‘My sibling died and my parents never talked about her again’

‘My sibling died and my parents never talked about her again’ 
The Telegraph; by Steph Clarkson; 7/20/24 
Julia Martin has few memories of her sister Karen, but remembers the last time she saw her. “She was five years old. I was seven. We were playing on the swing in the park. Then she went off to the hospital with Mum and Dad for a scheduled operation. “She never came home.” Losing a sibling is tragic enough, but for Julia the death of her sister following an operation to repair a hole in the heart was just the start of years of trauma. “I remember my father telling me Karen had died,” says Julia, ... “But that was it. There were no hugs, no comforting words. “Mum barely came near me. She tucked herself away. I had no other siblings to talk to. I was alone.” Things got worse as Julia’s parents built a wall of silence around their loss: ‘‘I wasn’t taken to see Karen in the hospital, I was kept away from the funeral, so there was no closure,” she says.