Hey Julian,

A lot has happened since you left. For a start, your children have grown up beautifully. You’d be so proud of them, all such characters.

Dad bellowed at us: “There’ll be no more out of order deaths in this family!” He had talked of leaving to be with Mum after she died. But your departure only eight weeks later snapped him out of it. He’s fraying around the edges these days, going down hill. But he’s still here!

And still telling funny stories. Today he told me how he sat down in a shop and didn’t realise it was the local barber’s until his hair had all been shorn off. It does look too short.

We gradually recovered and life got better for me. These four little fellas have joined us. The eldest arrived two days before your anniversary day. So you have to compete with birthday parties, Lego and his blue dog birthday cake – it’s always a blue dog.

But it is a nod to you, this life filled with little boy things.

ABC Everyday has two great articles on experiences of sudden sibling loss. ‘The Grief for a Sibling is Often Forgotten: Your Stories’ and ‘The Grief that Followed My Sisters Shock Death Changed Me’.

And there’s plenty of podcasts discussing sibling loss, some programs dedicated to it such as The Surviving Siblings, Surviviving Sibling Loss-The Forgotten Mourners, and others are episodes such as this one with Heidi Horsley Mindfulness and Grief-Coping with Sibling Loss.

There are also some great instagram accounts to follow. My favourites are sibling.loss and surviving our siblings.

Grieflink has also just published the factsheet ‘Death of a Sibling’. Check it out here.

Lastly this LaTrobe University article aims to help children experiencing sibling loss.