We all talk about loss, but many times we overlook how siblings experience the loss of a sibling. We tend to speak about parents who lose children, or children who lose parents. But what about the brothers and sisters – the ones who grew beside us, argued with us, protected us, annoyed us, shaped us? What happens to us when they are no longer here?
This blog post is a whisper reminding you that your pain is real, valid, and worth naming, and it intends to give space to anyone navigating the unique, often invisible grief of losing a sibling.
I have one and only brother, Alex, who passed away two years ago.
Just a few weeks ago was his birthday, and it is for me THE day that I do something to honour his memory. I feel more connected to the day that he came into this life than the day he departed. This year, I dedicated an episode on my podcast about sibling’s grief and his story that you can listen to here.
Growing Up Beside Illness
Alex was seven years older than me, and sick for most of his life. At twelve, he was told he had two years left. He lived until thirty-five. What a miracle, right?
While he was going through all of this, my family tried to protect me. I grew up knowing something was serious, but our home was not a place of tragedy. It was a place where hospital trips were a typical thing where he would go to make nurses and doctors have a pleasant shift with his jokes and vibrancy.
We were very different, but deeply connected—two planets sharing the same orbit.
He was the social one, the magnetic one. I was the nerdy one, the reader, the person who liked to disappear into books and ideas. Our differences meant we didn’t always understand each other, but they also meant we learnt a lot from each other. He pulled me into life; I grounded him in reflection and theory.
As we both grew older and I learned more about his diagnosis, guilt quietly entered the room: Am I making the most of the time we have left?
At some point I realised I was forcing myself into situations just because I was afraid of regret. I wasn’t showing up as a sister; I was showing up as a project manager of grief.
The turning point came when I chose alignment over guilt. I stopped forcing our time together and started choosing it. That shift allowed us to have some of the best days of our lives, even before his transplant—days full of laughter, shared trips, and the strange sense of calmness that sometimes appears right before life changes forever.
The Forgotten Grievers: Brothers and Sisters
When a sibling dies, attention bends toward the parents. The siblings become supporters, shadows, strong ones, helpers.
But who holds us?
When he died, it felt like everyone disappeared. Either they minimised my loss, dismissed it, expected me to recover quickly, or simply didn’t understand the weight of it. Some expected me to perform strength on command.
What helped me was a sentence I heard from a mother who had lost her son:
“Katerina, you are grieving too.”
I had to claim my own grief. Not carry everyone else’s. Not be the brave one. Not be the strong one. Just be the human one—the sister who was losing her brother.
That sentence saved me. It carved space for me to feel instead of being on autopilot fulfilling expectations for my family, my work, and everyone around me.
If you’re curious about how I made my way through these expectations and want to hear the full story, you can listen to it here.
The Legacy We Carry
One of my biggest realisations when meeting new people is that the only thing they know about Alex is that he is dead and this doesn’t feel right because he is the person with whom I spent the most time in my life. Losing him made me realise that our stories matter, and that I can keep him alive every time I talk about him.
His legacy travels through me.
Through the way I speak of him.
Through the choices I make.
Through the love I give.
Through the ways I decide to show up.
Sometimes, I catch myself wondering what he would say, what he would do, and how he would advise me to behave. That is how I keep him alive.
This year, I honoured him through my podcast.
Last year, I honoured him through art, putting together a choreography with this music.
Thank you for taking the time to get to know him and to get to know this part of me.
Each year, I try to find a new way to connect who he was with who I am now, and to share that with others so his legacy continues to take shape. That’s how I keep him alive.
Grief is not the end of love. It is love rearranged.
To hear the full version of this story, including the experiences, emotions, and insights I couldn’t fit into this blog, listen to the podcast episode on: Spotify I Apple podcasts I Youtube I Website I Podbean I
Katerina Chantzi
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