When our son died unexpectedly at just over six and a
half months of age, we knew that it would be hard on his older sister (who was
two and a half years old at the time), but we found it even more difficult to
explain to others why she was behaving in such a way. Being twenty-three months apart in age, they
bonded quickly. Their first meeting, our
daughter didn’t seem to understand what exactly we were trying to present to
her with this blanket swaddled bundle, but she handled being a big sister very
well, wanting to constantly help with the baby, and even taking on caretaking
roles with her animals or dolls, wanting to feed them or change diapers. His nickname (Atti) was one of the few things
she said clearly (because she was choosing not to speak more often than not)
and many times he wouldn’t want my husband nor I, but instead he’d be crying
for her attention and she’d always know what he wanted.
One of the first behaviors we noticed, as it was the
first to happen, was her slowly understanding that the babe her father held was
her brother. The two days he’d been on
life support and given medications as his organs failed had made him near
unrecognizable. It was how we had laid
his beloved toy upon his chest that finally made her realize, as she reached
out to touch his head that last time.
She didn’t understand our tears then, but I held her, and she looked up
at me before looking at her baby brother, as we told her it was time to say
goodbye. We’d had her out of the room as
he passed away, but it seemed wrong to not let her say goodbye.
She didn’t understand why we left him at the
hospital. We’d stayed the whole time he
was there, but she’d slept outside of the hospital, so to suddenly have us with
her again, but not her brother, was confusing.
I found myself carrying the animal given to Atti by the staff of the
hospital and suffering bouts of uncontrollable sobbing as I held that bear
close. She’d been given a matching bear
(as it was part of a sibling program) and she would often offer the bear
especially when I would start crying.
Looking back, she perhaps didn’t realize why I was crying, but she was
learning compassion, seeing that holding the bear would be better for me.
In the days that followed, her brother’s absence weighed
heavier and heavier upon her. The
morning after he passed, she was demanding that we go get him out of the car,
thinking he was just inside there. When
we were home, she would frantically search the house, ripping bedding off of
the beds, looking in his crib, peeking into the bassinet that was still in the
living room. She would demand that we
take her outside and prove that we hadn’t left him in the car.
This hadn’t been the first time that she had behaved this
way, doing it once before when he’d been alive and well. When Atti was a few months old, I took him
with me to go shopping, leaving her with my husband so they could both
sleep. She awoke when we were still
gone, and she wanted to know where her brother was, especially when my husband
prompted her, asking her where he was.
She searched high and low around the house, not believing that he was
with me until she had checked everywhere.
My husband told me of their little “game” when I got home, and it
saddened me, but it assured me just how much she cared for her brother.
Seeing how frantically she searched in those weeks
following his passing was heartbreaking.
We didn’t know what we could do; she didn’t believe us that he was
gone. She just couldn’t understand.
We didn’t have many pictures printed of him, but we’d
been given a digital picture frame some time before, and so we put pictures of
Atti, especially some that had both of them in the picture, and slowly, her
searches became less frantic. Instead,
an obsession with that picture frame developed.
If she ever looked over and it was turned off, everything would be
dropped until it was turned back on and she could see her brother again. If it hadn’t been for this, I don’t think we
would have had pictures up. It was in
the corner of the room, but whenever I looked at it, I would break down. It comforted her, however, so there it
stayed.
Other changes in behavior developed. This girl that had been so happy to start
sleeping in her toddler bed, especially now that it was in her own room, began
to only want to sleep with us. We took
up sleeping in the living room, because the crib was still up in our bedroom
and we couldn’t face being back there.
It was even worse when the crib was taken down and given to someone
else; as if he’d never been there. Worse
than that (because we didn’t mind her sleeping with us) was her reaction to
having to say goodbye to anyone.
When we had visitors (which truly were few and far
between) or even the post man, she would have meltdowns over saying goodbye,
refusing to say it or wave, and she would get worse when she realized they weren’t
coming back into the house. She wouldn’t
say goodbye to anyone at her daycare, and if anyone said it to her, she would
start crying. It took her months to
finally get to a place where she could say goodbye, but even now she doesn’t
like it.
To her, all babies were Atti. Babies in magazines, movies, on boxes; all
were her brother, and we would have to tell her that they weren’t. It was difficult to not get angry sometimes
over this, and to be honest, there were times that we shouted at her for it, because
we didn’t know how to handle the feelings that brought up.
The other worrisome behavior was perhaps the strangest,
and it took us some time to understand.
Although she had always said “daddy” and “mommy” just fine, she started
calling my husband “mommy” instead, calling us both “mommy”. Reminding her that my husband was “daddy”
would just make her upset. And then, one
day, we understood. It wasn’t that she
had suddenly forgotten that “daddy” was her daddy, but that she was noticing
how upset we got when she spoke of Atti.
They were too similar for her, so she refused to say daddy. It wasn’t until she began calling Atti by his
name (Atticus) that she began to call my husband “daddy” again. This didn’t happen until nearly six months
after he’d passed away.
When I became pregnant again, I talked to her about
having a new little brother or sister (but I hated whenever anyone asked her if
she was excited that she was “going to be” a big sister, because she had never
stopped being a big sister). I asked her
if the baby was a boy or a girl. She
told me the baby was a boy. I asked her
if she wanted a brother or a sister. She
told me she wanted a sister. I told her
that it was possible that she was going to have a little brother, and she got
upset, insisting that she wanted a sister.
I asked her why, and she told me that it was because she already had a
brother that she wanted a sister.
As time passed, we learned it was indeed another girl, so
she has her little sister. She is four
and beginning school soon. She doesn’t
have the same relationship with her little sister than she did with Atticus,
and that is hard for me. For about the
first month, she couldn’t stand the sound of her sister crying (though that’s
not uncommon for any sibling when a new baby is in the house). She still wants to care for her, and is now
big enough to actually help us with her sister at times.
She speaks about Atticus often, asking about him. She will tell people that she has a brother
and sister, but follow it up with “Atticus is dead, sorry.” which shocks a
great many people (as it did with us the first time she said it). She tells us that Atticus sleeps in the
bassinet and that he comes and plays with Chrys (her little sister) and her
toys. She asks if Atticus is still at
the doctor’s, and sometimes asks when we take Chrys in for check-ups if she’s
going to die too. It’s heartbreaking to
hear a child so young ask about things like that. We explain that going to the doctor isn’t
just for the sick (as she was with us for all but a handful of prenatal
appointments during my pregnancies).
There are times where she still calls my husband “mommy”
instead of “daddy” and she doesn’t normally want to sleep in her room, even
with her new bed, but on most days, you wouldn’t think that her brother was
missing. Perhaps what helps her most in
this is that she doesn’t quite yet understand that Atticus isn’t coming back,
but then there are the times that she will cry for no reason and say how she
misses Atticus, or she’ll try and comfort me by patting my head as I cry over
thoughts and memories.
I feel I should also mention that shortly after my
husband found Atti not breathing, I went to the back, and she followed soon
after. She initially thought that we
were playing with him, thinking we were playing on the bed with him, as we
tried to get him to respond and eventually beginning CPR. We yelled for her to get out of the room, and
she didn’t understand why. A little over
a month later, we had a BLS (basic life support) training in our house (as I
needed that specific certification to apply to the hospital as a CNA), and she
saw the training as well. There are
times that she “plays” with her dolls or stuffed animals as if she is giving
them CPR, and more than once, she has attempted chest compressions on Chrys,
not understanding that this could hurt her.
I don’t know how much she’ll remember of her brother as
she grows older, but there are more pictures of him up around the house, and we
do speak about him, so he will never be forgotten.
