A Meeting Place for Early loss twins

This is really my twin's Enjy's place, not mine. S/He does not have any other place in this world. S/He was miscarried at age four months in the womb. We were twins and made to be together for years and we were torn apart within seconds. This is the place where I go to talk to him/her and about him/her. Anyone who has lost a twin in utero or very early is very welcome here to read and share.
Anjy

Saturday, April 30, 2011

Books about Twins or Twinloss No 4 "I miss you, I miss you"

This was one of the first books I ever read about twinloss, ong before I knew I am a twin. It's originally in swedish by Peter Pohl and Kinna Gieth and it's Kinna's story although she is called Tina in the book and says at the beginning she can't bear to say "I" when telling about her twin-sister Jenny's death.
Jenny is called Cilla in the book and the story weaves in and out of the girls' early childhood, the story of the mother they cannot remember, of their new life with their father's new wife, Monika, her son Jonny who becomes their big brother and their growing up in a small swedish town. They are quite normal teenage girls, Tina and Cilla. At age 13 Tina's main interest ist boys, then boys and then probably boys, while Cilla thinks about the world's future, works on a theatre play and secretely writes poems. Pohl describes very convincingly how being a twin has it's pros and cons for the girls, how they get in trouble with their father, with his mother, Grandmère from France where they were born and how they slowly, ever so slowly develop their individuality, glide away from one another, back into their childhood closeness, learn to know themselves and each other even better ...
All this is brutally terminated when Cilla is killed in a road accident on her way to school on her step-mother's birthday. Sometimes I read just this chapter again and again. Pohl doesn't spare the reader anything although he never describes a single drop of blood, but the reader sees everything as Tina sees it and it slowly dawns on her what has happened, that her twin-sister is dead.
From then on the story unfolds in a tumble. How Tina tries to cope with her unspeakable grief, of the desperate effort to keep her sister present in her life, of being afraid her parents might do themselves in, of Martin, her brother's friend, who drove the car that hit Cilla, and finally of Tina herself and how the fourteen year old girl in her wants to go on living with a zest the bereaved twin does not always understand.
For my personal taste there is a little too much "boys" in that book. Romance never hooked me that much in novels (I was always very much interested in reading books about brothers but not about lovers), so I just can't understand how important it is for Tina, but I felt the impact of the unbelievable, the loss of a twin, from the very first time I read it. It's a very authentic book which doesn't come as a surprise since it is written by a twinless twin as co-author and sometimes it seems to be more of a documentary than a novel, when Tina does say "I". It's not a light read but with all the "normal teenage stuff" in it also readable for kids not so much interested in twins at all and one of those books that reveal to them: life can be over any day and then what would have been most important in YOUR life, therefore a strongly recommended book.

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