NOTE: THIS ARTICLE WAS ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED FOR LINKS MAGAZINE, AN ORGANIZATION THAT ENRICHES THE LIVES OF CHILDREN AND TEENS WHO HAVE LOST PARENT(S)
I don't know about you, but I really, really, really could not stand my little sister. I thought she was a kvetch, a nudge,a tattletale, and a big pain in the neck (and in other places I won't identify here!).
She was also adorable, funny, smart, and lovable. She was seven years younger than me, so I was horribly jealous of her cuteness and sick and tired of her tattling. I made her life miserable; she made mine, and we grew up to be best friends.
Yep. That's the story of sisters.
Except when the story changes midstream. Like when a parent dies. Ugh. Bad story.
And all the regular I-hate-you-no-I-hate-you-first stuff goes haywire.
And put Chanukah and family parties into the mix, all the holiday togetherness that kind of makes everyone claustrophobic, teary-eyed, stoic, or manically cheerful, and the only thing that's cooking is disaster.
So this article is to put Chanukah into perspective. To help you navigate when there's a parent missing, and everyone seems to be holding the wrong puzzle piece to make the holiday whole again. And this article is to help you understand the different pieces everyone is holding and why everyone thinks they have THE piece that will fit right into the puzzle, when you know that any idiot can see that the only right piece is the one you are holding.
Because every family deals with grief differently. And even within one family, the range of how-to-grieve/when-to-grieve can be miles apart, confusing everyone, making different people mad or madder, sad or sadder, and bad or badder, especially when Chanukah is supposed to be a happy yom tov and happy is relative. Especially when you have relatives sharing the holiday. Relatives like siblings who you suddenly don't recognize, or don't particularly like anymore, or you would like to buy a one-way shuttle ticket to the moon.
I am going to introduce you to the cast of actors in the Chanukah script in many homes where a parent has died.
First there is Miss Cheerful. The impossibly cheerful sister. Who is zipping around the house two weeks after shiva whipping up latkes and donuts for Chanukah, smiling ear-to-ear, making everyone very nervous. Except for the little ones, who are grateful someone is acting normal in the house, glad that at least Chanukah may make it to their home even if their mother is somewhere too far away to contemplate.
There's Miss Talkative. Who needs to comment on everything. How Totty used to do this, or Totty used to do that, and tries to engage everyone in conversation about Totty and makes everyone, including her old friends very, very, very uncomfortable. And sometimes even makes her mother get teary-eyed and other siblings wish she would just shut up and let Chanukah move on. And she doesn't understand how everyone is so content and easy about letting memories of Totty slide out of sight under the potato peels everyone is frantically peeling to make Chanukah seem normal when any normal person can see how not normal it is that Totty is not here.
Mr. Macho is the brother that stoically does the stuff Mommy asks him to do. Make kiddush. Make Havdalah. Light Chanukah lights. He does it all seriously. And kind of quietly. The boisterous brother everyone knew suddenly became Mr. Masmid when he was Mr. Mischeivous for the past 14 years. Learning long hours. Coming home and washing the dishes. Not sleeping in the dorm although it was his dream all of last year. Doesn't really smile much anymore. But makes Mommy smile. So that's nice. Though maybe not for him.
Miss Butterfly has tons of friends. Totally not planning on hanging around the house during Chanukah because she is booked for Chanukah parties every single, bingle night. She is going to have fun. Fun. Fun. Fun. Not being the nebich girl who doesn't have a mother. And if her father asks her when she will be home with the family, she says she is so busy she has no idea when she can fit in her biological relatives into her hectic Chanukah. And nothing anybody tells her makes a dent.
Because here are the missing pieces of the puzzle.
Sometimes grief and loss will push one sibling away from the others, unable to deal with their grief. Like Miss Butterfly. And Miss Cheerful will react just the opposite, trying to keep the family together, refusing to allow the grief to separate them into individual dark clouds.
Maybe Miss Talkative goes crazy because she needs the family to talk to, to keep her parent's memory alive in the every day job of living, but maybe Mr. Masmid has found other ways to commemorate his father's life; like by being a source of nachas. And maybe, although Miss Cheerful is upset at Miss Butterfly's absence from the house, Miss Cheerful could use someone to talk to about the unpleasant feelings she has instead of pretending everything is the same when it is so not, for goodness sake! And maybe even Miss Butterfly is seeing a therapist that is helping her to talk about her grief, helping her find the tools to share her grief, but she loves her family too much so she feels less pain hanging out with friends. And Miss Cheerful would be shocked to hear that. Because she thinks she loves her family most by pretending to be cheerful, by acting as if Chanukah can ever feel happy again.
Why do siblings grieve differently?
Wouldn't life be much simpler if all the siblings in the same house would grieve the same way? Then siblings would not be feeling angry at each other, frustrated at each other, hurt from each other, isolated from each other.
Yeah. It would make life simpler. But it is not as though your life has been simple until now, right? So what's a little more complication?
Siblings do not grieve the same, because so many factors affect grief.
Here are some stuff you may want to know.
First of all, birth order plays a role in how a person grieves. Oldest are nurturers. So often they take responsibility for the family. It may annoy the other siblings like crazy when she gets so bossy but it's just her nature and birth order that makes her fall naturally into that role. And if she is being the surrogate mother, she really doesn't have time or the luxury to grieve. It's hard to make latkes when your tears are falling into the batter, and nobody needs a runny nose going in that direction either. So maybe, if your older sister seems like she has it all put together, and you just need to talk about your mother and talk and talk and talk and talk and talk, you may want to try peeling potatoes with her first. If she finishes what needs to be done, she may have time and energy to grieve with you.
And if you are the oldest, and wondering why your sister exactly a year younger than you is of absolutely no help, and all she wants to do is run out with her friends and party, you may want to examine her birth order as well. Because it impacts her feelings of responsibility in the family. And her own pattern of grieving.
Some siblings become all spiritual and religious after a parent is niftar. It's seems like the only way to hold on to the hope that she will see her parent again. Because the sooner Moshiach comes, the sooner techiyas hamaysim, the sooner her parent comes home. So Tehillim, tefillos, and building bricks of good deeds for the Bais Hamikdosh is the clear cut path to her parent.
Other siblings feel tremendous anger towards Hashem. Scared of that anger. Unable to express it. Or expressing it in too much make up and too little davenning on days off from school. Expressing it in failing grades and disinterest in the Shabbos meals she used to love. Wanting desperately to connect to Hashem, but feeling He has left her. So on top of anger is guilt. And all that the Miss Religious sibling sees is her Miss Troublemaker sibling that is making everyone in the house crazy, who is causing her surviving parent much agmas nefesh.
It's hard for siblings who react differently to grieve similarly. And their frustration with each other draws them even further apart.
You know what else affects sibling grief? The relationship with the deceased parent.
Sometimes the parent that died was the favorite parent of one sibling, while the parent that lives is the favorite parent of the other. Mommy's girl, Daddy's girl. And depending on who died and whose left, grief manifests itself differently.
While I can assure you that parents LOVE their children to pieces (sometimes mincing them into too many pieces...), it is true that parents can LIKE a child more easily than another child, at different times, on different days, at different stages.
A parent will rush into a burning building to save every single one of her children, even the obnoxious one who made her cry during supper; but it is also true that sometimes, a child can be so difficult, or clash personalities with a parent, that a parent can have a hard time finding her likeable when she acts like that (although she is always lovable).
So if one sibling has lost her protector, her favorite parent, and the other sibling is the living parent's easier child, it's not hard to figure out how this dynamic will affect the grief, the feelings of guilt and anger, and even the relationship between siblings.
Another thing that can affect how siblings grieve is their age when the parent died.
A four year old will grieve differently than a fourteen year old. One Links member described that scenario by saying, “For me, because I lost my mother when I was only 4, the grief only really hit when I was a teenager, but by that point my older brother and sister were out of the eye of the storm.”
So while some siblings will grieve after the death, and grieve for many years, by the time the baby grows up, her siblings have weathered their grief, moved on to marriages and jobs and their own children, and now she is left to grieve a father or mother she never even knew at a time when nobody else is grieving anymore.
Some siblings grieve tremendously during shiva and then pull themselves together to some extent, and for some it doesn't hit them until the year-long aveilus is ending, and only then does the grief just burst out.
One of the most important things to know is that if you and your siblings can weather the tornado that different grieving can effect, and learn to be close, and support each other no matter what, then your sibling group will be the most powerful support group you will ever have for the rest of your life.
There is no one else in the world who can understand you like your siblings, not even your spouse (unless he lost a parent, too, and sometimes not even then).
So Chanukah is coming. And whether you are the Miss Cheerful or Miss Depressed or Miss Talkative or Miss Butterfly or Miss Religious or Miss Goody-Goody or Miss Baddy-Baddy, grieving silently, grieving loudly, grieving angrily or grieving not at all, Chanukah is still Chanukah, and happiness is relative. With your relatives. Especially with siblings.
My sister is coming in from New Jersey for Chanukah. Yes!!!
You want to know our childhood names? She was Little Miss Perfect-Can-Do-No-Wrong and I was Miss Impossible Teenager (and you expect me to have liked her? Honestly!)
(Now that we are finally best friends, our kids are fighting...that's life...)
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