My Brother Is a Complete Stranger to Me

The pain of sibling estrangement is more common than you might think

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Published April 09, 2025

a man walks away, with his figure slowly disappearing

Allie Sullberg

Welcome to Ethels Tell All, where the writers behind The Ethel newsletter share their personal stories related to the joys and challenges of aging. Come back each Wednesday for the latest piece, exclusively on AARP Members Edition.

I was sitting at my desk on a Monday morning when my cellphone rang. Glancing at the caller ID, my heart did a leapfrog in my chest. It was an expected — yet dreaded — call. A voice on the line said, “It’s time.” As I drove the eight hours to the nursing home, I knew the next few days would prove devastating for reasons other than just the imminent physical loss of my mother.

She had suffered a serious fall at home nine months prior. It resulted in surgery, complications and, ultimately, hospice care. I quietly entered my mother’s room and observed my brother standing by her bedside. I saw him glance my way as I paused at the door, waiting. He leaned down to whisper goodbye, hoisted his backpack onto a shoulder, and walked toward me. I ventured a hello, nervously preparing for a brotherly hug or some comforting gesture, but I needn’t have bothered. He walked past me without acknowledging my presence or greeting me, as if I were invisible. The hurt I had learned to ignore was back. My brother and I have been estranged for years, and the reasons why are still unclear to me.

I was 9 when the youngest of my three brothers was born with cystic fibrosis, a chronic lung condition that at that time was almost always fatal. The stress for my harried parents of raising two teenage boys, a prepubescent daughter and a chronically ill toddler in a small house on a single lower-middle-class income was a seemingly insurmountable challenge. Our sick brother was our parents’ top priority. Collectively, the three other children vied for parental attention and experienced feelings of jealousy, resentment, neglect and loss. Sadly, my brother passed away at age 9, and familial memories remained strong.

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As we reached adulthood, my middle brother began to deliberately distance himself, physically and emotionally. Not only did we live in different states, but he also declined most invitations to family gatherings. Phone calls were rare, and as the years passed, emails and texts became outlets for blame against perceived slights. Our own children were strangers, not the close, loving cousins we had hoped they would be.

I had always enjoyed a close relationship with my oldest brother, but not so with the middle one. Our interactions for the past few years could be described as a series of emotionally alienating encounters. I had no friends who were estranged from their siblings, so I had no confidantes.

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The cracks in the relationship between my two brothers formed years ago when we began to discuss legal and logistical plans for Mom’s final years. They continued to widen until a rift so great occurred between them that reconciliation seemed impossible. As the only other sibling, I was caught in the middle. My attempts to play peacemaker were unsuccessful.

Some claim sibling estrangement is more common than many think. Because of the shame and stigma attached to a strained or nonexistent relationship with a sibling, many are reluctant to divulge the embarrassing family secret to friends or relatives. I am one of those many.

The reality of our dysfunctional sibling relationship became alarmingly apparent when my oldest brother attended an aunt’s funeral and did not recognize the man who offered my mother condolences. The shocking realization that this stranger was our brother served as the catalyst for an emotional reunion. As a result, I felt confident the three of us could eventually release any lingering antagonism that existed and work toward genuine reconciliation.

As our mother’s overall health declined, we realized none of us were adequately equipped to handle her worsening ailments. The final fall at home necessitated the decision of long-term care, which two of us supported and one did not. This event proved to be the final break for my brothers, and the door to reconciliation between them slammed shut.

The secret I had tried to mitigate was on full, mortifying display at Mom’s funeral. We sat at opposite ends of the reserved family pew. I had failed to facilitate her end-of-life wish — that her three surviving children would reconcile. The guilt I felt as a daughter who had disappointed her mother was almost as deep as the grief I experienced from her death.

Author Fern Schumer Chapman spent years trying to forge a bond with her only brother. She details their eventual reconnection in her book, Brothers, Sisters, Strangers: Sibling Estrangement and the Road to Reconciliation. Chapman identifies some helpful steps that can help repair a broken bond: Call the problem what it is (estrangement), focus on positive qualities the sibling possesses, and face your own role in the breakdown.

In her book, Chapman says some relationships are irreparable: “Many estranged siblings must accept their cutoff as permanent, find a way to grieve the loss of a [sibling] and mourn the relationship they might have had.”

My brother is a stranger to me. In the months following my mother’s death, the only contact between us has been his texts intended to assign blame and guilt, and for what, he won’t divulge. I have established a boundary of refusing to engage with the toxicity of the messages because I will no longer be manipulated by guilt I don’t feel or shoulder blame that is undeserved.

Sociologist and gerontologist Karl Pillemer, author of Fault Lines: Fractured Families and How to Mend Them, writes that almost all siblings who successfully reconciled employed one strategy: “They abandoned a need for the estranged relative to accept their version of the past and to apologize. They instead focused on the present and future of the relationship, adopting more realistic expectations about the other person rather than trying to change them.”

I am focusing on the future and moving forward, with or without my brother. But I have decided it’s time to take a break from trying to mend fences. For now, the door to reconciliation with my brother remains open, if only cracked. When the time is right and he decides to walk through it, I’ll be waiting.

AARP essays share a point of view in the author’s voice, drawn from expertise or experience, and do not necessarily reflect the views of AARP.

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