Forgetting How to Breathe

From "Surviving the Death of a Sibling" by T.J. Wray

"The year my brother died, I forgot how to breathe. Often it would catch me unaware, that terrible feeling that I was suffocating—at work, at home, sometimes at night, as I tried to sleep. As if I had drawn a breath but simply forgotten how to exhale. ... The year my brother died, I forgot how to breathe, and no one seemed to notice. Oh, they might have noticed a bit at first, but after a few weeks I could be walking around with my face turning blue and no one would say a word. After all, it was only my brother; I should get over it. My brother. In the stillness of the early mornings when I have the house all to myself. I can recall his face and the sound of his voice so clearly that I'm often surprised, when I wake from my reverie, by his palpable absence."

"The sibling relationship is more complex than nearly any other, a mixture of affection and ambivalence, camaraderie and competition. Aside from your parents, there is simply no one else on earth who knows you better, because, like your parents, your brothers and sisters have been beside you from the very beginning. Unlike your parents, however, your siblings are people you assume will be part of your life for the rest of your life too. In terms of the span of time, the intimacy, and the shared experience of childhood, no other relationship rivals the connection we have with our adult brothers or sisters. From schoolyard bullies to teenage broken hearts, from careers to marriage to dreams unfulfilled, our siblings have been there through it all, life partners in our journey through time. They are the keepers of secrets, perennial rivals for our parents' affections, and a secure and familiar constant in an often precarious and uncertain world."

"Although each child is an individual member of a family, he or she is also part of a larger circle—a circle that helps to define who we are and provides a link to our shared past. Losing a sibling, then, can also mean losing a part of yourself, part of that special connection to the past. How do we learn to live with the broken circle that is now our family?"

Photo: Judi and Jimmy circa 1972.