Envy of the twin relationship

I can't count how many times I've heard "oh, I wish I was a twin!" Also people ask "what's it like being a twin?" They simply can't fathom it. And they ask "are you two close?" indicating by their nods and visible pleasure that they hoped we are close. While they are happy to have their stereotype confirmed, some people envy our twin relationship. These are the people who say "well, my sister and I are just as close as twins." No, you're not! It's just not possible, simply because you aren't twins. I often tell people I don't know what it's like to be a twin any more than they know what it's like being a singleton. I have nothing to compare it with. It's my experience. I have brothers and we are close, and it's not the same as the closeness I have with my twin sister.

Our mother is envious of our relationship. She hasn't had the kind of mother/daughter relationship she dreamed of and was told to expect. I knew before she told me that my sister was pregnant with David, and with Julia. Alana told my mother about Julia before we talked, so my mother would be the first to know. Yet I was the first to know, because I knew without being told. No mother can compete with that. And she is envious.

Envy manifests in the implied denial of our special bond as twins. Envy seeks to destroy what it cannot have. Envy knows it isn't the same, knows it's not achievable, and so needs to denigrate and devalue that which it secretly covets. And envy also emerges in our mother's desire to separate us, to pit us against each other, to ally herself with one of us against the other. But it doesn't work! Because we are united. If I weren't so annoyed by it, I'd have some compassion for her. Maybe another day.

My sister's son, my nephew David

In about three weeks, on June 29, it will be 2 years that David is gone. His 8th birthday was May 16. Julia talks about him some now, wanted to be reassured the other night that she knew he was 8 now. And Alana (my siste) said that Julia got angry the other day when her friend Lucy blurted out in class that "Julia's brother is dead!" She didn't like Lucy talking about her business. And I gather that Julia would not want to be reminded of it.

Being reminded of David interrupts our daily flow, the flow we've so painstakingly put together in his absence. I actually reminded Alana of David today because I was ordering Elizabeth Edwards' book Saving Graces when she called to see if I could pick up Julia tomorrow afternoon. I heard the typing begin and understood that I had interrupted her flow, had reminded her of her grief, had revealed the gaping hole in her life, had exposed the fundamental cruelty and unfairness of this human existence.

I'm posting her an excerpt of an interview of Elizabeth Edwards by Jonathan Alter in the April 9, 2007 Newsweek because this is the only thing I've read that makes sense to me.

You've kept God out of the public discussion of your situation. Why?
I had to think about a God who would not save my son. Wade was—and I have lots of evidence; it's not just his mother saying it—a gentle and good boy. He reached out to people who were misfits and outcasts all the time. He could not stand for people to say nasty things about other people; he just didn't want it. For a 16-year-old boy, he was really extraordinary in this regard. I wish I could take credit for it, but I can't. You'd think that if God was going to protect somebody, he'd protect that boy. But not only did he not protect him, the wind blew him from the road. The hand of God blew him from the road. So I had to think, "What kind of God do I have that doesn't intervene—in fact, may even participate—in the death of this good boy?" I talk about it in the book, that I had to accept that my God was a God who promised enlightenment and salvation. And that's all. Didn't promise us protection. I've had to come to grips with a God that fits my own experience, which is, my God could not be offering protection and not have protected my boy.

I was astounded to read this incredible passage that articulates what I now think is the only way to come to terms with faith, God and loss: change my conception of God. Sometimes there are miracles and someone is saved to do something else in this mortal life. Now I am coming to understand in a visceral way that the miracle is rare because it is the exception to the rule. And the rule is that people die. Good people die. Extraordinary people die. Terrible people die. So-so people die. And they/we die in many different ways at many different ages and times. That is what happens.

So when someone is miraculously cured, it is the exception. It is the unexplainable, because why would they be saved when David was not? No reason at all. It's inexplicable, because one can't rate the value of one life over another. Does David living merit me dying? I wish it did, I truly do. I really wish I could have taken his place. And if I had, what hole would have been left in Alana's life? As a twin, she would have had an incredible aloneness completely unfamiliar to her (unless she could conjure up the feeling from 27 minutes in the world while I lingered in our mom's womb).

One loss to prevent another loss? We don't have that choice. Or at least not very often. That's the dead hero route - I sacrifice myself to save my platoon, or rescue the little girl caught in the burning building, make sure my crew escapes from the sinking ship, or as the professor at Virginia Tech did, to save my students from a crazed gunman. He survived the Holocaust - the answer to "why was he saved then?" may well be that he was able to save his students by sacrificing himself. He had something important to do later in his life. And we mourn the hero deeply, for the loss of that person is surely as great to her/his loved ones as losing the others would be to theirs.

Losing David created an omnipresent shadow over our lives. Yesterday in Dad's office, I saw the picture he drew for Grandma and Grandpa of a tiger and a dinosaur. He was a remarkable artist. I wished he could have lived longer so the world could see his art, so his talent could flourish. When I watched Julia, Eloise and Basil on the "slip-n-slide" on my front lawn, I could picture David among them running and laughing uproariously. He would have loved it. Then I looked up and saw a hawk circling. David? Maybe. I like to think so. I see him in hawks and butterflies. He loved them. And I am reminded of how he loved flowers when I'm in my garden and especially when I pick the dandelions before they go to seed and invade my lawn. Even though I don't want them everywhere, I hope I always have a few in the lawn to remind me of his picking them to give to his mommy.

Every day, I think of him. And I know Alana thinks of him almost all the time. We don't talk about our respective grief. She talks to Mom and I do, too, a little bit. I do say sometimes how unfair it is, and how I see signs of him. Like the day Julia, Rick and I were tossing the hula hoop over their house from the front lawn, and I saw the curtain in his room move slightly as if someone was pushing it aside to see better. I told her, and while we agreed it was probably the light shifting, I still think it was him.

I wish he was here with us. The grief is indescribable.

Maybe that's why we don't talk about it. There's not a whole lot to say.

Alana said she knew she'd share her children with me, and she has. And that means I share the grief, too. I was not his mother. I don't know what she feels. I only know that my grief is boundless, just as is my love for David and my determination to keep him with me and us.

So I live a full life, with determination and joy - the same characteristics he displayed. That's the best way to keep him alive.