When Your Brother or Sister Dies: A Grief Guide for Adult Siblings

If your brother or sister has died, you may have noticed that people ask how your parents are doing, or how their spouse and children are holding up, and then move on. Your grief matters too. This guide is for you.

This guide is part of our series Grieving as an Adult: A Gentle Guide for Every Kind of Loss.

The "Forgotten Mourners"

Grief researchers have a name for adults who lose a brother or sister: the forgotten mourners. Sociologist Deborah Davidson describes sibling loss as a kind of disenfranchised grief, meaning grief that the people around you don't fully see or make room for. Cards go to the parents. Sympathy goes to the spouse and children. Work may give you less time off than you'd get for a parent. And somewhere in all of it, you may start to wonder whether you're even allowed to hurt this much.

You are. A brother or sister is often the longest relationship of your whole life. They were there before your spouse, before your children, before your friends, and you probably expected them to be there long after your parents were gone. Losing them is a real and serious loss, whatever anyone else seems to think.

The Person Who Knew You First

A sibling carries a part of your story no one else holds: the house you grew up in, the family jokes, the fights over the back seat, what your parents were like when they were young. When they die, it can feel as though part of your own history went with them. There may be no one left who remembers certain things the way you do.

Sociologist Laura Towers, who interviewed adults about losing a sibling at different points in life, found that this loss often changes how people see themselves. Survivors look again at the ways they were alike and different from the sibling who died, and they find their place in the family shifting. You may suddenly be the oldest, the only daughter, the last of the boys, or an only child. In a study summary shared with bereaved siblings, many people said they felt like two different people, one from before the death and one from after, and that for most this change came slowly rather than all at once.

If you feel unsure of who you are in your family now, that is a very common part of this grief, not a sign something is wrong with you.

Grieving the Future You Expected

Towers also found that people grieve the life they thought they'd share: growing old together, calling each other on birthdays, sitting side by side at your parents' funerals someday, watching each other's children grow. Losing a sibling can mean losing a whole imagined future, and those "should have been" moments may keep arriving for years, at weddings, graduations, holidays and milestones.

It helps to name these losses out loud or on paper. They are real, even though they never happened.

Holding Up Your Parents While Holding In Your Own Grief

If your parents are living, you may find yourself caring for them: making calls, handling the funeral, checking in every day, keeping your own tears for the car. A 2024 study of bereaved siblings found that many felt the weight of supporting their parents, and that this often led them to push down their own grief and feel alone with it.

Caring for your parents is loving. But you are grieving too, and your grief still needs somewhere to go. A few things that may help:

• Choose one or two people, a friend, a partner, a support group, who are there just for your grief.
• Let other relatives or friends share some of the calls and errands.
• It's okay to tell your parents you're hurting too. Many parents are comforted, not burdened, to know their other child misses them as much as they do.
• If your sibling left a spouse or children, you may feel pulled to help them as well. Help where you can, and let yourself say "not today" when you need to.

When the Relationship Was Complicated

Not every sibling relationship is close. Some are marked by rivalry, distance, addiction, old hurts, or years of silence. When a brother or sister you were estranged from dies, the grief can be confusing: sadness mixed with anger, relief, guilt, or grief for the relationship you never got to have.

Research on adult sibling loss suggests that people who had a harder relationship with their sibling may be more likely to struggle with long, heavy grief afterward, perhaps because the loss also closes the door on repair. If that's where you are, please know:

• You can grieve someone you had a hard relationship with. Love and hurt often live side by side in families.
• You can grieve the brother or sister you wished you'd had.
• Writing an unsent letter, saying what you never got to say, is a simple, well-used way to work through unfinished business.
• A grief counselor can be especially helpful when guilt or anger feels stuck.

If You Lost Your Twin

Many twins describe their twin as the other half of themselves, and losing a twin can shake your sense of who you are in ways other people may not understand. Shared birthdays can become especially hard. Many surviving twins say that talking with other twins who have been through it helps most. Twinless Twins is a US charity that supports anyone who has lost a twin, at any age.

Take Care of Your Body, Now and in the Years Ahead

Grief is not only emotional. Large studies in Sweden, following more than 1.6 million adults ages 40 to 69, found that people who lost an adult sibling had a somewhat higher risk of dying from a heart attack, and women a higher risk of fatal stroke, compared with people who hadn't lost a sibling. Interestingly, the higher heart risk didn't show up in the first months. It appeared a few years later, roughly two to six and a half years after the death.

The researchers pointed to long-term stress and to the ways people sometimes cope, like smoking, drinking more, eating poorly or stopping exercise. Part of the link may also come from shared family genes, especially when the sibling died of heart disease.

This isn't meant to frighten you. It's a reason to be gentle and steady with yourself:

• Tell your doctor your brother or sister died, and how they died, especially if it was heart disease, stroke, cancer or another condition that can run in families.
• Keep up with checkups, not just this year but in the years after.
• Notice if you're leaning more on alcohol, cigarettes, or skipping meals and sleep.
• Walking, time outside, and regular meals are small things that genuinely help a grieving body.

Grief Comes in Waves

You may have heard of "stages" of grief, but most grief researchers now describe it as coming in waves. One widely used model, the Dual Process Model from Margaret Stroebe and Henk Schut, describes healthy grieving as moving back and forth: some time facing the loss, and some time focusing on daily life and taking a break from it. Both are part of healing. A good day doesn't mean you've stopped loving them, and a hard day doesn't mean you're going backward.

Staying Connected to Your Brother or Sister

For a long time people were told they needed to "let go." Grief research now supports what many families already knew: staying connected to the person who died, sometimes called continuing bonds, is healthy and comforting for many people. Studies of bereaved siblings find the same thing.

Some ways people stay connected:

• Keep telling their stories, especially to nieces, nephews and your own children.
• Cook their favorite meal on their birthday, or play the music they loved.
• Keep one of their things where you'll see it.
• Carry on something they cared about, a cause, a hobby, a tradition.
• Stay close to their friends, who knew a side of them you may not have.
• Write to them.

Practical Things That Can Pile Up

Siblings are often the ones who step in: helping plan the service, sorting belongings, dealing with paperwork, or supporting a spouse and children. Sometimes siblings are the next of kin and carry all of it. Other times they have no official role at all and feel shut out of decisions. Both are hard.

• Ask for a small role in the service if you'd like one: a reading, a memory, choosing a photo.
• Ask for one or two keepsakes you'd treasure, gently and early.
• If there are disagreements about the service or belongings, try to remember that everyone is grieving, and bring in a calm third person if things get tense.
• Check your work's bereavement leave. Some employers offer less time for a sibling, and it's okay to ask for more or use other leave.

How Friends Can Help a Grieving Sibling

• Ask "How are you doing?" and mean it, not only "How are your parents?"
• Say their brother's or sister's name.
• Remember the anniversary and their sibling's birthday.
• Don't compare the loss to losing a parent or spouse. Every loss is its own.

When Grief Needs More Help

Grief is not an illness, and most people slowly find their footing with support from people who care. But some grief needs more help. It's a good idea to reach out to a doctor, counselor or grief specialist if, many months after the death:

• the longing for your sibling is so strong it crowds out almost everything else,
• you can't get through ordinary days at work or at home,
• you feel numb, or like life has no meaning without them,
• guilt, anger or shock feel stuck and aren't easing,
• you're drinking or using substances to cope,
• or you have thoughts of wanting to die or join them.

Grief counseling works, and asking for help is a strong and loving thing to do for yourself. If you're having thoughts of suicide or feel in crisis, call or text 988 (Suicide & Crisis Lifeline, US) any time, day or night.

Free Support and Resources

• The Compassionate Friends – Siblings: free peer support after the death of a child of any age. Adult siblings are welcome at all chapter meetings, and some chapters have sibling groups. National office: 877-969-0010.
• Twinless Twins: support for anyone who has lost a twin, at any age.
• 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline: call or text 988, any time.
• Your doctor, a local hospice bereavement program, or your workplace Employee Assistance Program (EAP) may also offer free or low-cost grief counseling.

You May Also Find Helpful

• Grieving as an Adult: A Gentle Guide for Every Kind of Loss
• When Your Mom or Dad Dies: A Grief Guide for Adult Children
• When the Caring Ends: Grief After Caregiving

You can download Side by Side: A Grief Companion for Adults Who Have Lost a Brother or Sister free any time.

Sources

• Davidson, D. (2018). Sibling loss – disenfranchised grief and forgotten mourners. Bereavement Care, 37(3), 124–130.
• Towers, L. (2023). Knowing what you've got once it's gone: Identifying familial norms and values through the lens of (sibling) bereavement. Sociology, 57(5), 1175–1190.
• Towers, L. (2024). Siblings and the bereaved self: Identity (re)construction following the death of a brother or sister. Sociology, 59(2), 250–266.
• The Compassionate Friends (UK). SIBBS Newsletter, Summer 2022: summary of sibling bereavement research.
• Kolte, A., & Mohan, M. P. (2024). Sibling bereavement among young Indian adults. Omega: Journal of Death and Dying.
• Chua, J. Continuing bonds in adult sibling bereavement. Harvard Medical School, Department of Psychiatry research poster.
• Rostila, M., Saarela, J., & Kawachi, I. (2012). The forgotten griever: A nationwide follow-up study of mortality subsequent to the death of a sibling. American Journal of Epidemiology, 176(4), 338–346.
• Rostila, M., Saarela, J., & Kawachi, I. (2013). Mortality from myocardial infarction after the death of a sibling: A nationwide follow-up study from Sweden. Journal of the American Heart Association, 2(2), e000046.
• Rostila, M., Saarela, J., & Kawachi, I. (2013). Fatal stroke after the death of a sibling: A nationwide follow-up study from Sweden. PLoS ONE, 8(2), e56994.
• Stroebe, M., & Schut, H. (1999). The Dual Process Model of coping with bereavement. Death Studies, 23(3), 197–224.
• Klass, D., Silverman, P. R., & Nickman, S. (Eds.). (1996). Continuing Bonds: New Understandings of Grief. Taylor & Francis.