Soon, the class of 2026 will graduate all across the country, but not many talk about what happens to the younger siblings when an older sibling walks the stage. Or maybe you don’t have a sibling, but when you see your friend finally graduate you decide you do have an older sibling after all. 

No one prepares you for the feeling of not seeing the people you’ve spent so much time with and shared so many memories and classes with over the years. That feeling of knowing you won’t be seeing your other half as much, or at all, can be heartbreaking. It could just be the transition from one year to the next that is sensitive to you, but for most, it’s a part of them that’s going away.

The feeling that may occur is a spectrum from nostalgia to bittersweet. The person you have so many memories with goes off to college or down a career path and you don’t get to see them as much anymore. The faces of last year’s juniors change into the faces of seniors and suddenly you won’t be able to find them in the sea of people like you could once in years past.

“I think it’s going to be weird without him after being near each other for so long,” Lillian Ahmed (9) says about her brother Yazan Ahmed (12). 

After the graduation ceremony, it feels like there’s suddenly a shift, and at the end of the day you know things won’t be the same as they were before even if the only thing that changes is not seeing them as often or not having a ride to school. Towards the last stretch of school the emotions suddenly hit harder than just the thought of that person graduating at the end of the year. 

While that sibling or friend accepts their hard earned diploma, there might not even be that much of an emotion there, it may just be a time for celebration. Maybe that moment will come back to you at your graduation and it will have a whole new meaning, the feeling changing to one of nostalgia.