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This Is Us
The Questions That Haunt Grieving Siblings
With my brother gone, am I still a sister?
Do you have any siblings?
I don’t feel the warm rush of panic flood my chest when I’m asked this question anymore, though I’ve never quite gotten used to it. As a middle-aged mom, I don’t actually hear it as much anymore. When I’m getting to know someone new, our inquiries tend to center around kids or jobs or news.
So when someone asked me recently, I was caught off guard.
We were at my mom’s doctor appointment. My mind flitted around from the fire alarm that had delayed her appointment by a half hour to my mom’s health to the stubborn disbelief that I was sitting there instead of my dad, who died a year and a half ago.
“Do you have any grandchildren?” the doctor asked my mother. My mom told him about my children. Then, before I could even see the question hurtling toward me, the doctor turned and asked me: “Do you have any brothers or sisters?”
The question sat between us, ripe and waiting.
“No,” I said. I shook my head, glanced at my feet.
For a moment, I wondered: If the doctor had asked my mom if she had other children, would she have answered the same? Or would she have told…
