My older brother died a few years back. We weren’t very close, really; there was 8 years of age difference between us, and we lived far apart and rarely saw each other.
His liver began to give out from decades of knocking back beers. One flair-up put him in the intensive care unit, and our mom called me to fly down, thinking that he was dying. On the second day at his bedside, thinking he was never going to leave that room, he asked me to sneak out and go to his house and get rid of some stuff that he didn’t want Mom to find after he died. That actually meant a lot to me. I had never really had a chance to actually do something for him, and it joined us in a sweet conspiratorial union.
To everyone’s surprise, he got a little better. I flew home, knowing that he was going to be released in a couple of days. I got a call a few days later saying that he had died at home.
It wasn’t terribly hard for me, but it was devastating for Mom. They were good buddies, and no parent these days expect to have to bury their children. All of my grieving was for her.