therapist Katie said to me. I sat on the couch in her office, she in her chair across from me, for our usual check-in after Nash’s session with her. “Let’s keep an eye on this,” we agreed.

Within a day or so, he seemed fine again.

Then it repeated.

And it started to dawn on me. Duh. This is grief.

Emotions and language don’t always move at the same speed. Especially in children. It can take time for feelings to become words. For the right brain to catch up with the left, or vice versa. That’s true for adults too, but even more so for kids. It’s why we don’t always know what’s bothering us right away, or how to explain it when something is. Sometimes we have to feel it, process it, marinate in it, before we can name it.

“I’m fine” isn’t necessarily a lie. Sometimes it’s simply all we can access with words in that moment.

Grief doesn’t follow a playbook. But there are some common patterns. Many people experience a period of relative numbness or “okay-ness” early on, as the nervous system slowly catches up to reality. As it marinates in the loss. For Nash, we started seeing cycles of irritability and increased sensitivity around month four.  

Some kids move toward withdrawal instead of irritability. Many swing between both.

A few other common things we’ve been watching for: sleep changes or clinginess, bursts of sadness, or regression. Bursts of sadness is the one that has most recently started to peek through, just this past week. Sadness that seemed heavier than one would expect given what he claimed was triggering it. So far, we’re in the clear on the others, but I don’t pretend they couldn’t crop up at any time. 

Nash is also deeply uncomfortable with structured grief rituals. I recently suggested we spend a few minutes each Sunday talking about what we missed most about Declan that week.  He was horrified. For a while, even hearing Declan’s name was too much. Now at least it can be spoken.

I don’t pretend to have all of the answers. We’re a sample size of one. But I can share what seems to help here: honesty and inclusion.

I don’t hide my own grief from Nash. When I feel overwhelmed, I hug him. When I’m sad, I tell him. When I cry, I don’t try to hide it from him. I remind him it is not his job to hold me or his dad up; it’s our job to hold him. I tell him his emotional swings are normal, especially right now. I remind him we all need grace. And I tell him every day how much we love him.

Nash still hurts. He lost his twin. I can’t imagine what that feels like from inside a child’s heart.

But we try. And we keep making room for joy, and gratitude for what we still have.