"Our relationships with our brothers and sisters are key to understanding ourselves. Where they end and where we begin is often so seamless, the loss of a sibling can be a crippling blow to our understanding of who we are, and how we function and relate to others"

--- From The Empty Room: Surviving the Loss of a Brother or Sister at Any Age 
    by Elizabeth DeVita-Raeburn

"Before the loss of our sibling, we think of ourselves and our siblings from the vantage point of one solid block of 'I,' an already baked cake."
We begin with the story of the loss, then, because it is the shock of the impossible---the rude stripping of one ingredient from the 'I.' The loss is the 'before and after' marker, indicating the moment at which we are forever launched---often without understanding it---into an uncertain state in which we are continuously checking our psychic pockets for something we've lost.

 "There is no agony like bearing an untold story inside of you."

---Maya Angelou

 "All sorrows can be borne if they can be put in a story."

---Isak Dinessen

When people ask me what I was feeling "I didn't know how to respond. I wasn't really feeling any one emotion---I was feeling everything---all at the same time."

---Anonymous