Death is never easy, and the loss of a mother can be devastating. Suddenly the presence you may have known and depended on since birth is gone, never to return and never to be replaced. In some families, this loss manifests itself in difficulties among surviving siblings.
Grief
Psychologists who specialize in bereavement have identified four clusters of emotions that many clients go through following a significant loss such as that of a mother: denial, often experienced or witnessed by siblings as a kind of numbness; resentment, anger and lashing out at the others, including those in the family; despair, in which siblings may fear their own or others' mortality; and resolution, when siblings may feel transformed as a result of their mother's death.
Significance
Grief does not follow a schedule. There is often little or no time allotted to mourners, aside from the funeral, to process death. As Harold Ivan Smith notes in "Grieving the Death of a Mother", surviving siblings are often expected to get over their mother's death quickly. Smith quotes an example from after Princess Diana's death, when an Eton faculty member was quoted as saying, "Prince William is not a little boy. He cannot grieve forever. He must learn to take it." The pressure to suppress grief creates difficulties later. According to Psychology Today, the incomplete grieving of a mother's death can change the way siblings are connected, and old rivalries can resurface.
Wills
Sometimes the confluence of censored emotions occurs during the reading of the will. As counselor Keren Smedley observes, parental legacies have the power to dredge up childhood feelings of resentment between siblings like nothing else. When grief has been buried, these feelings may intensify. Discord among siblings, both in processing the grief experience and the economic details of the will, can place further strain on sibling relationships.
Distress
Dr. Debra Umberson, a professor at the University of Texas, has conducted research that suggests adults are more likely to experience symptoms of emotional or psychological distress following a mother's death. Her research also shows that how a sibling reacts to the death of her mother depends on the specific relationship they had, and as such, it can be difficult to understand and predict.
Expression
Grief therapists agree that it is vital for siblings to allow full expression of all the emotions they feel around the death of their mother at the time that they feel them. Easier said than done. Emotions can be messy, inconvenient, time-consuming and misinterpreted. However, it is worth the time and effort for siblings to seek out places and people where they can express their grief safely and without judgment, to avoid taking them out on each other. Some suggestions include physicians, friends or support groups.
References
- Hand Online: Understanding Grief
- "Grieving the Death of a Mother"; Harold Ivan Smith; 2004
- "Psychology Today": Parenting: Adult Sibling Rivalry
- "Daily Mail"; Where There's A Will...There's A War; Keren Smedley; October 2009
- U Texas: Research Examines The Reaction Of Adult Children Upon The Death Of A Parent
