An "Awkward Grief" for Her Half-Brother—in Life and in Death |
In an essay called "An Awkward Kind of Grief," Patti Davis, the daughter of President Ronald Reagan, reflected upon the recent death of her half-brother, Michael Reagan—someone she barely knew.
The two had the same father, but a strained and distant relationship. Patti’s mother, Nancy Reagan, kept the children from her husband’s first marriage at arm’s length from the children she shared with Reagan. As adults, half-siblings Michael and Patti were further divided by their opposing political views, clashing over such matters as abortion rights, same-sex marriage, and gun issues. As Davis wrote in her essay: “The Reagan family has always lived on fractured earth, wide gullies and uncrossable rivers between us.”
The half-siblings didn’t have inside jokes, memorable holiday celebrations, or many shared experiences. Therefore, upon her half-brother’s death, Davis could not comfort herself with warm memories. Instead, she mourned the relationship she never had.
“With his passing,” she wrote in her essay, published in Maria Shriver's Sunday Paper, “the grief I feel has an uncomfortable familiarity to it, as if it’s an extension of grief I’ve lived with most of my life. A brother with whom I wasn’t able to have a relationship. A family of people who really didn’t know much about one another.”
What Davis describes is what Dr. Kenneth Doka has identified as “disenfranchised grief”—a hidden sorrow over a loss that is not socially recognized or validated because of the