Fair’s Fair “For Book Lovers”

DeVita-Raeburn, Elizabeth. The Empty Room: Understanding Sibling Loss. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2004.

DeVita-Raeburn’s The Empty Room is a highly-moving work about what happens when a sibling dies. The brother(s) or sister(s) left behind are often forgotten in the wake of grief and other emotions that the parents feel. Peers don’t know how to discuss the loss, and the child or children left are often bewildered, in shock, and feel abandoned sometimes for a lifetime.

DeVita Raeburn’s story is complicated by an added layer. Her brother was the so-called “Bubble-boy” (Ted) who spent from the time he was ten until his death behind a plastic wall in hospital with brief moments out of that room in a space-suit type garment. DeVita Raeburn not only presents her own sense of bewilderment and loss, but also weaves into her story the stories of some of the twenty-five others, whom she interviewed, who have lost siblings. She interviewed several twins who had lost a sibling, she interviewed both young and old, and she interviewed several siblings who had lost a brother or sister to suicide. Ultimately, although her own parents were reluctant to talk about their son’s death they agreed to do so sporadically. Her father, an oncologist, had saved the medical reports from the nurses and doctors, and her mother fillled in some of the details that Devita-Raeburn had forgotten or repressed. One of the things she learns from the medical reports is that the family bird that mysteriously died the day after her brother entered hospital, was actually killed in order to determine whether or not it carried disease.

DeVita Raeburn’s own memories of her brother focus on finding a new way to relate to him through the plastic bubble. She talks too about her brother’s bravery, although the medical reports note considerable angst on the part of Ted, who often refused to take the enormous numbers of pills, and how he vascillated in his feelings. She speaks about how the hospital became a second home and how she went with her family every evening to spend time with Ted. Finally, she tells about going back to “The Room” over twenty years later, and finding that much had changed. New technologies, new ways of filtering air, and so on allowed patients with aplastic anemia more freedom and comfort.

The Empty Room is a riveting memoir–a devastating but beautifully told story that needed to be told and that needs to be read.