I lost a twin before birth and I miss him/her.
Recently this sentence got less of the "but-how-can-you-miss-someone-you-never-knew" responses and more of the "I-understand-we-all-want-a-soulmate" kind.
I understand, too.
I have had many soulmates over the years. Imaginary ones. Book or movie characters. Saints or Guardian Angels. They always understand me, they are always there for me, they always give and they never ask for anything. They are perfect.
I have heard people talk about having real soulmates in friends, siblings, partners, and I don't doubt their testimonies. Funnily enough, though, I very, VERY rarely have heard someone say "I AM a soulmate to someone."
Many twinless twins I know online refer to their deceased twins as their soulmates. Many early loss twins even describe their twins that way.
I don't.
My twin was...
That's the most important thing about to say about my twin. He/She at one time existed. And that time was the most formative period in my life. It was when my software was created, my operating system. The presence of my twin is still a crucial part of me, all of me.
But HOW my twin would have been as a person, how our relationship would have developed had be been born alive together is open to imagination and speculation.
We might have been highly competitive.
We might have rivalled for our parents' attention.
We might have felt overwhelmed by our funamental closeness.
We might have had long spells of not speaking.
We might have felt discouraged by one another, by the other one's actual or imagined excellency.
It doesn't matter. My twin's presence would still be essential to my existence.
My twin might have been severly handicapped, mentally or physical.
My twin might have been non-verbal.
I might have been severly handicapped, mentally or physically.
Or we might have had a happy childhood, doing everything together and being each other's best friend...
...and then fall out with each other at puberty.
Or not. We might have gone on to be inseparable, talk to each other each day, share everything from bills to boyfriends...
...and then be separated by cancer or a car crash in our mid.thirties.
It doens't matter. My twin's presence would still be the core influence on me from conception on.
My twin might have been my soulmate or my archrival, my angel or my nemesis, his/her very existence is what matters. The constant absence of his/her presence is what makes my life lopsided in so many ways. The constant presence of his/her absence is like a bottomless hole I stumble in again and again and spend too much time and too much energy to scramble out again.
Of course I have tried to imagine my twin. To invent a name and a face and the relationship we might have had. That's normal for early loss twins.
But none of these HOWs have had only a fraction of the influence my twin's PRESENCE has had on my life. My twin's ABSENT presence.
I'm not looking for a soulmate. I think it would be exhausting to be so close to another human all the time. If a soulmate would understand everything about me, I'd have to understand everything about my soulmate. What a consuming task that would be!
I am looking for my twin's presence. For that gaping hole in my soul I try to circle, try to cover up, try to ignore, try to explain away, try to celebrate, try to not get sucked into, try to dive into...
It's not about being happy, being understood, having a best friend...
...it's just about being present.
My twin was.
My twin was lost.
My twin's loss is present.
My twin's presence is lost.
My twin's presence is.
The rest is silence.
Sunday, May 5, 2019
Monday, April 8, 2019
Memories... like hidden data
As an in-utero-twinless twin I don't have the "usual" memories of my twin. I don't remember her face, her laugh, what we did as kids, our birthday parties, pranks we played on people and so on.
My conscious mind, the part of my brain that holds pictures, sounds and events, goes blank when I type in "twin".
Other parts of my brain don't. They do remember, but it's not so easy to find them. They're burried under the conscious stuff like a hidden program in my computer running in the background all the time and taking up much MUCH working space, but visible only if you know which keys to press.
Most data there is about the loss, about panic and fear, abandonement, negative feelings. It pops up first, but when I dig deeper and try to reconstruct older files, I find more.
I find a memory of entangled limbs. Of feet and legs touching and floating apart. I find a lot of floating and touching, actually.
It runs in the back of my mind, where consciousness never goes, because it's to primarily and messy for the educated mind (hrrm!). It pops up and vanishes again, it can't be printed or converted into a JPG-file...
BUT IT IS THERE! IT IS REAL! IT'S MY TWIN!
My conscious mind, the part of my brain that holds pictures, sounds and events, goes blank when I type in "twin".
Other parts of my brain don't. They do remember, but it's not so easy to find them. They're burried under the conscious stuff like a hidden program in my computer running in the background all the time and taking up much MUCH working space, but visible only if you know which keys to press.
Most data there is about the loss, about panic and fear, abandonement, negative feelings. It pops up first, but when I dig deeper and try to reconstruct older files, I find more.
I find a memory of entangled limbs. Of feet and legs touching and floating apart. I find a lot of floating and touching, actually.
It runs in the back of my mind, where consciousness never goes, because it's to primarily and messy for the educated mind (hrrm!). It pops up and vanishes again, it can't be printed or converted into a JPG-file...
BUT IT IS THERE! IT IS REAL! IT'S MY TWIN!
Tuesday, March 26, 2019
When there is no proof...
I have no medical proof of my twinship.
There is one person who keeps coming back to question me. Are you sure you're not making this up? To have a handy explanation for being different? To make up for your lack of social interaction? To seek attention? To produce the feeling that you're special, somehow?
I am that person. Everytime I post in the Facebook group for twinless twins or upload a posting here on this blog, part of me feels like a fraud. I am making it up. Maybe I'm not a twin at all.
True, there are all the problems my mother had during pregnancy. There is my aunt saying "It's two in there" because the commotion inside was visible from outside. There is the fact my mother was hospitalised and when she left the hospital her cervix was partially open. There was the midwife saying the placenta was so huge "it could have held two".
And there is me with all the symptoms all the questionnaires ever done on prenatal twinloss can come up with. There are weird physical sensations, dreams, PTSD which can't be traced to any event in post-natal life and a water colour drawing I did ate age 4, long before I had even heard of twinloss before birth. Long before anyone in my neck of the wood had heard of it.
But still - there is no proof.
I talked to my mother, but it's so long ago she mixes up dates (and pregnancies, I have two younger siblings living). I talked to psychics, but if I'm not a fraud, they certainly were, the ones I met. They didn't even get the facts right I could easily check.
The only proof I will ever have is the same a person has who is faced with two boxes. Two identical boxes, wooden or cardboard. They are sealed, they look the same and the person is alone with them in the desert. Nobody near to ask or bear testimony.
When I pick the boxes up, one after the other, one of them is clearly heavier than the other. There is something inside.
I can feel the weight. I have no scales near to prove the difference in weight. Other people can't lift the boxes, they are meant for me alone, they are MY life. Only I can feel the difference in weight.
When I put them back on the ground again they look exactly the same.
I shift their positions, I try to distract myself. They look alike. There can't possibly any difference between them.
I pick them up again.
One is still heavier than the other.
They still look alike.
There is still no outward sign I can show to others to prove the boxes are different.
Only I can feel it, I am aware of the difference. One is filled, the other is empty.
That's all the proof I'll ever get.
There is one person who keeps coming back to question me. Are you sure you're not making this up? To have a handy explanation for being different? To make up for your lack of social interaction? To seek attention? To produce the feeling that you're special, somehow?
I am that person. Everytime I post in the Facebook group for twinless twins or upload a posting here on this blog, part of me feels like a fraud. I am making it up. Maybe I'm not a twin at all.
True, there are all the problems my mother had during pregnancy. There is my aunt saying "It's two in there" because the commotion inside was visible from outside. There is the fact my mother was hospitalised and when she left the hospital her cervix was partially open. There was the midwife saying the placenta was so huge "it could have held two".
And there is me with all the symptoms all the questionnaires ever done on prenatal twinloss can come up with. There are weird physical sensations, dreams, PTSD which can't be traced to any event in post-natal life and a water colour drawing I did ate age 4, long before I had even heard of twinloss before birth. Long before anyone in my neck of the wood had heard of it.
But still - there is no proof.
I talked to my mother, but it's so long ago she mixes up dates (and pregnancies, I have two younger siblings living). I talked to psychics, but if I'm not a fraud, they certainly were, the ones I met. They didn't even get the facts right I could easily check.
The only proof I will ever have is the same a person has who is faced with two boxes. Two identical boxes, wooden or cardboard. They are sealed, they look the same and the person is alone with them in the desert. Nobody near to ask or bear testimony.
When I pick the boxes up, one after the other, one of them is clearly heavier than the other. There is something inside.
I can feel the weight. I have no scales near to prove the difference in weight. Other people can't lift the boxes, they are meant for me alone, they are MY life. Only I can feel the difference in weight.
When I put them back on the ground again they look exactly the same.
I shift their positions, I try to distract myself. They look alike. There can't possibly any difference between them.
I pick them up again.
One is still heavier than the other.
They still look alike.
There is still no outward sign I can show to others to prove the boxes are different.
Only I can feel it, I am aware of the difference. One is filled, the other is empty.
That's all the proof I'll ever get.
Monday, January 14, 2019
Nobody is old in Heaven!
In the film "Heaven is for real" - which I highly recommend, by the way, if only for the absolutely adorable play acting of Connor Corum - little Colton Burpo after a Near Death Experience tells his father he met HIS grandfather in heaven. Shown a photo of the great-grandfather he never met in this life little Colton shakes his head, no, that isn't "Pop". His father who was very close to his Granddad runs to produce a picture of "Pop" when newly married. Colton starts the brightest of smiles "Yeah, that's Pop. Nobody is old in heaven."
Colton also in his NDE met a sister he hadn't known he had. His mother had had a miscarriage so early in the pregnancy they didn't even know the baby's sex. This girl, when Colton meets her 'in heaven' appears to be eight years old.
So, do people become younger 'in heaven' but some also become older?
I have heard from people who lost their twins in infancy and later in life met them some way or other, in dreams or in a coma, and these twins weren't babies any more but seemed to have grown alongside their twins living an earthly life.
I have also heard twins who lost their co-twin as adults tell they met them in a spiritual way after they passed and they "had grown so much".
What happens to us when time does not hold us in its clutches anymore? What becomes of our twins who died before birth? Will they be fetusses for ever? Will their hands and feet sink back into immateriality without having had the chance to grasp or walk? Who will they be if/when we meet again one day? What experiences will have shaped them whatever they are without the physical experience we go through? How can they be "young" without ever having become old? How can they become "older" without ever having been young like we were?
When I was young, having no idea I might be a twin, I imagined an older brother. He was always with me. I talked to him, I clung to him, I felt his presence like an arm around my shoulder.
I never imagined him to be my twin.
Since I know I was conceived but ot born a twin I have often wondered why twinship never played a part in my imagination. Could this be a sign I didn't have a twin after all?
I think not. By now, after 11 years of research, I still try to imagine what my life would have been like with a living twin, but I no longer struggle to "re-create" my twin into this life. In a way he wasn't my "twin" in the womb. Twin is a word from the outside, from post-birth life. It has no meaning in the womb. Like mother. There is no "mother" in the womb.
There is one all around it.
And there was no "twin" in the womb, there was just us, and we were the only "us" there was. No need to distinguish between twins and singletons and higher order multiples because all these things didn't exist.
We did. Exist. Very much. And we were just us.
My "imaginary brother" as a young child was very much like that. He just was there. I didn't think about the colour of his hair, for years I didn't even had a name for him. He was just there.
There were no names in the womb, either.
If the twin connection transcends death- and I'm very sure it does - my twin shares my experiences in this life, one way or the other. He feels, smells, tastes, moves through me feeling, smelling, tasting and moving. Likewise, I believe, sometimes, occasionally, I may experience something of a different kind of life through this connection. Something grander, more eternal, deeper, more real, even, than this life. Maybe...
I did not leave my twin back in the womb. He wasn't born with me, but he grew up with me, only on a different plane. But we didn't keep pace. Maybe it's my body slowing me down. Physicality with all its disadvantages, old age catching up with me, time and life wearing me down- all these things my twin never had to bother with (LUCKY YOU, TWIN!). After 55 years in this life and in this body I feel older and younger than my twin. Younger because I feel my senses and experiences are so very much limited compared to his. I'm a toddler crawling in the mud compared to an angel, I'm a caterpillar looking up to a butterfly.
At the same time I feel so much older. My creacking joints, my creasing skin, my greying hair, my tiredness, my decreasing vigour and energy, they all remind me of my age being a reality, while my twin feels so full of life and energy and ... yes, BOUNCE, as ever he did.
Suddenly Colton Burpo's view of 'heaven' makes sense. My twin is not a fetus any more. He grew out of being a mere potentiality to, not a person, that's reserved for this life, but something more, something just as much evolved from the potential state we had in the womb as I am, only on a different plane.
At the same time he isn't "old". No creaking joints, no greying hair for my beautiful twin. The vigour of youth is his if not youth in the earthly sense.
In Heaven nobody is old. But nobody is confined to the potential state of pre-birth or early infancy, either. Whether we evolve to our full being through this llife with a body or in some other way not visible to us, now, in the end we will be younger and older at the same time. Both of us. Like it is with twins.
Colton also in his NDE met a sister he hadn't known he had. His mother had had a miscarriage so early in the pregnancy they didn't even know the baby's sex. This girl, when Colton meets her 'in heaven' appears to be eight years old.
So, do people become younger 'in heaven' but some also become older?
I have heard from people who lost their twins in infancy and later in life met them some way or other, in dreams or in a coma, and these twins weren't babies any more but seemed to have grown alongside their twins living an earthly life.
I have also heard twins who lost their co-twin as adults tell they met them in a spiritual way after they passed and they "had grown so much".
What happens to us when time does not hold us in its clutches anymore? What becomes of our twins who died before birth? Will they be fetusses for ever? Will their hands and feet sink back into immateriality without having had the chance to grasp or walk? Who will they be if/when we meet again one day? What experiences will have shaped them whatever they are without the physical experience we go through? How can they be "young" without ever having become old? How can they become "older" without ever having been young like we were?
When I was young, having no idea I might be a twin, I imagined an older brother. He was always with me. I talked to him, I clung to him, I felt his presence like an arm around my shoulder.
I never imagined him to be my twin.
Since I know I was conceived but ot born a twin I have often wondered why twinship never played a part in my imagination. Could this be a sign I didn't have a twin after all?
I think not. By now, after 11 years of research, I still try to imagine what my life would have been like with a living twin, but I no longer struggle to "re-create" my twin into this life. In a way he wasn't my "twin" in the womb. Twin is a word from the outside, from post-birth life. It has no meaning in the womb. Like mother. There is no "mother" in the womb.
There is one all around it.
And there was no "twin" in the womb, there was just us, and we were the only "us" there was. No need to distinguish between twins and singletons and higher order multiples because all these things didn't exist.
We did. Exist. Very much. And we were just us.
My "imaginary brother" as a young child was very much like that. He just was there. I didn't think about the colour of his hair, for years I didn't even had a name for him. He was just there.
There were no names in the womb, either.
If the twin connection transcends death- and I'm very sure it does - my twin shares my experiences in this life, one way or the other. He feels, smells, tastes, moves through me feeling, smelling, tasting and moving. Likewise, I believe, sometimes, occasionally, I may experience something of a different kind of life through this connection. Something grander, more eternal, deeper, more real, even, than this life. Maybe...
I did not leave my twin back in the womb. He wasn't born with me, but he grew up with me, only on a different plane. But we didn't keep pace. Maybe it's my body slowing me down. Physicality with all its disadvantages, old age catching up with me, time and life wearing me down- all these things my twin never had to bother with (LUCKY YOU, TWIN!). After 55 years in this life and in this body I feel older and younger than my twin. Younger because I feel my senses and experiences are so very much limited compared to his. I'm a toddler crawling in the mud compared to an angel, I'm a caterpillar looking up to a butterfly.
At the same time I feel so much older. My creacking joints, my creasing skin, my greying hair, my tiredness, my decreasing vigour and energy, they all remind me of my age being a reality, while my twin feels so full of life and energy and ... yes, BOUNCE, as ever he did.
Suddenly Colton Burpo's view of 'heaven' makes sense. My twin is not a fetus any more. He grew out of being a mere potentiality to, not a person, that's reserved for this life, but something more, something just as much evolved from the potential state we had in the womb as I am, only on a different plane.
At the same time he isn't "old". No creaking joints, no greying hair for my beautiful twin. The vigour of youth is his if not youth in the earthly sense.
In Heaven nobody is old. But nobody is confined to the potential state of pre-birth or early infancy, either. Whether we evolve to our full being through this llife with a body or in some other way not visible to us, now, in the end we will be younger and older at the same time. Both of us. Like it is with twins.
Sunday, December 16, 2018
Books on twinloss N° 15 "Three Black Swans" by Caroline B. Cooney
I hesitated to purchase this book from amazon-marketplace because the reviews were mostly critical.
Characters not believably described, exaggerated story line, abrupt shift of perspective - the mostly juvenile readers didn't seem to buy into this story. I still bought it and I do not regret it.
Most of the reviews seem to think the book starts with a hoax 16yo old Missy plays on her friends and schoolmates pretending she found her long lost identical twin in her cousin Claire.
It doesn't. It starts with Missy listening to the radio and hearing something about twins who are much different in size and weight at birth might catch up in later life. It triggers something in her perception of herself and her cousin Claire with whom she has a very close relationship. When her adventurously minded biology teacher, goaded to talk about hoaxes in class by the students, sets them the task to create a hoax themselves, Missy really uses the opportunity to spill the beans on a family secret she hardly knows exists.
Cooney's style poses a challenge to her young readers. It seems to be abrupt, chaotic in parts, changing perspective too fast, dropping info and then leaving the scene, but as an adult reader I think she just keeps closer to reality than to the traditional idea of a story line. In reality stories seldom have lines but knotted wads and the author in this book doesn't do the steady unraveling the reader expects, but just throws them the wad to do the unraveling themselves.
There is Missy getting a senior student in charge of the school tv to distribute her alleged meeting with her alleged twin to the whole school and - unplanned by her but totally in line with modern kids' thinking - via YouTube to the rest of the world.
There is Claire, her cousin - as the girls have believed all their lives - having "a strong family resemblance", unwilling to participate in the 'hoax' but playing along after all and becoming unexpectedly overwhelmed by the girls' eery similarity shown on screen.
There are the Vianellos, Missy's parents, and the Linnehads, Claire's, with their different life-styles and challenges.
There are friends and peers who are shocked and amazed at the alleged twin-reunion.
And then there is Genevieve. Another girl with another set of parents. Or is she?
The social and emotional effects of identical triplets separated at birth and finding out at age 16, as well as the situation of families with very different finacial means on the eve of College for their daughters, of a young and ambitious couple facing an unwanted pregnancy and two other couples not able to become pregnant and eager not to ask too many questions when offered an opportunity to adopt a baby, the very different personalities of three girls wo look exactly alike and the difficulties to travel from one place to another within a range of 20 miles but with three different states involved... the book in parts resembles an impressionistic-pointillistic painting. The author just puts down dots which seem unrelated at first and slowly develop into the whole picture.
Although no twin dies in this book, the experience of twinloss is described very vividly and convincingly. Cooney obviously did her homework on this subject. The closeness between the "cousins" Missy and Claire is a bit spooky to their parents long before Missy's "hoax" discloses their twinship. They not only text one another all day long, they express a need to hear the other one's voice and meet regularly that goes beyond the expected level. The same goes for the only half-consciously perceived longing for something/someone Missy experiences and which, mysteriously, isn't satisfied even by meeting with Claire every weekend. The way the triplets react to one another when they finally meet is also described empathically and convincingly.
By the way, the different possibilities for a triplet pregnancy to develop are described correctly in this book. Sadly, this is not a given for every fictional book about multiples
At the end of the day, as an adult reader, I'd have to tell the young critics of the book they simply didn't understand its expert grasp of the plot. Caroline B. Cooney did a very good job with this book and even if it spares the reader the pain of the ultimate twinloss and leaves the door open for a very optimistic future for all characters, it's worth a read for twinless twins imhO, maybe specially early loss twins, because it faces the feelings of multiples separated at birth and living their twinship unconsciously for a long time, in a convincing way.
Characters not believably described, exaggerated story line, abrupt shift of perspective - the mostly juvenile readers didn't seem to buy into this story. I still bought it and I do not regret it.
Most of the reviews seem to think the book starts with a hoax 16yo old Missy plays on her friends and schoolmates pretending she found her long lost identical twin in her cousin Claire.
It doesn't. It starts with Missy listening to the radio and hearing something about twins who are much different in size and weight at birth might catch up in later life. It triggers something in her perception of herself and her cousin Claire with whom she has a very close relationship. When her adventurously minded biology teacher, goaded to talk about hoaxes in class by the students, sets them the task to create a hoax themselves, Missy really uses the opportunity to spill the beans on a family secret she hardly knows exists.
Cooney's style poses a challenge to her young readers. It seems to be abrupt, chaotic in parts, changing perspective too fast, dropping info and then leaving the scene, but as an adult reader I think she just keeps closer to reality than to the traditional idea of a story line. In reality stories seldom have lines but knotted wads and the author in this book doesn't do the steady unraveling the reader expects, but just throws them the wad to do the unraveling themselves.
There is Missy getting a senior student in charge of the school tv to distribute her alleged meeting with her alleged twin to the whole school and - unplanned by her but totally in line with modern kids' thinking - via YouTube to the rest of the world.
There is Claire, her cousin - as the girls have believed all their lives - having "a strong family resemblance", unwilling to participate in the 'hoax' but playing along after all and becoming unexpectedly overwhelmed by the girls' eery similarity shown on screen.
There are the Vianellos, Missy's parents, and the Linnehads, Claire's, with their different life-styles and challenges.
There are friends and peers who are shocked and amazed at the alleged twin-reunion.
And then there is Genevieve. Another girl with another set of parents. Or is she?
The social and emotional effects of identical triplets separated at birth and finding out at age 16, as well as the situation of families with very different finacial means on the eve of College for their daughters, of a young and ambitious couple facing an unwanted pregnancy and two other couples not able to become pregnant and eager not to ask too many questions when offered an opportunity to adopt a baby, the very different personalities of three girls wo look exactly alike and the difficulties to travel from one place to another within a range of 20 miles but with three different states involved... the book in parts resembles an impressionistic-pointillistic painting. The author just puts down dots which seem unrelated at first and slowly develop into the whole picture.
Although no twin dies in this book, the experience of twinloss is described very vividly and convincingly. Cooney obviously did her homework on this subject. The closeness between the "cousins" Missy and Claire is a bit spooky to their parents long before Missy's "hoax" discloses their twinship. They not only text one another all day long, they express a need to hear the other one's voice and meet regularly that goes beyond the expected level. The same goes for the only half-consciously perceived longing for something/someone Missy experiences and which, mysteriously, isn't satisfied even by meeting with Claire every weekend. The way the triplets react to one another when they finally meet is also described empathically and convincingly.
By the way, the different possibilities for a triplet pregnancy to develop are described correctly in this book. Sadly, this is not a given for every fictional book about multiples
At the end of the day, as an adult reader, I'd have to tell the young critics of the book they simply didn't understand its expert grasp of the plot. Caroline B. Cooney did a very good job with this book and even if it spares the reader the pain of the ultimate twinloss and leaves the door open for a very optimistic future for all characters, it's worth a read for twinless twins imhO, maybe specially early loss twins, because it faces the feelings of multiples separated at birth and living their twinship unconsciously for a long time, in a convincing way.
Books on Twinloss N° 14 "The One Left Behind" by Willo Davis Roberts
This small book is one of my favourites. In no more than 140 pages we learn how the loss of a twin differently affects a family and the surviving twin. Acclaimed writer Willo Davis Roberts (1949-2004) introduces the reader to the Sebold family, five boys in different stages of teenage and young adult, schizophrenic uncle Frank (quite a dear) and 11-year old Mandy whose identical twin sister Angel died one year ago.
The family is close but, as it turns out, not close enough to notice that in the general hubbubb of planning a weekend with the parents gone to celebrate their 24th wedding anniversary, Mandy gets left behind at home on her own.
Mandy is left alone in more than one sense. Her family, although grieving for her sister Angel after she died from accidental food poisoning, has moved on. Her brother Bert is newly married, the other brothers have sports and peers and girls to fill their lives. Mandy is drifting through an everyday life that no longer feels like hers and the others don't seem to notice. And now she is left behind when everybody rushes away for the weekend.
Willo Davis Roberts perfectly captures the situation of the young surviving twin in the lines "It occurred to her now, in the middle of the night in the huge silent house, that even if the entire family had been home, she would still be alone. She could not reach out and touch any of them, nor would it mean anything if she could." (p.4)
I sometimes think no more words are needed to describe the feelings of a twinless twin.
But, of course, the book uses some more words, and so we learn about the relationship between Angel and Mandy. How Angel had always been "the best and the smartest and the prettiest" (p.13), the daring one, the one to intiate social contact, and how Mandy realises she is lost without her sister. Their make-believe games played in the coastal area they live in, involving rather risky trips to the beach and deserted lighthouses, for instance, were the twins' favourite past time, and Mandy tries to carry them on on her own. She knows Angel so well she is able to provide her parts as well as her own. The make-believe turns into the life line the little girl unconsciously uses to survive the unsurvivable: the loss of her twin.
And then suspense is added. Willo Davis Roberts was known to write stories full of suspense, mysterious figures and crime and "The One Left Behind" is no exception. First there are noises in the house, empty but for Mandy and the giant family dog, Herry. Then there are foot prints in the sand and a wrecked car in the undergrowth. Mandy knows Angel would not have left any of these things unexplored, and neither does she.
The story of Xander, the boy who kidnapped his little brother from a devious baby-sitter and went to hide at his great-grandmother's beach house not knowing she passed away some time ago, interweaves with Mandy's left-behindness. It's Angel's presence, her sense of still being a twin, that allows Mandy to deal with the situation, make decisions and in the end bring a highly dangerous situation to a good end.
Of course, big dog Herry and her mother's schizophrenic brother Frank also play a part in this, together with the local police officer Clancy who never before had such a crime at his hands. He quite rises to the occasion.
The setting, all in all, is a close-knitted community where people, even the weird ones, look out for one another, and that makes the book thoroughly endearing. The largely unnoticed loneliness of the twinless twin runs like an undercurrent through the story, and is brought to an end satisfactiory for the reader in the concluding lines from Mandy's thoughts that "she was pretty sure that from now on, even all by herself, she would be able to lean on what Angel would have thought or said. Because she knew Angel that well. Nobody would ever be able to change that." (p.138)
It's a childrens book, after all, and the pain and loneliness have to morph into something hopeful for the future, but it's also a book for twinless twins of all ages to spend an hour or two on and savour some lines which really hit the nail on the head. I like to come back to it again and again.
The family is close but, as it turns out, not close enough to notice that in the general hubbubb of planning a weekend with the parents gone to celebrate their 24th wedding anniversary, Mandy gets left behind at home on her own.
Mandy is left alone in more than one sense. Her family, although grieving for her sister Angel after she died from accidental food poisoning, has moved on. Her brother Bert is newly married, the other brothers have sports and peers and girls to fill their lives. Mandy is drifting through an everyday life that no longer feels like hers and the others don't seem to notice. And now she is left behind when everybody rushes away for the weekend.
Willo Davis Roberts perfectly captures the situation of the young surviving twin in the lines "It occurred to her now, in the middle of the night in the huge silent house, that even if the entire family had been home, she would still be alone. She could not reach out and touch any of them, nor would it mean anything if she could." (p.4)
I sometimes think no more words are needed to describe the feelings of a twinless twin.
But, of course, the book uses some more words, and so we learn about the relationship between Angel and Mandy. How Angel had always been "the best and the smartest and the prettiest" (p.13), the daring one, the one to intiate social contact, and how Mandy realises she is lost without her sister. Their make-believe games played in the coastal area they live in, involving rather risky trips to the beach and deserted lighthouses, for instance, were the twins' favourite past time, and Mandy tries to carry them on on her own. She knows Angel so well she is able to provide her parts as well as her own. The make-believe turns into the life line the little girl unconsciously uses to survive the unsurvivable: the loss of her twin.
And then suspense is added. Willo Davis Roberts was known to write stories full of suspense, mysterious figures and crime and "The One Left Behind" is no exception. First there are noises in the house, empty but for Mandy and the giant family dog, Herry. Then there are foot prints in the sand and a wrecked car in the undergrowth. Mandy knows Angel would not have left any of these things unexplored, and neither does she.
The story of Xander, the boy who kidnapped his little brother from a devious baby-sitter and went to hide at his great-grandmother's beach house not knowing she passed away some time ago, interweaves with Mandy's left-behindness. It's Angel's presence, her sense of still being a twin, that allows Mandy to deal with the situation, make decisions and in the end bring a highly dangerous situation to a good end.
Of course, big dog Herry and her mother's schizophrenic brother Frank also play a part in this, together with the local police officer Clancy who never before had such a crime at his hands. He quite rises to the occasion.
The setting, all in all, is a close-knitted community where people, even the weird ones, look out for one another, and that makes the book thoroughly endearing. The largely unnoticed loneliness of the twinless twin runs like an undercurrent through the story, and is brought to an end satisfactiory for the reader in the concluding lines from Mandy's thoughts that "she was pretty sure that from now on, even all by herself, she would be able to lean on what Angel would have thought or said. Because she knew Angel that well. Nobody would ever be able to change that." (p.138)
It's a childrens book, after all, and the pain and loneliness have to morph into something hopeful for the future, but it's also a book for twinless twins of all ages to spend an hour or two on and savour some lines which really hit the nail on the head. I like to come back to it again and again.
Monday, November 5, 2018
The Drums of Survivor's Guilt
WHY? WHY YOU? WHY NOT ME? WAS IT MY FAULT? WHAT COULD I HAVE DONE TO SAVE YOU?
Early loss surviving twins have these words like a drum beat in the background of their lives. While twins who lose their twins later in life may be subject to a shrill cacophony of these very words, piercing their souls - especially when suicide is involved - early loss twins may go for years without consciously realising the drums are there. They have become a part of everyday life. But they are there, and they are beating on. And on. And on.
Sometimes they are fuelled by heartless - and thoughtless - remarks like "you ate all the food" or even "you ate your twin". Such remarks are not only heartless and thoughtless, theyare utter nonsense. If one twin in utero isn't nourished as well as the other, there are medical reasons for this, never, NEVER, an activity by the other twin. The most common reason is Twin To Twin Transfusion Syndrome (TTTS), in which a pathological connection between blood vessels in the placenta causes the malnourishment in one twin. This, still severe, complication may result in the death of one or both twins, but the twin who is more at risk is almost always the one who gets more blood and seems to be better nourished. The added fluid the so-called Receptor-twin receives puts the heart under severe and possibly fatal stress. So not even in that case when the BS remark quoted above MIGHT be backed by a medical condition would the twin who "ate more" be at fault. Not. One, Tiny. Bit.
In those rare cases when a medical condition MIGHT be interpreted as "you ate your twin", when a fetus-in-fetu is found (the remnants of a deceased embryo found within a living child, mostly found at an early age and at first diagnosed as a tumor), the underlying process of one embryo absorbing the other one happens very early in the pregnancy, long before the twins interact, so that not even a shred of anything similar to a voluntary action can have been present.
In most cases survivor's guilt doesn't need stupid remarks to be sparked. It's just there.
The WHY-question harasses parents, grandparents, siblings alike every time a baby dies, before or after birth. Why should a baby die? It's so completely without sense or reason that life should be gone so soon after it even began, but statistics show that a third of all confirmed pregnancies end in a miscarriage. Singleton babies die unexpectedly in the womb and everybody admits it's a tragedy. When a twin dies, it's more complicated. Mothers think they have no right to grieve since they still have one living child. People, well meaning but every bit as heart- and thoughtless as the ones quoted above, might even say "you still have one baby left."
Nobody, NOBODY, would say that to parents of two children, born two years apart, when one of those tragically dies. "So little Adrian drowned when you were on holidays at the seaside? How very tragic, but at least you have his sister Corinna left. " You see? Unimaginable.
But because grief for a twin baby is complicated for parents the survivor's problems with it often go unnoticed. They, too, may think "I'm not allowed to grieve. I never 'knew' my twin. I have to be happy to be alive. I mustn't add to my parents' grief." Etc.etc.
And all the while they still do grieve, unallowed, they did 'know' their twin with all their existence, physically and emotionally, if not consciously, they are not happy to be alive and they know their parents are worried over them. Tough load for a five-year old, a twelve-year old, a fifteen-year old, a twenty-one-year old.
And there never seems to be an answer. Why me? Why not you?
The co-twin may have been too weak, growth retarded, genetically impaired. There may have been a cord accident, a faulty inserted cord or misplaced placenta. Things that also happen in singleton pregnancies and cause the demise of an unborn child. The moment life is there, the possibility of death also is. We know that, but it isn't an answer.
Naming a medical reason only shifts the WHY. Why didn't I have a cord accident? Why wasn't I a breech? Why were my chromosomes normal?
The drum beats on and on. Softer some days, harsher or even earsplitting and heartbreaking other times. Why me-why not you-why you-why not me...
We try to stifle them. We tell ourselves our twins wouldn't want us to suffer.
Of course they wouldn't. But they're not here. Because of that gigantic WHY.
Our twins are better off. A priest once said that to me. I firmly believe it's true, but it's not an answer. Not to THE WHY.
We will understand it all when we are finally reunited in heaven.
I firmly believe that, too, but not all survivors do, and the drum harasses them on.
Personally I try to see the drum of survivor's guilt as a constant reminder that my twin lived.
If I feel guilty about what happened or may have happened in the womb, if I feel it so strongly that it effects my everyday life even decades after it happened, than it's because something actually did happen. That drum roll doesn't come from nothing. It's an echo of my twin's heartbeat. S/He did have a heartbeat. S/He existed. Take that survivor's guilt! The drum doesn't spell doom, it spells fact. The only answer I can and will hurl at THE WHY is: S/HE LIVED. And his/her heart beats on in my life.
So if I feel survivor's guilt, it doesn't mean I'm less. Less worthy of living. Less capable to deal with things. Less deserving of good things in life. It actually means I'm more. More than my feelings tell me. I'm a twin who lost her co-twin. I'm me. I'm a survivor. I'm the one who felt you, heard your heart beating (unborn babies DO hear things), lived with you.
Survivor's guilt doesn't mean your guilty, it means you're a survivor. And you can only be a suvivor if there was something to survive. A terrible tragedy, even if nobody realised. Your twin's death. Because there as a twin. Because you are a twin. For always.
Early loss surviving twins have these words like a drum beat in the background of their lives. While twins who lose their twins later in life may be subject to a shrill cacophony of these very words, piercing their souls - especially when suicide is involved - early loss twins may go for years without consciously realising the drums are there. They have become a part of everyday life. But they are there, and they are beating on. And on. And on.
Sometimes they are fuelled by heartless - and thoughtless - remarks like "you ate all the food" or even "you ate your twin". Such remarks are not only heartless and thoughtless, theyare utter nonsense. If one twin in utero isn't nourished as well as the other, there are medical reasons for this, never, NEVER, an activity by the other twin. The most common reason is Twin To Twin Transfusion Syndrome (TTTS), in which a pathological connection between blood vessels in the placenta causes the malnourishment in one twin. This, still severe, complication may result in the death of one or both twins, but the twin who is more at risk is almost always the one who gets more blood and seems to be better nourished. The added fluid the so-called Receptor-twin receives puts the heart under severe and possibly fatal stress. So not even in that case when the BS remark quoted above MIGHT be backed by a medical condition would the twin who "ate more" be at fault. Not. One, Tiny. Bit.
In those rare cases when a medical condition MIGHT be interpreted as "you ate your twin", when a fetus-in-fetu is found (the remnants of a deceased embryo found within a living child, mostly found at an early age and at first diagnosed as a tumor), the underlying process of one embryo absorbing the other one happens very early in the pregnancy, long before the twins interact, so that not even a shred of anything similar to a voluntary action can have been present.
In most cases survivor's guilt doesn't need stupid remarks to be sparked. It's just there.
The WHY-question harasses parents, grandparents, siblings alike every time a baby dies, before or after birth. Why should a baby die? It's so completely without sense or reason that life should be gone so soon after it even began, but statistics show that a third of all confirmed pregnancies end in a miscarriage. Singleton babies die unexpectedly in the womb and everybody admits it's a tragedy. When a twin dies, it's more complicated. Mothers think they have no right to grieve since they still have one living child. People, well meaning but every bit as heart- and thoughtless as the ones quoted above, might even say "you still have one baby left."
Nobody, NOBODY, would say that to parents of two children, born two years apart, when one of those tragically dies. "So little Adrian drowned when you were on holidays at the seaside? How very tragic, but at least you have his sister Corinna left. " You see? Unimaginable.
But because grief for a twin baby is complicated for parents the survivor's problems with it often go unnoticed. They, too, may think "I'm not allowed to grieve. I never 'knew' my twin. I have to be happy to be alive. I mustn't add to my parents' grief." Etc.etc.
And all the while they still do grieve, unallowed, they did 'know' their twin with all their existence, physically and emotionally, if not consciously, they are not happy to be alive and they know their parents are worried over them. Tough load for a five-year old, a twelve-year old, a fifteen-year old, a twenty-one-year old.
And there never seems to be an answer. Why me? Why not you?
The co-twin may have been too weak, growth retarded, genetically impaired. There may have been a cord accident, a faulty inserted cord or misplaced placenta. Things that also happen in singleton pregnancies and cause the demise of an unborn child. The moment life is there, the possibility of death also is. We know that, but it isn't an answer.
Naming a medical reason only shifts the WHY. Why didn't I have a cord accident? Why wasn't I a breech? Why were my chromosomes normal?
The drum beats on and on. Softer some days, harsher or even earsplitting and heartbreaking other times. Why me-why not you-why you-why not me...
We try to stifle them. We tell ourselves our twins wouldn't want us to suffer.
Of course they wouldn't. But they're not here. Because of that gigantic WHY.
Our twins are better off. A priest once said that to me. I firmly believe it's true, but it's not an answer. Not to THE WHY.
We will understand it all when we are finally reunited in heaven.
I firmly believe that, too, but not all survivors do, and the drum harasses them on.
Personally I try to see the drum of survivor's guilt as a constant reminder that my twin lived.
If I feel guilty about what happened or may have happened in the womb, if I feel it so strongly that it effects my everyday life even decades after it happened, than it's because something actually did happen. That drum roll doesn't come from nothing. It's an echo of my twin's heartbeat. S/He did have a heartbeat. S/He existed. Take that survivor's guilt! The drum doesn't spell doom, it spells fact. The only answer I can and will hurl at THE WHY is: S/HE LIVED. And his/her heart beats on in my life.
So if I feel survivor's guilt, it doesn't mean I'm less. Less worthy of living. Less capable to deal with things. Less deserving of good things in life. It actually means I'm more. More than my feelings tell me. I'm a twin who lost her co-twin. I'm me. I'm a survivor. I'm the one who felt you, heard your heart beating (unborn babies DO hear things), lived with you.
Survivor's guilt doesn't mean your guilty, it means you're a survivor. And you can only be a suvivor if there was something to survive. A terrible tragedy, even if nobody realised. Your twin's death. Because there as a twin. Because you are a twin. For always.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)