Please Note: The section below is a summary of some of the important aspects of sibling grief. For a more comprehensive resource, please read Do They Have Bad Days in Heaven?

Sibling survivors are often called the forgotten mourners. When a sibling dies, those siblings left behind, no matter their ages, are considered secondary mourners to the parents and/or if the sibling who died had a spouse and children. For those siblings still living at home, they will "lose" their parents for some time as the parents grieve the death of the deceased child. Parents can become so engrossed in their grief that they forget their living children still need reassurance they are loved and wanted. Because of the suicide, the surviving siblings' roles in the family are altered. They might feel the need to parent their parents or protect them from anything else bad happening. The opposite could also happen where the parents try to shield the living children, afraid of losing them, too.

People forget the importance of siblings in our lives. Listed below are some characteristics of the sibling bond:

• It's the longest relationship we'll have in our lives. We are typically only a few years apart when one is born and we become aware of each other. We usually know them longer than our parents, spouses, and children.
• We witness more life events and life changes with our siblings than anyone else.
• We share a sense of genetics, sense of family, belonging, and culture.
• They teach us how to function in society and communicate with others.
• The time spent together in our early years is greater than with our parents.

It's estimated that 80 percent of children in the United States and Europe grow up with siblings. By approximating 1.85 children in each U.S. Household (using U.S. Census statistics) and 31,000 suicides (per year), then 24,800 people become sibling survivors of suicide yearly. That means, in the past 25 years, at least 620,000 Americans became sibling survivors of suicide.

Through the life span, losing our sibling to suicide sets up complicated grief. As suicide grief is already difficult, adding in the factors relating to sibling loss reminds us of the uniqueness of the sibling bond.