Did your sister make you pay a nickel every time you wanted to ride her bicycle?
Did your brother hide plastic spiders in your bed?
How old were you when you found out you had a half-sibling?
Siblings are complicated. They claw for parental attention. They betray. They sucker-punch. But many times, they also star in some of the sweetest childhood memories.
Sometimes, we define who we are by everything our siblings are not. Sometimes, our greatest ambition is to follow in their footsteps.
Half Life: the time it takes for one-half of a substance introduced to a living system to disintegrate by natural processes.
When I was younger, it seemed so strange to me that my parents rarely saw most of their siblings. How could that possibly happen, I wondered? How could they grow apart?
I wondered about the bond siblings share as children. Does it have a half life?
And then I learned about my half-brothers (and later, a half-sister), and everything changed. Suddenly, I had siblings I never knew, siblings I did not (and probably will not ever) know. They gave a whole new meaning to half-life—and to siblings.
Half-Siblings
half-life: the time it takes for one-half of a substance introduced to a living system to disintegrate by natural processes.
A couple of years ago, my brother (half brother, as family often corrects me) died. I had not seen him in 18 years – not since my mother booted him out of my life forever. Friends and family – even my spouse – did not understand the intensity of my grief. After all, I hardly knew my brother. But I mourned for the brother I never had. The brother I wanted. The brother I did have for a brief time, when he showed up on our doorstep and stayed with my mother, father, sister and I until he found another job and home. For what a brother should have been.
For weeks, I wandered into greeting card shops, looking for comfort. I found cards for loss of mother, father, grandfather, grandmother, son, and daughter — nothing for the loss of a sibling, let alone a “half” sibling. More than once, I slipped my brother’s obituary in the slot for “Birthday–Brother” and stared at it.
How did I measure a half loss? What was the half-life of a sibling bond?
And so, this blog’s title: The Half Life of Siblings.
