Hypothetically speaking, suppose you ARE wrong? Are you supposed to mourn for her NOW or feel guilty you didn't mourn before? If feel guilty is the option, HOW MUCH GUILT is required to pay your due pennance? Why is mourning necessary; is this required death etiquette? Who sets the mourning standard of behavior, anyway? ???????????????????? Hmmmm...seems like I have more questions than answers.

I agree with what you feel you never knew her so how would you mourn her, and as well you were an infant and grew up never ever knowing her or loving her so..I say you are not wrong.

You are not wrong. I think people want to know if you felt a connection to her, because many family members have an emotional connection they can't explain. It's ok to feel what you feel, and if you feel fine with it there's nothing wrong with that.

Hey Frank, well i think that for anyone to ask you that question is a bit silly, how can you mourn someone who you have never met?? I agree with you on this one Frank.

I think Elvis brought this type of mourning to the public's attention. From everything I've read or heard, I believe this was passed on to him by his mother. In my opinion I don't think it was healthy for either one of them.

People mourn what they've lost. They fill a hole with grief and work through it. You never really lost anything, certainly nothing you were old enough to be conscious of. There was no hole left in you from the departure of another. It's prefectly natural for you not to feel a sense of grief over your sister.

You can not force yourself to feel sorrow or loss for something or someone if it is not really there. When we use the word "mourn", we use it in two ways. One is the actually feeling of loss or sorrow and the other is a process that has been identified as helpful (the mourning process) for people who are experience grief. If you feel some sense of sorrow or loss, then you should allow yourself time and energy to grieve through a mourning process. But if it ain't there, it ain't there. If your life has been full and your childhood was not marked by a constant feeling that something or someone was missing...if you are a well-adjusted adult...if you know that this lack of mourning is because there is nothing to mourn as oppossed to some sort of menatl deficiency (I am assuming you do know *how* to feel grief and loss...you just don't feel it for this situation...) then move on. Don't worry about it. Someone telling you to mourn something you feel no sorrow for is like getting blood from a stone.

Frank , may I be Frank with you? no seriously, you seem prettty good at being Frank, so I'll leave it to you. Not tying to be harsh on those who ask those questions, but, M/M is spot on with this one. Mourning implies loss, and if you feel that you never had the person, or the relationship, then there is not much to mourn over. There is a school of though that attaches a great importance to unresolved problems, or tragedies; In your case this is not a tragedy to you. I believe from the limited bit of info you have given, and ignore me if I'm too far off, is that you have a fairly full life, while some of the other people asking the question have time and energy to concentrate on this subject, perhaps looking for some way to focus their negative experiences vicariously into something that happened in your life, and years ago. You don't need to internalize their opinions about you or your past, if at some point in your life, you need to deal with the why me/ why not me questions or similar things, that's your stuff, but what you describe is there stuff, let them keep it, if your like the rest of us, you have enough of your own. Be good to yourself, some days no one else will.

i have one younger sister but i also had to twin sisters that passed away (born prematuely)... i never knew them, never saw them. people ask why i only say i have 1 sister when technically i have 3... am i doing something wrong?

I think the only ones that would mourn would be your mom and dad, they lost a child. You don't know what you lost cause you were just a newborn yourself.

Whatever you are feeling is right. Who's to tell you how you are supposed to feel about something like this?

Your behavior is absolutely OK. You don't need to mourn her. However, if you were doing a deeper psychological work on yourself, it could be interesting to examine how this situation could have had some influence in the development of your personality. And if you were finding some influence, you could try to experience these feelings again. I think what you were referring to as "womb counts" is the experience of recalling one's birth or the time before. This is possibly quite exagerated. However, even if we aren't able to recall those things, it doesn't mean that they have not existed and could have some influence on the development of our personality. Anyway, you are not wrong here. No reason to feel bad.

Absolutely not. How can you mourn someone you never knew? You might feel a bit sad that you never had the opportunity to know her but you can't be expected to mourn her.

It's perfectly fine not to mourn. My hubby's twin was miscarried at around 2 months into the pregnancy. He doesn't necessarily "mourn" him, but there is always a "what if" or "what would have it been like if" that pops into his head right around his birthday.