Ted is Elizabeth DeVita-Raeburn's older brother, best friend, and the 'ringmaster of her days.' On a September morning when she is six, she wakes up and Ted is gone. Her parents explain that he went to the hospital for a while. 'A while' turns out to be eight years in a plastic bubble, where he dies of a rare autoimmune disease at age seventeen.
In The EMpty Room DeVita-Raeburn draws on interviews of more than two hundred survivors to render a powerful portrait of the range of conditions and emotions that accompany the loss of a sibling. Raeburn and her experts present an understanding of the sibling bond, the lifelong impact of the severing of that bond, and the tools needed to heal and move forward. Paperback.
