The first time I lied about my sister, I was sitting in a semicircle in my high school homeroom study hall. Our teacher asked us to describe one of our siblings as a class bonding exercise. Numb with grief, I almost laughed at the cruel timing.
I was 17 and my sister, Kait, had been missing, presumed deceased, for only a few days.
One by one, my classmates shared anecdotes about their brothers and sisters. When it came to my turn, I panicked and said, “I’m an only child.” The words tasted sour in my mouth.
On Jan. 8, 2014, security cameras captured footage of my sister walking to the peak of Philadelphia’s Benjamin Franklin Bridge and not returning. She was 22 years old and had been struggling with her mental health and the effects of a traumatic brain injury for several years.
It might have been easy to deduce what had happened, but grief defies reason. My family never found Kait’s body. It took us years to accept that she had taken her life, and even longer to put the experience into words.
In the months after my sister’s suicide, every time someone casually asked me if I had siblings — on first dates; during college admission interviews; in the grocery store in the middle of an otherwise average day — I would wince. It was such an innocuous question for some, but so loaded for me. It made my chest ache each time.
Later, in college, where no one knew me or what had happened, I found it easier to lie about being an only child than to communicate the clunky but simple truth: I once had a sister but now I don’t.
In those early weeks of college orientation, full of repetitive conversations about our hometowns and prospective majors, I remember feeling surprised, guilty and sometimes even angry when people believed me. How could they not see all the ways my sister has shaped me?
I think of her when I do my makeup in the morning. I use her unique turns of phrase. I imagine her advice before I make a major decision. I don’t do this consciously. I do it because I was born a sister. When I entered the world, Kait was already in it. There is no version of me that exists without her imprint. And the qualities I like most about myself — my sense of humor, my desire for adventure — are hand-me-downs from her.
I wished there was a word to identify myself in relation to my loss. I longed for a label that would be instantly understood by others, one that would communicate both Kait’s presence and absence in my life. I wanted a word like orphan or widow — a term that says, “I once had a sibling, but I lost her.”
“There are no words,” was a phrase I heard often when I was grieving, and on some level, it is true. Death is mute. Loss steals our language. There aren’t sufficient words to convey what it feels like to lose someone you love — and even fewer to comfort those of us who know the feeling too well.
But does the inadequacy of language in the face of death mean we should silence ourselves? Grief is isolating enough. Shouldn’t we try to name what we can?
Some people may bristle at the titles of orphan, widow and widower, as they each come with their own stereotypes and limitations. But, after losing my sister, I yearned for a similar title to locate and lend legibility to my experience.
If I had a word to describe myself, perhaps I would have been more likely to mention my sister to my college classmates, rather than entirely omitting her existence. If I had a word to describe myself, perhaps I would have been more likely to meet and connect with other people who struggle to speak when asked if they have any brothers or sisters.
At the very least, I wanted a term that could serve as a metaphorical stop sign in conversation: a warning to tread carefully, a succinct and sufficient answer in its own right.
But I didn’t have that word. So I resorted to lying until, only a few weeks into college, I was caught.
A group of us were sitting on a friend’s dorm bed when a boy confronted me. I was telling a story about my sister’s brief flirtation with a famous actor.
I was bragging like a little sister, but I had previously told everyone that I wasn’t a little sister. The boy pointed out the discrepancy. “Who lies about something like that?” he asked.
As everyone turned to look at me, my cheeks burned and my heart caught in my throat. My voice wavered, but I didn’t cry. For the first time in a public setting of more than one or two people, I answered the question honestly.
That was seven years ago. Back then, there was more urgency and confusion for me about how to approach my loss. Now there is some clarity. The more I’ve written and talked about my sister’s life publicly, the more confident I feel in telling the hard, full truth.
If someone asks me if I have siblings now, I tell them that I have a sister who passed away. I tell them that Kaitlyn was rebellious, smart, beautiful, outrageously funny and sometimes outrageously defiant too. If they ask further questions, I tell them what she went through and how she died.
And yet, I still wonder if I and others whose siblings have died would benefit from having a word that names our pain — especially in the early days of mourning when telling the complete story may feel impossible.
For now, there is a word for longing, and there is a word for grief, but there are no words to describe how it feels to pull your phone out to text your sister and know that she won’t answer. There is no term for being the remaining half of a shared tradition, no label that captures a relationship that ends, but also doesn’t, like a phantom limb that still aches when it rains.
Hopefully, someday, someone will find or create an adequate term for people like me. But in the meantime, what I am, and what I will always be, is a little sister.
If you are having thoughts of suicide, call or text 988 to reach the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline or go to SpeakingOfSuicide.com/resources for a list of additional resources.
