'Always A Sibling' with Author Annie Orenstein

Annie Orenstein, author of the newly released book "Always A Silbing: The Forgotten Mourner's Guide To Grief" joins us to talk about her big brother Ben who died during military service in Afghanistan. She explains how that led to her using her researcher brain to interview other bereaved siblings and eventually writing this beautiful resource of a book to validate the experience of millions of siblings whose grief can go unnoticed.

For links to the book as well as Annie's social media, visit her website- www.annieorenstein.com

Transcript

Mandy: 0:01

Hello and welcome back to the Grief Trails podcast. I'm your host Amanda Kernaghan from Remembergrams, a small business dedicated to helping you support those in your life experiencing grief. I hope you'll consider sending someone a personalized card or grief support box. Shipping within the U. S. is always free and we treat each order with special care, paying attention to every detail. Currently, Remembergrams website is getting a facelift and We are hoping to make it even easier for you to support a grieving friend, but in the meantime, there may be unplanned interruptions to the website while we migrate everything. If you have any difficulties at all, please email us at contactatremembergrams. com and thank you in advance for your patience and continued support. Today is the last episode of season two, and we are ending on an incredibly high note with our guest today, Annie Orenstein. Annie is the author of the book, Always a Sibling, The Forgotten Mourner's Guide to Grief. She's also a researcher, and she's here to talk to us about losing her big brother, Ben, and everything she learned from interviewing other grieving siblings. We had such a genuine connection as two sisters who've walked this specific path of grief, and I truly hope that you enjoy listening in to the interview.. Okay, so, I am thrilled to talk to you. I just finished your book, and I have a million place markers in it. As a sister who has lost a brother you know, I've been through sibling loss, and it is so unique, and I've also lost my mom, and so I feel like I have this comparison, and When I lost my mom, there's this foundational book out there for women who've lost their moms called Motherless Daughters, and I've looked at that as sort of a touchstone book. And I wasn't able to find anything like that for sibling loss, and it isn't until I saw your book that I feel like you I've really taken that place on the bookshelf where it can be this resource for siblings. But before we get all ahead of ourselves and talk about your book, I first wanted to ask you to tell us about Ben. Tell me about who Ben was to you as a brother, what your relationship was like, and yeah, just fill us in.

Annie: 2:18

Absolutely. I mean, first of all, thank you for having me. Thank you for reading the book. I'm sure we'll get into it later, but kind of everything you said of, of where that book could live has been kind of my dream. So thank you. So I'm the youngest and the youngest of three and the little sister, and that was very much a core part of my identity being the little sister the two older brothers. One four years older than me and one eight years older than me. My mom said that she loved kind of having babies. And so when someone was potty trained and out of diapers, she would have another one. So we're all, four years apart, very evenly spaced. And you know, I think really since my very first memory, they were my idols. You know, I, I looked up to them in every, every possible way. And Ben was the oldest and he really, you know, there are a lot of kind of stereotypes about birth order and all of that. And, you know, he really was the ringleader. He was the responsible one. And he was the one who was kind of left in charge of us, I think, in a lot of ways, emotionally sometimes and physically other times. You know, but I really he was he was everything, you know, and I think in hindsight and now knowing what I know and learning everything I have through the research of the book, I think, what I realized is that he was a very kind of strong attachment figure for me, a very, you know, strong and healthy, very healthy attachment figure for me. And and as I, grew up, it felt like we only got closer with an eight year age difference, you know. When he graduated high school, I was only 10 years old. We didn't have a ton in common, but by the time I was in high school and college we were really kind of relating to each other a lot more as equals. And that was, Just the highlight of my life, you know, the fact that that now these big brothers got to be my friends and and people I hung out with like peers just blew my mind and was at every time we would kind of hang out without our parents around like adults. It was like. The best night of my life, you know, and they were my best friends and closest confidants and in many ways, and I think, you know, a lot of people with multiple siblings have this, but like they played very different roles for me. And I talk about this in the book where Sam, my middle brother, you know, something was wrong. Sam was the one I would call if I wanted to be distracted, if I wanted to forget about it, to, you know, be kind of whisked away. And Ben was the one to call if I wanted. Really work it out, you know, and really talk through it and and that's a really scary person to lose.

Mandy: 5:13

Yeah.

Annie: 5:14

And he He was in the reserves, the Army reserves, and he was deployed for the first time in 2006 to the Horn of Africa. And he was then called up on a Stop-loss order in 2009 and deployed to Afghanistan. And almost exactly three months into his deployment, he was killed by a suicide bomber while on foot patrol. They were going, they thought they were going to meet the leader of a local village and it was, you know, it seems a trap. And I was 25 in grad school and my world just crumbled. To live. You know, such a strong attachment figure and someone, the person who kind of knows you better than you know you and who had that, place coupled with being 25 years old and all of these things, it it was not a pretty time. It was, it was very dark. And and I write about that a lot in the book, as you mentioned, but I think I was. Just completely lost. I didn't know what to do or how to, how to exist in this world. I, I had never existed in a world without him in it. And I didn't know how to do that.

Mandy: 6:41

I mean, there's so much I could ask about the different pieces that you've mentioned, but you bring up in the book that more people have siblings than fathers. in their lives, which was mind blowing to me. And, but also the fact that we spend so much of our time with our siblings, like it's a different relationship than we have with anyone else, because they're there through all of these different developmental stages. They're usually right alongside you for a lot of things happening in the house. And then, you know, Like you mentioned, you transition once you become an adult and you sort of morph your relationship with your sibling, whether it was contentious as children or not oftentimes that relationship changes in ways and, and you sound like you had such a close relationship with them and all of that combined, I think it goes to the difficulty that comes when, when we lose somebody like that in our lives. But then adding in the fact that it was a sudden loss and unexpected, despite him being in the military, I think some people will say, well, you know, you always know that that's, that's a risk that comes with the territory, but knowing that something's a risk and actually having something happen is completely different.

Annie: 7:55

And it's interesting you say that because I was convinced that he was going to be killed. I was sure of it. I, you know, Would tell anyone who would listen. I tried to convince him to stay home. And so as convinced as I was, then it happened. And I was like, no, no, nope. This is not, this is not what was supposed to happen. This is not the plan. And, and for the book, I interviewed a lot of, of, surviving siblings, and I was really interested to hear from folks who who experienced, you know, their sibling succumbed to a prolonged illness where they very much knew it was coming, were told they were coming. And even those siblings who had been preparing themselves, some cases for years, Would tell me that that when it happened, they were shocked and then they were shocked by the fact that they were shocked, you know But but all of these situations same with you know People who struggled with addiction and mental health issues who had attempted to take their own lives in the past siblings were still surprised when it happened and I I still can't totally wrap my I guess I can't I Both can and can't understand it But I think it's just that there's nothing, there's no way to prepare yourself for a set of powerful emotions that you have never felt before. And so you can reason it, and you can try to imagine what it would be like, but you have no reference point. So you can't actually, you can lull yourself into this false sense of security, and think that you know it, but it's like having a child. You can't imagine it until you experience it. You know, those hormones are rushing through your body and, and then you're like, Oh, I had no idea, you know? And, and I think in a lot of ways, grief is very similar.

Mandy: 9:55

Yeah, and you say beforehand you can reason through it, but when it happens, it's like that reason, that part of your brain shuts off. You have no ability to reason through anything and, you know, your brain's trying to protect you. And so it's telling you, no, of course this didn't really happen. And like I saw in your book and you say like, well, how do I know it was really him? How do I know he's not just lost out there and the army messed up and they're misidentifying him? And our brains can and convince us of things like that. And it's fascinating. And I think it's not just you. I think that's an important point to make is people think, wow, like I really was losing my mind not being willing to believe what was so clearly a fact in front of me. But that's a very common feeling. And that's one of the things I love about your book, is that you kind of go through these things that not everyone realizes is such a common experience in grief and bring it to light. And you also show how it can be applied to multiple different types of losses. So not just sudden loss, but also prolonged loss and loss related to mental illness and addiction and all of those things. That's incredibly helpful.

Annie: 11:05

During the interviews, There would always be a moment where someone, once someone was comfortable, where they would say, you know, I don't know if you've heard this from anyone else, but, or this is probably a really weird thing to say, but, or, you know, kind of embarrassed to admit this, but, and whatever came after the but was something that I had already heard from someone else. And. And so in my head as a researcher, I'm like, Oh, we have a pattern here, right? This is more than one data point. Maybe there's something here to dig into from a very analytical perspective. But what I quickly realized was when I would tell the person, no, you're actually not the first one who told me that I, you know, I've heard that from other people, you could see the relief in their body. And, and they would kind of, You know, their eyes would get wide and they would want to know more. They would become more curious about their own grief and their own experience by hearing about other people's. And that kind of reflecting during these sessions, I could see how powerful it was. And so very quickly, I realized, okay, any of these things that someone, you know, qualifies as thinking is weird. I have to be sure I talk about this in the book because They have no idea how common it is, and it seems that knowing how common it is helps. And so I, I kind of would always note those things in my notes, and be like, someone thinks this is weird, dig into it, and write about it.

Mandy: 12:49

Yeah, I mean, you really went deep into things that I think are hard to talk about. And one of those things comes down to parents, and you know, a parent has lost their child, and that is a big deal. And yet you are also their child and you've had your own loss and like how you navigate that relationship with your parents and what that looks like in each family and how different it can be, but also just the strain it can put on those relationships or the way it could delay your own grief because you're trying to be there for your parents as they grieve their loss of their child and you defer your own needs through that whole time. I just found that whole section to be so honest because it's. That happens all the time, but it's not talked about.

Annie: 13:35

Yeah, and I think that chapter was really difficult to write, because I kept imagining my parents reading it. Yeah. And, you know, wondering what they were going to take away from it. And I heard some really horrific, upsetting stories of how parents treated their surviving children. And I also heard a lot of stories of parents Who were doing their best, and sometimes their best was like really good, and sometimes their best was pretty terrible, but they were trying, and I think one thing I wrestled with in that section is I think when we talk about these situations where it seems like there's no good, solution. We try to force a solution, right? Like, well, but even though it's not perfect, this is the way to do it. And I think what I was trying to convey in that chapter is like, you know, it's just a bad situation. Your parents can't be there for you like they would have otherwise because they're grieving and you can't put your grief aside to only focus on them because you're grieving too, and you have lost a piece of your parent. And. You're right that nothing will be the same. Period. Right? There's no, you want to be like, but here's what you can do to somehow make it better. And the truth is you kind of can't. The best thing you can do is understand, give each other grace and, you know, give each other the opportunities to find someone who can support you and, you know, be there for each other. But there's no like magical solution except to just kind of be there. Acknowledge that everyone is living in an imperfect situation and an imperfect world and That's the reality of

Mandy: 15:27

it. It reminds me of how you end your book. It's like, well, I can't tie this up in a bow for you. Like, I can't make this better. And even though the book is over, it doesn't mean that, like, your grief is over, and that your sibling is back, and the world is better, and it's the same kind of thing. Like, you're in a difficult situation, and there are no right answers. There is no instruction manual. I think your book comes really close to being not an instruction manual, but just a comfort in acknowledging. The different aspects that can come up and that there is no right or wrong response and, and you also go into different types of grief that people experience, which not everyone knows about all the different types of griefs that are out there. And I, I think that can be really helpful for people as well.

Annie: 16:12

Yeah, I certainly didn't know about them until I started reading the book. I knew about complicated grief because my therapist had talked to me about it. And I knew about traumatic grief because my mother had called me, probably, Nine years, eight, nine years after my brother died and in a whisper, has any therapist ever told you about traumatic grief? And I was like, no, what are you talking about? She was like, someone just told me about this. And it was like, How had no one told about this, right? Like we had even gone to therapy, like we were trying And, and I think there is just so much power in having the knowledge and understanding, you know, again, okay, I'm not crazy. This is enough of a thing that it even has a name. And, knowing, oh, I do this weird thing and my grief is often the type of grief you're experiencing. And so, knowing, just having that information, I think, kind of empowers you to examine it a little bit more. And, and send a little bit more curiosity there and figure out if there's another way to do it. And so I think that's a lot of, Why I was trying to give all of this information is like you can pick out the pieces that resonate with you and try to examine them a bit more.

Mandy: 17:43

So how long after your brother's death did you realize that you were going to write a book?

Annie: 17:49

About nine, nine and a half years after he died, I knew I wanted to do some kind of project. I wanted to do something ahead of the 10 year anniversary. And I was a researcher and I knew I could do interviews and so I thought what I wanted to do was interview his friends and family and capture all of the stories about him that I didn't know before people really started to forget. And the first person I talked to about it was my brother Sam. And he was like, I think this is a great idea. Sounds like a podcast. And I was like, it does sound like a podcast. I have no idea how to do it. And it never, it was like, it sounded like a podcast, but it podcast didn't feel right. And I was like, maybe it'll be a book. I didn't know what it was going to be or if it was going to be anything more than transcripts of interviews that I could give my children and my nieces and nephews so that they could learn about their uncle. And then, and then at some point, I realized I wanted, it would be written, but I still thought it would be written, and it would be more of a story about Ben.

Mandy: 19:06

Yeah, that's what I'm curious about. How did you go from, like, why, what made you veer from Menmar to what you ended up doing, which was more incorporating your own story, but also including other people's stories, other people's perspectives, and research all in one package.

Annie: 19:24

So I got a, I had this proposal and the book was about Ben written like an oral history, and I got an agent, and she said, and I had at that point published an essay in time, and she said, really like your writing, I loved your piece in time. But you're not in this book and would you be willing to put yourself in the book and you know, write it more in the style of this essay? And I said, yes. So then I came up with another version of the proposal, which was kind of two timelines and it was Ben Kepp journals for years, you know, we had probably decades worth of journals. And so I thought, His timeline, which would be kind of the last year of his life and his deployment could be written through journal entries and letters and interviews. And mine would be about the first few years after the death. And when we eventually took that out to publishers they weren't that into that version, but a lot of them came back and said, we do see your argument that there aren't any sibling loss books. And if you'd be interested in writing. a book on sibling loss, you can bring it back. And my first reaction was no, very adamant no. I was like, you know, what am I going to write? Like 10 ways to get over your dead brother? Like there's no way, you know, and I hadn't really found many grief books that had helped me at that point. And so I couldn't, I don't want to write a book that I wouldn't want to read. And I couldn't really imagine a grief book. like how I could write that grief book. And then I started thinking about right after Ben died, when I also tried to find a book, you know, like was your experience. I tried to find a book on Sibling Loss and there was nothing. And I saw books on losing parents and, and friends and children and pets, but nothing about a sibling. And I thought that meant that I wasn't allowed to grieve or that I shouldn't be grieving. And so I started thinking more and more, what if I wrote the book 25 year old Annie was looking for in the bookstore, and I knew that my story was very unique. Right? Military loss, it has its own unique piece. The way you're treated by your community afterwards is very different than most other types of loss. So I knew I couldn't write a broad, broadly encompassing, helpful book from only my perspective.

Mandy: 22:06

Yeah.

Annie: 22:06

And so again, I was like, well, I'm a researcher. I know how to interview people. And I put together this new version of the book, which is what it is now, where it's Ben's story and my story were still in there, but it was also full of stories from surviving siblings who had different types of relationships, different experiences and loss and in grief. And I thought in that way, I could write more broadly about the experience because I could use their stories to supplement my own and to understand it a bit more. And so that's how it. Landed where it finally did.

Mandy: 22:45

That's incredible. And then once you're collecting all of these interviews and collecting all this information, I mean, that's in and of itself a lot to distill down how much of your own story do you put into the book? And how much do you put in of other people's? And where do you find that balance? Because I think as humans, We tend to want to tell our own stories more, which is totally natural, but I think you found a really healthy balance of your own experience, and then really sprinkling in all these other people's experiences, like, was that, did that take multiple revisions, or how did you find that balance?

Annie: 23:25

It's funny, it was kind of the opposite for me because in my professional work as a researcher, I have to stay completely unbiased and my story has no place in my finding. So it actually was kind of the opposite experience where my editor would be like, What were you you are not in this chapter, like, where, you know, let's let's hear more about you and about Ben, and so it, especially in the beginning, it took a little more encouragement for me to talk about my own story. And then there are other chapters where I think. My story is a lot of it, like when I talk about things that are very, that I experienced very deeply, I think there's just more of me in those chapters. But it, it was kind of the opposite, where, where my initial instinct was to tell everything fully through other people's stories, and I had to keep kind of reminding myself, like, nope, I'm, I need to be in this book too. That's fascinating.

Mandy: 24:23

You mentioned Ben's journals. I want to touch on that a little bit. A, I think journaling is not, you know, something everyone does, right? So if your sibling kept a journal, I think that feels very special and feels like you get a piece of them that you would not have otherwise had. I know that in your book, you say you didn't read those journals for a long time. Like, which 10 years

Annie: 24:50

till I started doing interviews?

Mandy: 24:51

That is fascinating to me. My brother was not a journal keeper per se, like your brother was, where he had multiple journals. He had one journal, and it was kept towards the end of his life, or probably that last year of his life. And I read it before his funeral. Like, I stayed up late at night on the floor like, devouring and sobbing. I'm like And the whole time I felt nothing but guilt for reading it, because I was like, these are not words for me. Like, this information isn't information for me. And yet, I could not stop reading it. And I read it cover to cover, and then I offered it to my brother. And I was like, look, he has a journal, you should read the journal. He was like, I can't, it's not my place. And I was just like, ah, then I felt like a terrible person. So Yeah. Tell me, talk to me about that. And like, how did you come to terms with like the fact that you were reading his inner thoughts?

Annie: 25:48

So, yes, we had all these journals. They were kind of sprinkled around. A lot of them were at my parents house. But then he had put his stuff in storage. So some of it was in storage. And, you know, he had one or two journals with him that didn't get returned until. A while after and they were there, but I think again, like I am the little sister through and through and I don't know what exactly I thought would happen, but like I was so trained because he had kept journals since I was little. I was so trained to never touch those journals. Like, I don't know if I thought I was going to get struck by lightning or what exactly would happen, but I just didn't even think about it. I was like, we don't read those. It didn't, the option of reading it didn't cross my mind. My, my family still hasn't read them. I think they're going to and I, Now have them and you have kind of catalog them. But it was really interesting because I had reached out to a colleague of mine. Whose sister Sandra bland died under suspicious circumstances and police custody, and she had also kept. Diary. And they had read them like you, you know, shortly after. And, and I asked her about it and she too could not believe that I had not read them. And she was like, if you're waiting for a sign, this is your sign. You have permission. And then I just devoured you know, I kind of collected them all and would read them and then run and make my husband read them. And It was, I don't know, I, I wish someone had encouraged me to read them earlier, you know, I, I wish someone had told me it was okay, I think I felt like I needed permission, but no one in my family was touching them, so I wasn't going to get permission, you know, not that they were telling me not to, but they weren't going to tell me to read them, and and I felt like that was ultimately what I needed was for someone to say like, it's okay, you can read this, and And now I treasure it.

Mandy: 28:04

Yeah, I think there's something that draws us to things like the journal or things like The stories that you sought out from his friends and, and people who knew him in other aspects of life where you didn't know him, because we know that everything we know about our sibling Is now cut off like there is no opportunity to get to know them on another level anymore. And so any way that we can like fill in those gaps for ourself and feel like we're still meeting who they were as a whole person rather than just a brother or sister. I think that's really powerful, but I never thought about that.

Annie: 28:45

Kind of fills the void, right? You know, it gives you more. Nuggets. More little pieces of information and more pieces of them. They become more, more whole. Yeah. Which is so important when they're not there

Mandy: 29:02

anymore. Yeah. And I, I like that we had two very different experiences with that because I think it just goes to show that like, Everyone's going to handle it differently and you can make the decision for yourself whether that's something that you want to, you know, explore if your sibling does have something like that and you've been holding back, you know, to think about what you've said about feeling like you needed permission, but then finding that it was okay once you did read them.

Annie: 29:29

Yeah. And I do think there is a good chance that I was not ready to read them when he first died. You know, it maybe is ultimately for the best. That it took me so long, obviously I'll never know, but I do like to think that I read them when I was ready to read them and I'm grateful that they still existed at that point.

Mandy: 29:51

Yeah, so when you started this project and you were mostly interviewing people who knew Ben, Well, I'm trying to document like a life history, a life story of his what have you chosen to do with with that information, those interviews that you did? Are you just documenting that for your, your children, your family? Have you made it into anything? Or that was just like raw copies that you're just keeping for your family? Or are you embarking on a separate project for something else? Such a good question.

Annie: 30:22

No one, no one has asked me that. Right now, they're just the raw copies and the transcripts and, I think of them as, you know, if nothing else, then they are they document a lot of Ben's life and I can share that with his nieces and nephews. And so that's kind of where they sit at the moment. I do think about. Making something else out of them. But I don't think I know exactly what that is yet, and I find a lot of comfort just knowing that they exist for now. But yeah, I don't, I don't know yet if they'll live beyond that.

Mandy: 31:02

Wow, I was very curious reading, so I'm glad that I got to ask. I love that you, you really bring in a lot of humor to it, too. It's such a heavy, serious topic. We're talking about the death of our siblings, which happens very out of the natural order of things. And You do a really brilliant job of bringing in levity. One of my favorite parts was when you were talking about, like, telling your brain, like, okay, I'm going into this really important meeting. Hold it together for the next hour. Every time. Your brain is like okay, I'm gonna immediately start crying.

Annie: 31:39

Brains like, hey, remember that time your brother died? Yes. You're like, why now? I think, like, I wrote, you know, I worked full time, I have kids, and I wrote a lot of the book either very early in the morning or on weekends, and so I, the first draft, especially, you know, I had all my notes of the facts and the figures and the interview quotes. But then what, what links them together, at least in that first draft, a lot of it was stream of consciousness, and I think I would get to a point in writing it or reading it where, like, I needed some comedic relief for myself, you know, that's my own kind of, you know, Reaction or defense mechanism is to just like find a way to laugh. And so I was putting all of these jokes in, I think just for my own psyche. Like I just needed the levity and the break. And then when I would reread a draft. Sometimes, you know, months later, because I wrote the whole thing longhand first and then transcribed it. So it was like months between when I would first write something and then read it. And I'm like, I think that's actually funny. Like, I'm going to try keeping this in for one more draft. And obviously most of them did not make it, but I think it was just, it was what I needed to be able to get through the content. And then I felt like, Maybe other people would also appreciate these moments to take a breath.

Mandy: 33:12

Wow. I'm still now totally hung up on the fact that you just said you wrote this longhand first. I

Annie: 33:17

did. I don't know if it was smart or not, but I just love writing by hand, and I get so distracted on computers, and I spend all day looking at screens, and I just don't like looking at screens. Towards the end, there was kind of a time crunch, and I think the last like three chapters. I drafted on the computer. But it felt really good to write it out longhand. It just took, it wasn't as fast.

Mandy: 33:44

Yeah, and longhand, you can feel like, wow, I wrote so much. And then if you put it in the computer, you're like, no, I didn't.

Annie: 33:52

That felt great because I wouldn't transcribe it. And I would transcribe every, like, Four or five chapters. So they were big enough chunks that yeah, if I wrote in the mornings, I'd be like, I was amazing. I wrote eight pages, you know, and then you type it up and it was much shorter. But when you type up five chapters at once, it, it wasn't as shocking, but periodically I would get asked about my word count and I was like, who knows?

Mandy: 34:22

Oh my gosh, I love hearing about everyone's process because everyone is so different. I went to a writing conference. It's totally not to do with sibling loss, but I went to a writing conference and I didn't know if people were going to bring laptops to the session or just paper and notebook and pen. And so I brought a notebook and pen. I never write with that. And so then there was a writing prompt and I was so lost because it was just not the medium that I write in. And so then the next day, I brought my laptop because a bunch of people had laptops and realized that it was, like, my process is much more on a computer. So I love to hear that everyone is different in that way. Okay. Back to Ben and back to siblings I'm going to wrap this up, but I wondered if you, one of the things I liked in the book is that you said during your interviews, you would write down the person's sibling's name on a piece of paper in front of you so that you didn't forget what their name was, but also just as a way of honoring that person still and recognizing that like by us talking about them, by us saying their name, we're keeping them here with us or in this. This realm in some way and I, I think that's really beautiful and I try to do the same thing. And so I just wanted to end with some little fun tidbit or memory or something of them that you keep with you.

Annie: 35:42

Sorry to put you on the spot. No, no, it's such a good question. And actually I have some stuff right behind me. I know no one can see me, but just to, to think of my own memory invent something that Ben had saved. A mix tape that I had made him like a cassette tape that, let's see, I write on the cover that my bat mitzvah is coming up. So it was probably 1995 or six. The age of Mixed tapes. Got it. The age of mixed tapes. Like, I don't even know it, it's such the mix tape that a 12-year-old would make. There are Kelly and bare naked ladies are back to back on it and it's covered in like glittery nail polish. And, and I love it and I, I think I mailed it to, I'm pretty sure that I had mailed it to him when he was doing study abroad in college. I was 12 and he was like 20. And this 20 year old guy doing a full year of study abroad. kept this mixtape from his little sister that's not good. I was not like a mixtape prodigy. Like it's not a very good mixtape and carried it around with him on study abroad, brought it home, kept it through however many moves, multiple deployments. And you know, when I was going through his stuff, there, there it is. And I think that that's like, so emblematic of who he was as a person. And as a brother, you know, he, he, Genuinely loved everything I did, and I was special in his eyes. And and I think it, it just speaks a lot to the beauty of the relationship that we had as siblings.

Mandy: 37:35

And what a perfect thing, because in your book you, you mention music a lot and you include lyrics a lot. And so that totally fits with like what I know about you just from reading the book. And I'm curious, did you put that playlist, like, into the current century and, download it and have a playlist on your phone where you can listen to that specific playlist, or? Oh, this

Annie: 37:57

one I made? So I started making a playlist out of it. But I, I put songs on here, like, I don't know the name with an asterisk, and then down below, the asterisk says, I I really don't know the name. So there's one song, one that just says love. Like, I definitely didn't get the right song titles, because they're probably recorded off the radio. So I did try to make like a digital version of this. And I think what I need is to actually just find a cassette player and figure out what the songs are. But I really want to because it's a weird, weird bunch of songs. And I think it would be really entertaining. So one of these days, maybe I can get a Walkman off of eBay or something. Figure out what's actually on here.

Mandy: 38:51

Maybe for one of the anniversaries, that sounds like a really fun project. And then you can like share the playlist with people.

Annie: 38:58

Well, all right, now I'm going to go on eBay

Mandy: 39:00

and find a Walkman. Oh, I love that. Well, thank you so much for sharing. Your story and them story and also just really creating this resource for people that I know is so needed out there and you know something I wish that I had had access to Six years ago when my brother died and I just know it's gonna help so many people and it's gonna be one of those books That everyone recommends when someone loses a sibling which is Horrific and an awful thing that we need such a resource, but it's going to keep happening and having something so well rounded, I think is important because many, a lot of the books that are out there. I do feel like are more focused on like this specific kind of loss, which can't as easily be extracted to the variety of experiences. And I, I, I found that you did a really great job incorporating all of that. So

Annie: 39:52

thank you so much. Thank you so much. This has been such a wonderful conversation and I really appreciate it getting to talk about it.

Mandy: 40:00

I hope you enjoyed hearing from Annie as much as I enjoyed talking to her. To hear not only about Ben, but about sibling loss as a whole. Her book is a phenomenal resource and can bring you or anyone who's lost a sibling some much needed validation in that experience. You can find a link to her book in our show notes or wherever books are sold. As mentioned earlier, we're going to be taking a break now between seasons and we look forward to coming back this fall with more amazing interviews like the one today with Annie. I hope you're gentle with yourself if you're grieving this summer and know that you are seen regardless of the type of loss you are facing. Thank you so much for listening. Please make sure you subscribe, share this episode with anyone who could benefit from it. And as always, visit RememberGrams anytime you need to send a little love to someone who is grieving. Stay tuned for our updated website. Thank you so much, and have a wonderful day and summer ahead.