Strange convergence of topics

I have a dead sister; she died when she was around 23. (As I’ve probably mentioned, I’m bad with names and dates -- but I think it was 23. Fell off a balcony, at a party. December, 1998?) Usually, this topic doesn’t come up, and when it does, I’m never quite sure how to address it. But it typically comes up in the “how many siblings do you have” conversations.

The weird thing is that the last few days, it’s come up with peculiar regularity.

On Friday, everyone at work was a little more ‘’talky’’ than usual. One person was talking about cross-national adoptions, so I mentioned my sister (we adopted her from Korea when she was five). And the conversation eventually came around to “and how’s she doing now?” My response: “Um -- she’s dead.”

Then, about a half hour later, I was talking with a different co-worker -- pregnant -- about a good number of kids to have. Both of us have siblings, and think it’s good to have sibs. And, this led to questions about how close we are to each sib. I said that when we were younger, I was probably closest to the older of my two sisters, whereas my younger brother was closer to the youngest sister. “And are they still close?” was the question. “Um, not really -- because she’s dead.”

And then another co-worker comes in, and someone we get on a related topic, and I have to ‘fess up -- again -- that I have a dead sister.


Surprisingly, it’s not the conversation-stopper that you might think. Maybe it’s because I’m fairly matter-of-fact about it: at this point I’m used to it, although I still don’t like it. (‘’It’’, of course, refers to her being dead.) And people tend to respond in a standard way, as do I: ‘’Oh, I’m so sorry...’’ ‘’Thanks. It was pretty nasty. But... [shrug, with resigned ‘’what can you do’’ expression on face]’’


Then, today, The Lady and I were at a get-together of her co-workers, and I was talking to the wife of one of the co-workers. They were considering an overseas adoption, and because she has a psychology background, we were talking about the impacts of adopting at various ages, in terms of bonding, child development, etc. I offered that we adopted my youngest sister when she was five, and before that she was raised in orphanages and foster homes, where she didn’t receive a lot of cognitive stimulation. And probably because of that, she always had a low-level, diffuse learning disability, and therefore didn’t do too well in school. “And how’s she doing now?”


And, finally, my Dissertation is about family influences on delinquency, so I’m reading various books about the family. I recently found a journal article about sibling dynamics that really fits with the key point I’m trying to make: that although ‘’family’’ research tends to focus on the parents, and the parent-child relationship, that siblings are a really important sub-system of the family. And one of the sections in that article is “Mourning and Loss: The Departure of Siblings.” Ayeah.


This is probably where I get my darker side from. Not cynical -- just darker.


Folks -- don’t try this one at home. It sucks.


--GG