What I Needed When My Sister Died

I don’t have one specific moment to point to. It was a culmination - too many nights that blurred together where I would drown in my sorrow. I know it sounds so corny, but if you’ve gone through it you understand. I would open Meredith’s Facebook page, scroll through her photos, and just bawl my eyes out.

I cried a lot. Most of the time I hid it. But sometimes I couldn’t. It would come out of nowhere - out with friends, in the middle of an ordinary night - and I would excuse myself and find somewhere quiet to be alone and have a moment with my grief.

I remember one night I walked outside to the end of the driveway. I didn’t tell anyone. I just needed air and darkness and a moment to let it out. When I turned around, my friends had all followed me out without a word and placed their hands on my back. They didn’t say anything. They just let me know they were there.

That helped. It really did. But it wasn’t what I needed most in those moments.

What I needed was to know that I would get through it. I needed to hear from someone who had lost a sister - not a therapist, not a hotline, not a friend who loved me but couldn’t truly understand - someone who had been exactly where I was and had come out the other side. Someone who could tell me that the grief wouldn’t always be this heavy. That the void wouldn’t always be this painful. I needed to hear that often. I sometimes still do.

I needed to talk to someone I didn’t know. Not because my friends weren’t incredible - they were - but because I couldn’t let my pride get in the way of being honest about how bad it really was. And I needed to do it through my phone, anonymously, so I could form the words I couldn’t speak out loud without sobbing.

Have you ever tried to have a real conversation while you’re crying? It’s ugly. Nobody likes it. But typing? Typing I could do.

Instead, I ran. I was constantly stoned. I drank too much. I failed classes. I let people down. I couldn’t sit still because the moment I stopped moving, my mind would go somewhere I didn’t want it to go. I had to go, go, go. Anything to stay ahead of the grief.

I’m not saying I’m not a better person for it. But I think about how different those years might have looked if I’d had somewhere to go at 2am when the waves hit hardest. If I could have opened an app and found someone who lost their sister and made it through. Just to know it was possible.

That’s why I built Stages.

If you’re in the middle of it right now - the late nights, the scrolling through old photos, the excusing yourself from rooms to cry somewhere quiet - Stages is here. Someone on the other side is waiting to tell you what I needed to hear back then.

You’re going to get through this.

Zack Smith, Founder
Stages