Sibling Grief

It’s been about four years since I’ve written anything on here, although I have continued to share and write over on Insta.

I’d say that we have a fair grip on our grief for Leo – in that, we recognise its ebbs and flows and we are mostly okay at not letting it overwhelm. Yet, what we are now learning is Eli’s grief. Now 7.5 years old and exploring his own emotions, feeling and thoughts about life in general – he is also trying to understand what it means to have a big brother, who is a baby and who is dead. A brother, a sibling. His only sibling.

Over the years we’ve allowed Eli into our own rituals and methods of parenting Leo. As he gets older, he’s understand that more and more, and so gets involved more. More recently, it feels that the balance for him is less ‘peripheral curiosity’ and more ‘this is important to my sense of person’.

I have zero clue if we get the balance right for him – feeding the need to be active in grief and to brother from afar, vs it overwhelming him with sadness and confusion for his loss. However, what I recognised in Wave of Light was that I did not find a child-friendly balance to honouring his brother to the level that I anticipated was needed.

So much is rightfully targeted to adults, and whilst children are often included, it doesn’t always speak to them directly. It places them on the peripheral, and for some that’s great and it’s enough to partake from afar. For others, they need to lead, it needs to be their thing and we – as adults – need to be on the sidelines. Exploring this stuff is hard for us, let alone them.

Wave of Light was saved by enabling Eli to make his own donation and star in the Tommys memory sky. We then grabbed his acrylic pens, and decorated an old jam jar to create his own Wave of Light candle. Both created that the perfect balance – albeit, as somewhat an afterthought. We sat and watched the candles dance with a hot chocolate and marshmallows.

So it got me thinking and it got Eli thinking. Could we find a way to create a child-friendly activity pack that simply nodded to fact that this is part of them and their identity? That wasn’t about the grief or the loss or the sadness – but the joy and the identity, the existence, and the memory.

I’ve had to balance how we co-create this to, again, allow him to be involved enough but not let the responsibility or the importance of it overwhelm him. So we started with a ‘simple’ idea of an Advent calendar. It’s grown a little less simple, but simple enough.

We are still working on it but it will be ready in time for Advent for anyone who wishes to get involved. For those who follow me on Instagram, you’ll most likely know that Advent To Remember has been a project of mine ever since Leo’s first Christmas. So this has been a lovely way to grow that, and create something for children (and adults!) to get involved in.

It includes:

– 24 + 1 bonus A4 downloadable colouring pages. Each page is dedicated to and inspired by a baby who has died using symbols that their families use to remember them by.

– A mini version – for the fridge or those who want to be more low key.

– A short intro sentence about each of the babies – people can use this as they wish.

They are available on a pay-what-you-can method, with a percentage of all sales going to the charity, Elsie’s Moon.

As a fundraiser, I know how hard it is at the moment and so we wanted to support a smaller charity. We asked for nominations, and Eli picked from this list.

If you’d like to purchase it, do this on PayPal, and add your email to the payment note. I’ll email the pack when it’s ready, and before Advent.