Reading this post I can't help but feel for the sibling. When I was 5 I lost my sister and best friend; you just aren't equipped to deal with the event at that age.
Yes, so many years with the pains unravelling as you learn to cope with that loss. Children are great at handling traumatic events, but it doesn't mean it's any less traumatic. That poor kid is probably going to struggle with this for a long time.
One hot August day my father was involved in a farm machinery accident, and died of his injuries two weeks later. I was 5.
All the time I was growing up, it used to surface every couple of years. Later when I got into college and took a bunch of psychology and child development classes, I learned that the brain undergoes a major reorganization at about two year intervals, the last being in the early twenties. Looking back, I realized that at every brain re-org, I mourned again. I mourned like a 5 year old at 5, like a 7 year old at 7, etc.
After my twenties, I thought I had put it completely behind me.
Then when my own daughter was 5, I had a period of several months where I felt an unfocused dread. A feeling of impending doom that I just could not explain or account for. Then in late September of that year, somehow I snapped out of it, with the realization that I was still alive. I looked at my daughter and understood that I was her age when my father passed. And it all made sense. And I am free.
That's an incredibly hard event to process at 5. Someone close to me lost her dad at 6 in a similar way (major injury, passed away shortly after), and I've helped her process that in conversations over the years. It's still hard to grasp what that experience would be like. I can see the pain it inflicts, the questions it triggers, but I suppose I'm fortunate enough that I don't fully comprehend it. Losing parents is so hard, and hard enough as an adult when it's easier to process and you may even feel secure in your independence.
