Twins and M/Others: A Survival Story
Laura Adamo
On a Thursday night in the Intensive Care Unit at Hotel Dieu hospital in Windsor, Ontario, my twin sister, Lee, is officially declared brain dead. Present at her bedside are three members of the ICU staff and the hospital chaplain. The head physician notes the date and time: September 10, 1998. 8:13 p.m. The chaplain says: “The family is outside.”
He's wrong. Not all of us are present. My father is missing. So is Chris, the youngest of my three brothers.
Three miles away, in the red brick house at the end of Detroit Street, all of the lights are still on. My father and Chris are sitting side by side on the sofa. They are chain smoking and Chris is drinking beer. My father stubs out his cigarettes halfway through. He hasn’t asked for morphine since the hospital called last night, when he admitted he was too sick from the chemo to make the trip.
My mother sits on the beige vinyl couch in the ICU waiting room. Draped across her legs is Lee’s red rain jacket. She tells anyone who will listen that it's supposed to be a wet weekend and that Lee might need the jacket for the ride home. She plays hand-Yahtzee and thinks about the menu for Sunday's dinner.
Margaret, my older sister, is restless. She wants fresh air. She wants to call her husband and children. As she retrieves her new cell phone from the front pocket of her jeans, not even my mother reminds her that it's raining or that she was just outside half an hour ago. We all know she is smoking again. It's no secret that she started making regular stops at the 7-Eleven to buy cigarettes when my father was diagnosed with late-stage prostate cancer. That was four months ago. Her children, aged 7 and 5, asked us not to tell, but they're worried. Grandpa is already sick and he smokes a lot. Besides, they say, our mom smells bad when she kisses us goodnight.
My older brothers are watching CNN news on the complimentary TV. More rain in the forecast for the Detroit/Windsor area. And an update on Swissair Flight 111. It has been eight days since the plane disappeared into the Atlantic Ocean off Peggy's Cove, but there is no shortage of images that capture family members huddled together on the beach. Some wade into the cold water with flowers in their hands. They toss red roses and white carnations out to sea. The flowers disappear under the crest of a wave, then reappear, the way the bodies of their loved ones still might.
“Hopeless," James says. "Those poor families.”
"Bad luck," says Thomas.
"I told you it would rain this weekend," my mother adds.
I wasn’t supposed to arrive from Calgary until next week, until Lee was home recovering from knee surgery. I sit cross-legged on the floor, my back straight against the wall, a Yoga position that should be helping me to breathe. I apply cherry chapstick to my lips and drop it into the pouch of my overalls, next to the tiny bottle of vodka I saved from the plane and the plastic cylinder filled with Ativan my doctor prescribed early this morning.
Emma sits next to me, lays her head on my shoulder. She wants to know why she can't see her mommy. I tell her soon. She wants to know if people can die from knee surgery. I offer her money for the vending machines. She wants quarters for the phone. She wants to call her friends. I remind her that it's a school night and hand over my wallet.
When Emma disappears, a doctor emerges from behind the ICU door. My mother is startled, but her weight makes it difficult for her to get up quickly. My brothers move toward her.
“We’ve been monitoring her closely since her heart stopped last night,” he says. “There was one more test but there hasn't been any brain activity for hours."
He looks directly at my mother: “I’m sorry.”
No one understands.
“Are you saying we have to decide whether or not to pull the plug?” I ask.
“There isn't any choice," he says. "I really am sorry."
The women's restroom at the end of the hall is empty. I take the first stall, the one that is wheelchair accessible, and lock myself in. I hold onto the railing and hang my head over the toilet. As I gag and retch, I remind myself that I cannot keep going full days without eating. Even if people I love are dying. Or die.
At the sink I splash cold water on my face. As I look into the mirror I hear an unfamiliar voice in my head: You are so cliché. Can't you grieve more creatively than this? I begin to panic. What does grief look like? My twin? Me? Us?
I reach into the pouch of my overalls for the Ativan and alcohol. I calculate how to make the pills last, anticipate the moments I will need them most: the flight home, the funeral, when we see my father. Now. I can’t leave without saying goodbye to my sister. I wait until the pill dissolves under my tongue before taking the shot of vodka. To conceal the smell of alcohol on my breath, I apply a thick layer of chapstick to my lips, tasting cherry.
I find my mother standing in the hallway.
"Everyone has been in to see her again," she says. "We've been here since last night and don't want to remember her like this."
"I couldn't get a flight out last night," I say.
My mother sighs. "It's hard living so far away."
"I was just here a month ago," I remind her. "I was coming next week to take care of her and Emma and to help with Dad too."
"You've been drinking," my mother says. "Do you need me to go in there again?"
"No," I say, and walk past her.
In the ICU there is only one bed around which the drapes have been pulled. I find a body there and it is my twin sister’s body.
I do not understand.
They say she is gone, but her blood pumps through her veins, her lungs breathe her breath. Her blood pressure is steady at 124 over 86. The machines confirm all of this. Even the narrow transparent tube down her throat seems unnecessary, merely a precaution. It hangs loosely at the corner of her mouth, on the right side. The piece of white tape that is meant to keep it in place is beginning to curl at the edges. Her lips aren't even chapped.
Her hands are folded across her chest, as if she’s meditating or deep in prayer.
As if she’s a corpse in a coffin.
As if.
The polish on her fingernails is chipped. No, chipping. She was painting them as we talked on the phone last week. She was lying in her bed, not in this bed, the phone cradled between her shoulder and ear.
“What color this time?” I ask.
“Passionate Purple. It’s nice and dark, just how you like it.”
“That’s obscene,” I say. “I hope they make you take that gunk off before your surgery.”
“I should reschedule,” she says. “Dad is way too sick.”
“The wait time for surgery in this province is way too long,” I remind her.
"Do you think he'll still be here at Christmas?" she asks.
"Of course he will be. He's still getting chemo."
"I wish you lived here," she says.
"I may as well," I tell her. "All this travelling back and forth to take care of the walking wounded."
"Do you really think I'll walk again?" she asks.
"Of course you will," I say.
"I'm scared," she says.
“Ssshh," I say. "No one ever died from knee surgery. I’ll see you next week."
You have to understand that if I had touched my sister that night, I would have crawled into the bed with her. Although the drapes had been pulled for privacy, I was afraid someone would come in and see me. Or commit me to another kind of ward. When a woman can't decide whether or not she's crazy, it's best she doesn't let others decide for her.
Holding her hand wasn't an option, either. I would have told her to squeeze and I was afraid she would. Afraid no one would believe me. Most of all I was afraid she would want to respond and not be able to. "I'm scared," she said.
When I leave the ICU without touching my sister, I find my mother standing alone in the waiting room. She has her jacket on and her purse hangs from her left shoulder. She is left-handed, like Lee. She holds Lee's rain jacket close to her breast. "Everyone is driving back to the house," she says. "Are you ready?"
"You don't want to be the one to tell Dad, do you?"
"No," she says. "Your brothers can do it."
It is no longer raining when we step into the night air and make our way to the car in the visitors' parking lot. My mother says my luggage won't fit in the back seat this time. I have two suitcases and a carry-on. She uses her key to open the trunk.
Lee's wheelchair is there. So are her running shoes.The laces are still tied, in double knots, and the heels are flattened. Flat. She hasn't been able to walk since the car accident last October, not with two broken kneecaps that did not heal as expected, and she was sick and tired of asking people to bend down and tie up her goddamn shoes. Especially her daughter.
But the accident was no one's fault, not really. Not unless you blame the cat or have some weird superstition about Halloween. It's true it happened on October 31st, but Lee borrowed our mother's car on the last day of every month. It's when she received the child-support check from her ex-husband and made the run to the Great Canadian Superstore. She liked to do it while Emma was in school. That way she wouldn't be tempted to blow the money on anything but groceries.
The cat wasn't black, either. It was an orange tabby.
Lee said: The poor thing. It bolted onto the expressway out of nowhere. There aren't even any houses around on that stretch of road. I turned to look back after the thud. There was so much blood, but don't tell Emma. When I turned around again I meant to hit the breaks, not the gas. Thank God I didn't kill the guy when I crashed into his truck.
My mother closes the trunk with a thud and the night air swallows my twin sister's voice. My own tongue has grown too large for my mouth. All that is left is the pounding in my throat and the cruel gift of vision that grief brings: I can see into the near future with brutal accuracy.
My father will need the wheelchair during the funeral on Monday. Thomas will be the one who wheels him down the aisle at the church because he is the oldest son. When they reach the front pew, Thomas will put on the brake and take the seat next to my mother. James and Chris will take the seats next to him.
I'll be in the second row with my sister and her family. And Emma. I will study my father from behind and notice the yellow streaks of nicotine in his white hair. He won't be wearing his hearing aid, either. He will not want to hear the eulogy in particular, even though he will be relieved to learn that I won't be the one to provide it.
There's all the work to be done after the funeral, too. Already I'm in the small one-bedroom apartment my sister shares with her daughter. Trying to decide what to keep and what to throw away. Trying on her clothes. Wondering how long I can go without washing them so that I never lose the scent of her.
As my mother pulls out of the parking lot, the pounding in my throat begins to subside and my tongue finds language again.
"She has to be cremated," I say.
My mother almost laughs: "Your father won't go for that. You know we're Catholic."
"She didn't plan her funeral, Mother. She didn't know she'd die from knee surgery. She wouldn't want us to keep -"
"Don't," my mother warns.
At the house, all of the lights are still on. Margaret is sitting next to my father on the sofa. She is holding his hand. My brothers are in the kitchen with Emma. Chris is making toast and James is peeling an overripe banana. They haven't eaten today, either. Thomas is drinking red wine. He gives Emma a sip.
No one is crying.
I want to go to my father but I stand back out of respect for my mother. But she does not go to him. She hangs Lee's rain jacket on the back of a chair and asks him if he has eaten anything today. When he doesn't respond, she joins everyone in the kitchen.
I sit on the floor at my father's feet and lay my head on his lap. When he raises his hand and touches my hair, Margaret begins to cry.
My father takes his touch away from me. "Tell your mother to get me some morphine," he says. "Maggie, help me to bed."
Emma wants to share the double bed with me in the spare room in my parents' basement. Just like she does at home with her mother. She falls asleep immediately. I cannot do the same, even after two glasses of wine and another Ativan. Emma is grinding her teeth, tossing and turning. She is talking nonsense. She does not call out for her mother, and I have yet to hear her cry.
At dawn I hear my own mother crying. I leave Emma and go up the stairs that lead to the kitchen. My mother is sitting at the table. In her left hand she holds one of the black felt pens my father uses for his crossword puzzles. She has been making lists on a white paper napkin. One is for groceries and the other includes names for Lee's obituary.
"Mom," I say.
"I'm sorry. I didn't mean to wake you."
"I was already awake."
"You were calling out for your father in your sleep," she tells me.
"What?" I say.
"He says you should talk to Emma about what you want for the funeral. We have to decide today."
"He agrees with me?"
"Don't expect her to agree," she says. "Even if she is only 10."
My mother uses a napkin to wipe her eyes and tells me that when I go out with Emma we need to pick up a few supplies. She hands me the list: six boxes of Kleenex (“white”), a case of chocolate SlimFast (“the only thing your father will drink”), toilet paper (“Cottonelle is on sale”), Apple Juice (“for Margaret's kids”), wine (“for you kids”), and a half a case of beer (“for Chris”).
"Don't buy any food," she adds. "There will be enough casseroles and fruit baskets around here to feed an army."
My mother hands me a napkin.
"Are you sure you're fit to drive?" she asks.
In the car with Emma, I turn down the radio. I tell her that we need to talk about the funeral.
"Can we put a picture of a cat on her headstone?" she asks.
"Yes," I say. And then I try again: "We can also visit anytime we want, even if we just bury her ashes."
Emma does not respond. Not with words. She unbuckles her seatbelt instead. With my right hand I grab hold of her left arm. Hard. This is when she screams: "You can't burn my mommy, Auntie! Please don't burn my mommy!"
I am not fit to drive. I'm not even left-handed like Lee and my mother. I hold onto Emma with my right hand and use my left to steer the car onto the shoulder of the road. At least most of the way, out of traffic. I even remember to switch on the hazard lights.
Cars pass by and impatient drivers lay on their horns. Some are angry. One man takes the time to stop and roll down his window: "Get a license!" he yells. "Fucking women drivers."
Good grief, can't these people see that I have my twin sister's daughter in my arms? Don't they know that her mother is dead?
"Ssshh," I say. "We'll do it any way you want."
Emma sits up and adjusts her ponytail. "You're not going to let me have one of those frozen cappuccinos at Tim Horton's, are you?"
Emma is far too young to be drinking coffee. But she's far too young to have lost her mother, too.
"Should we drink them in or take them home?" I ask.
I insist on choosing the coffin for Lee. James agrees to go with me and we don't have to drive all over town. There is a display room on the top floor of the funeral home. “Right up the stairs and to your left," the director says. We don't even need to walk down the aisles and survey the rows of possibilities. I spot my sister's bed immediately. A simple red mahogany. Cool to my touch. Cream satin sheets. No ruffles.
As my fingers sink into the soft sheets, James checks the price tag hanging from one of the brass handles. The same one he will hold onto as a pallbearer. "You can have this one," he says. And then he begins to cry.
The funeral director puts an awkward hand on my brother's shoulder: "I'm sorry, pal. We know this is hard. We're here to make this as quick and painless as possible."
The value of his sympathy makes me suspicious - and guilty. Right down to my middle-class skin. "What happens to people who can't afford all of this?" I ask. "Their bodies and their families."
"There are payment plans," the director replies. "For those who can't afford it or don't have any family at all, the city can make arrangements."
"I've heard about that," I say. "All the people whose ashes are buried at the back of the graveyards, near the highway. They don't get gravestones, either."
The director removes his hand from my brother's shoulder. "Just a bit more paperwork," he says.
As we make our way down the stairs, he turns to me: "How is your father doing?"
My father stops speaking to me after Lee dies. In fact, he can barely look at me when I enter my parents' bedroom and plead with him to drink from the can of SlimFast so that he can keep up his strength. After one or two sips through the straw, he passes the drink back to me and with a wave of his hand dismisses me from the room.
"You remind him of Lee," Thomas tells me in the kitchen. "He doesn't say much to me, either. He mostly wants to know if Mom will know how to pay the bills."
"Do you think he'll still be here at Christmas?" I ask.
"I hope not," he says. "For his sake."
My father is taken to the hospital a week later by ambulance. The cancer has spread into his bones and he needs a blood transfusion. The oncologist visits in the morning and tells my father that he should be strong enough to go home in a day or two. In the hallway, he tells my mother and me that this could on for weeks, maybe months.
He's wrong. My father dies that afternoon. It happens so quickly that Margaret, Chris, and Emma don't make it back from the mall in time. They only planned to run into The Bay to buy my father a new pair of pajamas, but Emma insisted they stop at the Dairy Queen. She wanted to bring Blizzards back to the room. Chocolate for my father. He might like it, she said.
My father's death is quiet, too. There is no clutching of our hands or the sheets. Not a word about Lee. At no time does he open his eyes. Even as his breath becomes labored and the foamy white saliva appears between his lips, I expect my mother to say he always snores and drools without his dentures. The ones she has wrapped in Kleenex and stored in the side pocket of her purse.
But my mother does not speak. She reaches for the Kleenex stored on the inside of her sleeve. She wipes my father’s mouth.
When it’s over, she sits down on the chair next to the bed.
No one understands.
"You kids need to make arrangements at the funeral home," she says.
Thomas and James put on their jackets and take out their keys.
"Tell them your father wants cremation. He agreed to one night of visitation but he doesn't want to be on display."
"What?" I say.
"I was surprised about the cremation, too," she says. "Who knows what all that morphine did to his brain."
"He doesn't want us to see him again, either?" I ask.
My mother reaches over and takes my father's hand. "We can see him," she says. "The immediate family. But he doesn't want us to dwell there."
"Dwell there?" I say.
She turns to my brothers: "Order the same coffin we did for your sister."
It begins to rain as we pull into the parking lot at the funeral home. Frustrated because there is never a rain hat in the glove box when she needs one, my mother wonders why she bothered to do her hair at all. Thomas is driving and says he'll pull up closer to the front door, but the funeral director appears at the window with an umbrella. He helps my mother out of the car, puts an arm around her shoulder. As he leads her inside, he tells her how sorry he is about my father – and my sister. He hopes that she will be pleased: her husband is laid out in the same room her daughter was.
My mother breathes a sigh of relief when he opens the coffin for us. “Thank God,” she says. “He looks so much better than Lee did.”
The funeral director apologizes again. “Your daughter underwent a good deal of medical intervention."
And an autopsy, he doesn’t add.
None of us yet know about the infection Lee contracted in the hospital. We have not yet learned that she was alone when her heart stopped or that she managed to find the call button at the end of the chord wrapped around the railing of her bed. Yet none of this had anything to do with our reaction to her body.
“Her skin looks like play-doh,” Emma said. “It’s gross.”
My mother was upset about Lee’s hair: “What kind of hairstyle is that for a 35-year-old woman?” she hissed into my ear. “Can’t they follow a picture?”
I couldn’t understand why they didn’t remove the nail polish. “How could they leave that gunk on in the coffin?" I asked.
But my father looks good. In fact, he looks handsome in his navy blue suit and cranberry tie. There is no mark of cancer, or grief. His sleeves conceal the needle marks and bruises. His nails are manicured. His forehead is almost creaseless, as though death has restored his youth and health. And his daughter.
“People are starting to arrive,” Thomas announces.
My mother wants to know if her hair looks okay. When I tell her that she looks fine, she says that she hopes to God it isn't raining at the cemetery tomorrow.
Heavenly Rest is the cemetery at which my parents have recently spent a good deal of their life savings. We haven't been here since Lee's funeral almost two weeks ago and much to Emma's disappointment, we do not get to ride in a hearse this time around.
"We've already talked about this," my mother says. "All we need are your grandfather's ashes and they're waiting for us at the gravesite."
Emma is still confused. She wants to know why people can bring whole dead bodies to the graveyard in a hearse but not their stupid ashes in a car. My mother tells her not to use the word stupid and this shuts Emma up. At least for the time being. Everyone is relieved. No one wants to explain that we don't have my father's ashes because the cremation just happened. We don't even know if it happened this morning or last night. We don't want to know.
As Thomas pulls into the cemetery's main entrance off Howard Avenue, my mother says it looks like we might get an Indian summer after all and then instructs him to turn onto the narrow paved road that will lead us to the section named after Joan of Arc. We pass an old woman at a burial plot at which there is a large headstone and a whole lot of flower arrangements. She is bent over, placing dying or dead flowers into a brown paper bag. Wrinkling rose petals and weary forget-me-nots. Lifeless lilies.
When the woman is no longer in sight my mother turns to look back. "It's probably her husband," she says. "Most women outlive them."
Emma spots the red maple tree and the mound of earth under which her mother's body is buried and where we are about to bury her grandfather's ashes.
"There they are!" she says.
"It will take time for the earth to settle," my mother says. "Maybe till spring. They can't put the gravestone in until then."
Emma wants to hear about the gravestone again, the one my mother and I chose from the catalogue in the office near the main entrance of the cemetery. My mother explains that it's flat, at ground level. A warm bronze with ivy around the border. "Headstones are too expensive," she adds.
Emma wants more. She wants to know about the pictures, especially the cat.
"They're not really pictures," I remind her. "Etched under your mother's name is a figure of a cat curled up on a pillow. For your grandfather we chose a single candle."
No one mentions that under my mother's name will be her year of birth - then a dash.
At the service - Interment, they called it - some of my family members place mementos in the vault we purchased. Not the large concrete vault with steel lining in which Lee's coffin lies but the much smaller one that will protect the red velvet-covered box that contains my father's ashes. If I had been thinking clearly, I would have brought along one of my father's black felt pens and a crossword puzzle. A hard one, perhaps from the Globe & Mail or New York Times. Or both. At it stands, my father has for company a purple Bic lighter, a Detroit Red Wings flag, one of Emma's Beanie Babies, a few flowers, and an abridged version of the Bible.
The priest from the parish my parents have belonged to for more than thirty years has offered to provide the closing prayers at the graveside service. He tells all of us gathered here today that my parents' marriage of forty-three years and the loving family they have built is a cause for celebration, not grief. He takes my mother's hand. And a deep breath. "Let us find comfort in the Scriptures," he says. "From Isaiah: Awake and sing, you who lie in the dust. For your dew is a dew of light, and you cause the land of shades to give birth."
The cruelty of his Christian metaphor jolts me like an electric shock, like a heart attack. I can't breathe. If my sister is only sleeping, what is going to happen when she wakes up?
Emma insists that I pick her up. She is getting far too old for this, but the weight of her body in my arms keeps my feet planted firmly on the ground.
"I can't stand thinking of her under there," she cries into my ear. "I'm sorry, Auntie."
"Ssshh," I whisper, "They're not here."
"Then why are we?" she asks.
As we pull out of the cemetery, I turn to look back. Joan of Arc is tied to the red maple tree. Her body is in flames.
In my parents' kitchen that evening, I pull corks out of bottles of red wine and my brothers decide on how many pizzas to order. My older sister is at home with her husband and children. When she goes outside for a smoke she calls on her cell phone. She tells me that she has positively run out of space for plants and flower arrangements and that people should know better. "As if we won't need all this sympathy when it's over and everyone carries on with their lives," she says.
Emma calls from her father’s house. She has only seen him on the occasional weekend since he left her and Lee for a new family three years ago, but she has decided he isn't a bad guy after all. "He's even letting me have a sleep-over," she says. "My friends and me are going to have a séance and we get to use real candles."
My mother muses over my father's obituary in the morning newspaper. We accidentally left out her brother and sister-in-law in Lee's and she is glad we didn't make that mistake again.
When my father's sister calls, my mother tells her that we are in pretty good spirits.
“Or the good spirits are in us,” Chris says.
It is hard to tell. Until my mother hangs up the phone and mentions my father's sweatshirt.
“His sister wants it,” she announces. “The navy one with the bleach stain on the front."
The one already in my suitcase.
"It's mine," I say.
“His sister should get something, dear," she says. "There are plenty of other things you kids can choose from.”
When my mother and I fight, we make all the logical leaps. Like any war. We aim. We shoot.
“You wish it had been me instead, don’t you!”
“You wish it had been me instead, don’t you!”
My brothers are horrified. They are not used to seeing women in full combat. Chris and James take my mother’s side. Thomas takes me outside.
We sit on the curb. He asks me if I want to smoke.
“I am so tempted to start again,” I say.
He lights a Colt, skips stones across the surface of the road. One pings against the car across the street.
“I feel so bad for you guys,” he says.
In the house, Thomas turns out the lights and I make my way down the hall to my parents’ bedroom. I stand at the edge of their bed, on my father's side. My mother pulls back the sheet.
In my mother’s arms, I surrender to grief. It’s simple, really. My cheek against her breast. The wetness of our tears. Her damp nightgown clinging to the edge of her nipple. My father’s scent is on the pillow.
My mother’s skin is apples and cinnamon. She is peeling apples for a pie. Lee and I use the skins to make faces on the kitchen table. My father comes in and says he’s hungry. We giggle as he gobbles up the smiles.
Her skin is Ivory soap and warm towels. Lee and I are just out of the tub. She doesn’t want us to be cold so she wraps us in a towel and pulls us into her body.
My mother’s skin is my skin. Our skin is Lee’s skin. I am my twin. I am my father. We are all here.
Sometimes this is so easy to forget.
In my mother’s arms, I tell her I am sorry.
“Ssshh,” she says. “Rest.”
Listen to Laura read part of "Twins and M/Others" here:
He's wrong. Not all of us are present. My father is missing. So is Chris, the youngest of my three brothers.
Three miles away, in the red brick house at the end of Detroit Street, all of the lights are still on. My father and Chris are sitting side by side on the sofa. They are chain smoking and Chris is drinking beer. My father stubs out his cigarettes halfway through. He hasn’t asked for morphine since the hospital called last night, when he admitted he was too sick from the chemo to make the trip.
My mother sits on the beige vinyl couch in the ICU waiting room. Draped across her legs is Lee’s red rain jacket. She tells anyone who will listen that it's supposed to be a wet weekend and that Lee might need the jacket for the ride home. She plays hand-Yahtzee and thinks about the menu for Sunday's dinner.
Margaret, my older sister, is restless. She wants fresh air. She wants to call her husband and children. As she retrieves her new cell phone from the front pocket of her jeans, not even my mother reminds her that it's raining or that she was just outside half an hour ago. We all know she is smoking again. It's no secret that she started making regular stops at the 7-Eleven to buy cigarettes when my father was diagnosed with late-stage prostate cancer. That was four months ago. Her children, aged 7 and 5, asked us not to tell, but they're worried. Grandpa is already sick and he smokes a lot. Besides, they say, our mom smells bad when she kisses us goodnight.
My older brothers are watching CNN news on the complimentary TV. More rain in the forecast for the Detroit/Windsor area. And an update on Swissair Flight 111. It has been eight days since the plane disappeared into the Atlantic Ocean off Peggy's Cove, but there is no shortage of images that capture family members huddled together on the beach. Some wade into the cold water with flowers in their hands. They toss red roses and white carnations out to sea. The flowers disappear under the crest of a wave, then reappear, the way the bodies of their loved ones still might.
“Hopeless," James says. "Those poor families.”
"Bad luck," says Thomas.
"I told you it would rain this weekend," my mother adds.
I wasn’t supposed to arrive from Calgary until next week, until Lee was home recovering from knee surgery. I sit cross-legged on the floor, my back straight against the wall, a Yoga position that should be helping me to breathe. I apply cherry chapstick to my lips and drop it into the pouch of my overalls, next to the tiny bottle of vodka I saved from the plane and the plastic cylinder filled with Ativan my doctor prescribed early this morning.
Emma sits next to me, lays her head on my shoulder. She wants to know why she can't see her mommy. I tell her soon. She wants to know if people can die from knee surgery. I offer her money for the vending machines. She wants quarters for the phone. She wants to call her friends. I remind her that it's a school night and hand over my wallet.
When Emma disappears, a doctor emerges from behind the ICU door. My mother is startled, but her weight makes it difficult for her to get up quickly. My brothers move toward her.
“We’ve been monitoring her closely since her heart stopped last night,” he says. “There was one more test but there hasn't been any brain activity for hours."
He looks directly at my mother: “I’m sorry.”
No one understands.
“Are you saying we have to decide whether or not to pull the plug?” I ask.
“There isn't any choice," he says. "I really am sorry."
The women's restroom at the end of the hall is empty. I take the first stall, the one that is wheelchair accessible, and lock myself in. I hold onto the railing and hang my head over the toilet. As I gag and retch, I remind myself that I cannot keep going full days without eating. Even if people I love are dying. Or die.
At the sink I splash cold water on my face. As I look into the mirror I hear an unfamiliar voice in my head: You are so cliché. Can't you grieve more creatively than this? I begin to panic. What does grief look like? My twin? Me? Us?
I reach into the pouch of my overalls for the Ativan and alcohol. I calculate how to make the pills last, anticipate the moments I will need them most: the flight home, the funeral, when we see my father. Now. I can’t leave without saying goodbye to my sister. I wait until the pill dissolves under my tongue before taking the shot of vodka. To conceal the smell of alcohol on my breath, I apply a thick layer of chapstick to my lips, tasting cherry.
I find my mother standing in the hallway.
"Everyone has been in to see her again," she says. "We've been here since last night and don't want to remember her like this."
"I couldn't get a flight out last night," I say.
My mother sighs. "It's hard living so far away."
"I was just here a month ago," I remind her. "I was coming next week to take care of her and Emma and to help with Dad too."
"You've been drinking," my mother says. "Do you need me to go in there again?"
"No," I say, and walk past her.
In the ICU there is only one bed around which the drapes have been pulled. I find a body there and it is my twin sister’s body.
I do not understand.
They say she is gone, but her blood pumps through her veins, her lungs breathe her breath. Her blood pressure is steady at 124 over 86. The machines confirm all of this. Even the narrow transparent tube down her throat seems unnecessary, merely a precaution. It hangs loosely at the corner of her mouth, on the right side. The piece of white tape that is meant to keep it in place is beginning to curl at the edges. Her lips aren't even chapped.
Her hands are folded across her chest, as if she’s meditating or deep in prayer.
As if she’s a corpse in a coffin.
As if.
The polish on her fingernails is chipped. No, chipping. She was painting them as we talked on the phone last week. She was lying in her bed, not in this bed, the phone cradled between her shoulder and ear.
“What color this time?” I ask.
“Passionate Purple. It’s nice and dark, just how you like it.”
“That’s obscene,” I say. “I hope they make you take that gunk off before your surgery.”
“I should reschedule,” she says. “Dad is way too sick.”
“The wait time for surgery in this province is way too long,” I remind her.
"Do you think he'll still be here at Christmas?" she asks.
"Of course he will be. He's still getting chemo."
"I wish you lived here," she says.
"I may as well," I tell her. "All this travelling back and forth to take care of the walking wounded."
"Do you really think I'll walk again?" she asks.
"Of course you will," I say.
"I'm scared," she says.
“Ssshh," I say. "No one ever died from knee surgery. I’ll see you next week."
You have to understand that if I had touched my sister that night, I would have crawled into the bed with her. Although the drapes had been pulled for privacy, I was afraid someone would come in and see me. Or commit me to another kind of ward. When a woman can't decide whether or not she's crazy, it's best she doesn't let others decide for her.
Holding her hand wasn't an option, either. I would have told her to squeeze and I was afraid she would. Afraid no one would believe me. Most of all I was afraid she would want to respond and not be able to. "I'm scared," she said.
When I leave the ICU without touching my sister, I find my mother standing alone in the waiting room. She has her jacket on and her purse hangs from her left shoulder. She is left-handed, like Lee. She holds Lee's rain jacket close to her breast. "Everyone is driving back to the house," she says. "Are you ready?"
"You don't want to be the one to tell Dad, do you?"
"No," she says. "Your brothers can do it."
It is no longer raining when we step into the night air and make our way to the car in the visitors' parking lot. My mother says my luggage won't fit in the back seat this time. I have two suitcases and a carry-on. She uses her key to open the trunk.
Lee's wheelchair is there. So are her running shoes.The laces are still tied, in double knots, and the heels are flattened. Flat. She hasn't been able to walk since the car accident last October, not with two broken kneecaps that did not heal as expected, and she was sick and tired of asking people to bend down and tie up her goddamn shoes. Especially her daughter.
But the accident was no one's fault, not really. Not unless you blame the cat or have some weird superstition about Halloween. It's true it happened on October 31st, but Lee borrowed our mother's car on the last day of every month. It's when she received the child-support check from her ex-husband and made the run to the Great Canadian Superstore. She liked to do it while Emma was in school. That way she wouldn't be tempted to blow the money on anything but groceries.
The cat wasn't black, either. It was an orange tabby.
Lee said: The poor thing. It bolted onto the expressway out of nowhere. There aren't even any houses around on that stretch of road. I turned to look back after the thud. There was so much blood, but don't tell Emma. When I turned around again I meant to hit the breaks, not the gas. Thank God I didn't kill the guy when I crashed into his truck.
My mother closes the trunk with a thud and the night air swallows my twin sister's voice. My own tongue has grown too large for my mouth. All that is left is the pounding in my throat and the cruel gift of vision that grief brings: I can see into the near future with brutal accuracy.
My father will need the wheelchair during the funeral on Monday. Thomas will be the one who wheels him down the aisle at the church because he is the oldest son. When they reach the front pew, Thomas will put on the brake and take the seat next to my mother. James and Chris will take the seats next to him.
I'll be in the second row with my sister and her family. And Emma. I will study my father from behind and notice the yellow streaks of nicotine in his white hair. He won't be wearing his hearing aid, either. He will not want to hear the eulogy in particular, even though he will be relieved to learn that I won't be the one to provide it.
There's all the work to be done after the funeral, too. Already I'm in the small one-bedroom apartment my sister shares with her daughter. Trying to decide what to keep and what to throw away. Trying on her clothes. Wondering how long I can go without washing them so that I never lose the scent of her.
As my mother pulls out of the parking lot, the pounding in my throat begins to subside and my tongue finds language again.
"She has to be cremated," I say.
My mother almost laughs: "Your father won't go for that. You know we're Catholic."
"She didn't plan her funeral, Mother. She didn't know she'd die from knee surgery. She wouldn't want us to keep -"
"Don't," my mother warns.
At the house, all of the lights are still on. Margaret is sitting next to my father on the sofa. She is holding his hand. My brothers are in the kitchen with Emma. Chris is making toast and James is peeling an overripe banana. They haven't eaten today, either. Thomas is drinking red wine. He gives Emma a sip.
No one is crying.
I want to go to my father but I stand back out of respect for my mother. But she does not go to him. She hangs Lee's rain jacket on the back of a chair and asks him if he has eaten anything today. When he doesn't respond, she joins everyone in the kitchen.
I sit on the floor at my father's feet and lay my head on his lap. When he raises his hand and touches my hair, Margaret begins to cry.
My father takes his touch away from me. "Tell your mother to get me some morphine," he says. "Maggie, help me to bed."
Emma wants to share the double bed with me in the spare room in my parents' basement. Just like she does at home with her mother. She falls asleep immediately. I cannot do the same, even after two glasses of wine and another Ativan. Emma is grinding her teeth, tossing and turning. She is talking nonsense. She does not call out for her mother, and I have yet to hear her cry.
At dawn I hear my own mother crying. I leave Emma and go up the stairs that lead to the kitchen. My mother is sitting at the table. In her left hand she holds one of the black felt pens my father uses for his crossword puzzles. She has been making lists on a white paper napkin. One is for groceries and the other includes names for Lee's obituary.
"Mom," I say.
"I'm sorry. I didn't mean to wake you."
"I was already awake."
"You were calling out for your father in your sleep," she tells me.
"What?" I say.
"He says you should talk to Emma about what you want for the funeral. We have to decide today."
"He agrees with me?"
"Don't expect her to agree," she says. "Even if she is only 10."
My mother uses a napkin to wipe her eyes and tells me that when I go out with Emma we need to pick up a few supplies. She hands me the list: six boxes of Kleenex (“white”), a case of chocolate SlimFast (“the only thing your father will drink”), toilet paper (“Cottonelle is on sale”), Apple Juice (“for Margaret's kids”), wine (“for you kids”), and a half a case of beer (“for Chris”).
"Don't buy any food," she adds. "There will be enough casseroles and fruit baskets around here to feed an army."
My mother hands me a napkin.
"Are you sure you're fit to drive?" she asks.
In the car with Emma, I turn down the radio. I tell her that we need to talk about the funeral.
"Can we put a picture of a cat on her headstone?" she asks.
"Yes," I say. And then I try again: "We can also visit anytime we want, even if we just bury her ashes."
Emma does not respond. Not with words. She unbuckles her seatbelt instead. With my right hand I grab hold of her left arm. Hard. This is when she screams: "You can't burn my mommy, Auntie! Please don't burn my mommy!"
I am not fit to drive. I'm not even left-handed like Lee and my mother. I hold onto Emma with my right hand and use my left to steer the car onto the shoulder of the road. At least most of the way, out of traffic. I even remember to switch on the hazard lights.
Cars pass by and impatient drivers lay on their horns. Some are angry. One man takes the time to stop and roll down his window: "Get a license!" he yells. "Fucking women drivers."
Good grief, can't these people see that I have my twin sister's daughter in my arms? Don't they know that her mother is dead?
"Ssshh," I say. "We'll do it any way you want."
Emma sits up and adjusts her ponytail. "You're not going to let me have one of those frozen cappuccinos at Tim Horton's, are you?"
Emma is far too young to be drinking coffee. But she's far too young to have lost her mother, too.
"Should we drink them in or take them home?" I ask.
I insist on choosing the coffin for Lee. James agrees to go with me and we don't have to drive all over town. There is a display room on the top floor of the funeral home. “Right up the stairs and to your left," the director says. We don't even need to walk down the aisles and survey the rows of possibilities. I spot my sister's bed immediately. A simple red mahogany. Cool to my touch. Cream satin sheets. No ruffles.
As my fingers sink into the soft sheets, James checks the price tag hanging from one of the brass handles. The same one he will hold onto as a pallbearer. "You can have this one," he says. And then he begins to cry.
The funeral director puts an awkward hand on my brother's shoulder: "I'm sorry, pal. We know this is hard. We're here to make this as quick and painless as possible."
The value of his sympathy makes me suspicious - and guilty. Right down to my middle-class skin. "What happens to people who can't afford all of this?" I ask. "Their bodies and their families."
"There are payment plans," the director replies. "For those who can't afford it or don't have any family at all, the city can make arrangements."
"I've heard about that," I say. "All the people whose ashes are buried at the back of the graveyards, near the highway. They don't get gravestones, either."
The director removes his hand from my brother's shoulder. "Just a bit more paperwork," he says.
As we make our way down the stairs, he turns to me: "How is your father doing?"
My father stops speaking to me after Lee dies. In fact, he can barely look at me when I enter my parents' bedroom and plead with him to drink from the can of SlimFast so that he can keep up his strength. After one or two sips through the straw, he passes the drink back to me and with a wave of his hand dismisses me from the room.
"You remind him of Lee," Thomas tells me in the kitchen. "He doesn't say much to me, either. He mostly wants to know if Mom will know how to pay the bills."
"Do you think he'll still be here at Christmas?" I ask.
"I hope not," he says. "For his sake."
My father is taken to the hospital a week later by ambulance. The cancer has spread into his bones and he needs a blood transfusion. The oncologist visits in the morning and tells my father that he should be strong enough to go home in a day or two. In the hallway, he tells my mother and me that this could on for weeks, maybe months.
He's wrong. My father dies that afternoon. It happens so quickly that Margaret, Chris, and Emma don't make it back from the mall in time. They only planned to run into The Bay to buy my father a new pair of pajamas, but Emma insisted they stop at the Dairy Queen. She wanted to bring Blizzards back to the room. Chocolate for my father. He might like it, she said.
My father's death is quiet, too. There is no clutching of our hands or the sheets. Not a word about Lee. At no time does he open his eyes. Even as his breath becomes labored and the foamy white saliva appears between his lips, I expect my mother to say he always snores and drools without his dentures. The ones she has wrapped in Kleenex and stored in the side pocket of her purse.
But my mother does not speak. She reaches for the Kleenex stored on the inside of her sleeve. She wipes my father’s mouth.
When it’s over, she sits down on the chair next to the bed.
No one understands.
"You kids need to make arrangements at the funeral home," she says.
Thomas and James put on their jackets and take out their keys.
"Tell them your father wants cremation. He agreed to one night of visitation but he doesn't want to be on display."
"What?" I say.
"I was surprised about the cremation, too," she says. "Who knows what all that morphine did to his brain."
"He doesn't want us to see him again, either?" I ask.
My mother reaches over and takes my father's hand. "We can see him," she says. "The immediate family. But he doesn't want us to dwell there."
"Dwell there?" I say.
She turns to my brothers: "Order the same coffin we did for your sister."
It begins to rain as we pull into the parking lot at the funeral home. Frustrated because there is never a rain hat in the glove box when she needs one, my mother wonders why she bothered to do her hair at all. Thomas is driving and says he'll pull up closer to the front door, but the funeral director appears at the window with an umbrella. He helps my mother out of the car, puts an arm around her shoulder. As he leads her inside, he tells her how sorry he is about my father – and my sister. He hopes that she will be pleased: her husband is laid out in the same room her daughter was.
My mother breathes a sigh of relief when he opens the coffin for us. “Thank God,” she says. “He looks so much better than Lee did.”
The funeral director apologizes again. “Your daughter underwent a good deal of medical intervention."
And an autopsy, he doesn’t add.
None of us yet know about the infection Lee contracted in the hospital. We have not yet learned that she was alone when her heart stopped or that she managed to find the call button at the end of the chord wrapped around the railing of her bed. Yet none of this had anything to do with our reaction to her body.
“Her skin looks like play-doh,” Emma said. “It’s gross.”
My mother was upset about Lee’s hair: “What kind of hairstyle is that for a 35-year-old woman?” she hissed into my ear. “Can’t they follow a picture?”
I couldn’t understand why they didn’t remove the nail polish. “How could they leave that gunk on in the coffin?" I asked.
But my father looks good. In fact, he looks handsome in his navy blue suit and cranberry tie. There is no mark of cancer, or grief. His sleeves conceal the needle marks and bruises. His nails are manicured. His forehead is almost creaseless, as though death has restored his youth and health. And his daughter.
“People are starting to arrive,” Thomas announces.
My mother wants to know if her hair looks okay. When I tell her that she looks fine, she says that she hopes to God it isn't raining at the cemetery tomorrow.
Heavenly Rest is the cemetery at which my parents have recently spent a good deal of their life savings. We haven't been here since Lee's funeral almost two weeks ago and much to Emma's disappointment, we do not get to ride in a hearse this time around.
"We've already talked about this," my mother says. "All we need are your grandfather's ashes and they're waiting for us at the gravesite."
Emma is still confused. She wants to know why people can bring whole dead bodies to the graveyard in a hearse but not their stupid ashes in a car. My mother tells her not to use the word stupid and this shuts Emma up. At least for the time being. Everyone is relieved. No one wants to explain that we don't have my father's ashes because the cremation just happened. We don't even know if it happened this morning or last night. We don't want to know.
As Thomas pulls into the cemetery's main entrance off Howard Avenue, my mother says it looks like we might get an Indian summer after all and then instructs him to turn onto the narrow paved road that will lead us to the section named after Joan of Arc. We pass an old woman at a burial plot at which there is a large headstone and a whole lot of flower arrangements. She is bent over, placing dying or dead flowers into a brown paper bag. Wrinkling rose petals and weary forget-me-nots. Lifeless lilies.
When the woman is no longer in sight my mother turns to look back. "It's probably her husband," she says. "Most women outlive them."
Emma spots the red maple tree and the mound of earth under which her mother's body is buried and where we are about to bury her grandfather's ashes.
"There they are!" she says.
"It will take time for the earth to settle," my mother says. "Maybe till spring. They can't put the gravestone in until then."
Emma wants to hear about the gravestone again, the one my mother and I chose from the catalogue in the office near the main entrance of the cemetery. My mother explains that it's flat, at ground level. A warm bronze with ivy around the border. "Headstones are too expensive," she adds.
Emma wants more. She wants to know about the pictures, especially the cat.
"They're not really pictures," I remind her. "Etched under your mother's name is a figure of a cat curled up on a pillow. For your grandfather we chose a single candle."
No one mentions that under my mother's name will be her year of birth - then a dash.
At the service - Interment, they called it - some of my family members place mementos in the vault we purchased. Not the large concrete vault with steel lining in which Lee's coffin lies but the much smaller one that will protect the red velvet-covered box that contains my father's ashes. If I had been thinking clearly, I would have brought along one of my father's black felt pens and a crossword puzzle. A hard one, perhaps from the Globe & Mail or New York Times. Or both. At it stands, my father has for company a purple Bic lighter, a Detroit Red Wings flag, one of Emma's Beanie Babies, a few flowers, and an abridged version of the Bible.
The priest from the parish my parents have belonged to for more than thirty years has offered to provide the closing prayers at the graveside service. He tells all of us gathered here today that my parents' marriage of forty-three years and the loving family they have built is a cause for celebration, not grief. He takes my mother's hand. And a deep breath. "Let us find comfort in the Scriptures," he says. "From Isaiah: Awake and sing, you who lie in the dust. For your dew is a dew of light, and you cause the land of shades to give birth."
The cruelty of his Christian metaphor jolts me like an electric shock, like a heart attack. I can't breathe. If my sister is only sleeping, what is going to happen when she wakes up?
Emma insists that I pick her up. She is getting far too old for this, but the weight of her body in my arms keeps my feet planted firmly on the ground.
"I can't stand thinking of her under there," she cries into my ear. "I'm sorry, Auntie."
"Ssshh," I whisper, "They're not here."
"Then why are we?" she asks.
As we pull out of the cemetery, I turn to look back. Joan of Arc is tied to the red maple tree. Her body is in flames.
In my parents' kitchen that evening, I pull corks out of bottles of red wine and my brothers decide on how many pizzas to order. My older sister is at home with her husband and children. When she goes outside for a smoke she calls on her cell phone. She tells me that she has positively run out of space for plants and flower arrangements and that people should know better. "As if we won't need all this sympathy when it's over and everyone carries on with their lives," she says.
Emma calls from her father’s house. She has only seen him on the occasional weekend since he left her and Lee for a new family three years ago, but she has decided he isn't a bad guy after all. "He's even letting me have a sleep-over," she says. "My friends and me are going to have a séance and we get to use real candles."
My mother muses over my father's obituary in the morning newspaper. We accidentally left out her brother and sister-in-law in Lee's and she is glad we didn't make that mistake again.
When my father's sister calls, my mother tells her that we are in pretty good spirits.
“Or the good spirits are in us,” Chris says.
It is hard to tell. Until my mother hangs up the phone and mentions my father's sweatshirt.
“His sister wants it,” she announces. “The navy one with the bleach stain on the front."
The one already in my suitcase.
"It's mine," I say.
“His sister should get something, dear," she says. "There are plenty of other things you kids can choose from.”
When my mother and I fight, we make all the logical leaps. Like any war. We aim. We shoot.
“You wish it had been me instead, don’t you!”
“You wish it had been me instead, don’t you!”
My brothers are horrified. They are not used to seeing women in full combat. Chris and James take my mother’s side. Thomas takes me outside.
We sit on the curb. He asks me if I want to smoke.
“I am so tempted to start again,” I say.
He lights a Colt, skips stones across the surface of the road. One pings against the car across the street.
“I feel so bad for you guys,” he says.
In the house, Thomas turns out the lights and I make my way down the hall to my parents’ bedroom. I stand at the edge of their bed, on my father's side. My mother pulls back the sheet.
In my mother’s arms, I surrender to grief. It’s simple, really. My cheek against her breast. The wetness of our tears. Her damp nightgown clinging to the edge of her nipple. My father’s scent is on the pillow.
My mother’s skin is apples and cinnamon. She is peeling apples for a pie. Lee and I use the skins to make faces on the kitchen table. My father comes in and says he’s hungry. We giggle as he gobbles up the smiles.
Her skin is Ivory soap and warm towels. Lee and I are just out of the tub. She doesn’t want us to be cold so she wraps us in a towel and pulls us into her body.
My mother’s skin is my skin. Our skin is Lee’s skin. I am my twin. I am my father. We are all here.
Sometimes this is so easy to forget.
In my mother’s arms, I tell her I am sorry.
“Ssshh,” she says. “Rest.”
Listen to Laura read part of "Twins and M/Others" here:
Working notes
When my twin sister died suddenly from complications following knee surgery, my father was already dying from prostate cancer. Yet his death came sooner than expected. Aside from his own grief over the loss of his daughter, he also witnessed a rehearsal of the additional grief his loved ones would experience when he too died. He wanted to hold on and to hold onto us, to comfort us, as he always did at our most trying moments. This was no longer possible. So he decided it was best to get it over with, for himself and the rest of us. He wanted us to start the healing process.
My mother never had the chance to recover from the trauma. Within a year she lost her own mother. Not long after she found the lump in her left breast. Cancer. She underwent treatment and had a brief period of remission. The cancer returned and this time with a vengeance. She lasted fourteen weeks. She died in August 2004. Two weeks before her death I was on home-care duty. My mother was having a rough night. I crawled into my parents' bed with her. Like I did after my sister and father died, as I write about in the story. I didn't have the chance to say goodbye to my sister or father and I didn't want this to happen again. My mother and I wept (again) in each other's arms. She said: It's okay to cry. I said: I don't want you to go. She said: I don't want to live like this. I'll be with your dad and Lee. I want you all to move on. I want you to heal.
According to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, the verb to heal means to restore, to overcome, to become whole again.
My story is not about healing. Not in the conventional sense. As creative nonfiction, the story is based on factual events but some of the scenes have been reconstructed and re-imagined to capture the essence of the experience or how I remember the experience at this present moment. Just as our memories and identities are provisional, incomplete, always in process, so is the story. I have no desire to restore the past or to return to some imaginary state of "wholeness." I have no desire to overcome the grief. As a twin, as both double and other, I have always known that such wholeness is elusive, impossible. As a surviving twin who has also lost both parents, and other loved ones (through death or separation), I am acutely aware that healing too is always provisional, incomplete, always in process.
If there is any healing in the story, then, it comes through the writing itself. As a feminist writer and instructor of both English and Women's Studies, I am drawn to creative nonfiction because it allows for a creative re-vision of the narratives and events that shape and continue to reshape our lives. It allows us to embrace rather than resist incoherence and change. For this reason the story does not provide a coherent whole. Not does it provide closure. It attempts instead to find language that captures the everyday complexities of trauma and the messy business of survival: pain, guilt, confusion, fear, anger, hope. And love.
My mother never had the chance to recover from the trauma. Within a year she lost her own mother. Not long after she found the lump in her left breast. Cancer. She underwent treatment and had a brief period of remission. The cancer returned and this time with a vengeance. She lasted fourteen weeks. She died in August 2004. Two weeks before her death I was on home-care duty. My mother was having a rough night. I crawled into my parents' bed with her. Like I did after my sister and father died, as I write about in the story. I didn't have the chance to say goodbye to my sister or father and I didn't want this to happen again. My mother and I wept (again) in each other's arms. She said: It's okay to cry. I said: I don't want you to go. She said: I don't want to live like this. I'll be with your dad and Lee. I want you all to move on. I want you to heal.
According to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, the verb to heal means to restore, to overcome, to become whole again.
My story is not about healing. Not in the conventional sense. As creative nonfiction, the story is based on factual events but some of the scenes have been reconstructed and re-imagined to capture the essence of the experience or how I remember the experience at this present moment. Just as our memories and identities are provisional, incomplete, always in process, so is the story. I have no desire to restore the past or to return to some imaginary state of "wholeness." I have no desire to overcome the grief. As a twin, as both double and other, I have always known that such wholeness is elusive, impossible. As a surviving twin who has also lost both parents, and other loved ones (through death or separation), I am acutely aware that healing too is always provisional, incomplete, always in process.
If there is any healing in the story, then, it comes through the writing itself. As a feminist writer and instructor of both English and Women's Studies, I am drawn to creative nonfiction because it allows for a creative re-vision of the narratives and events that shape and continue to reshape our lives. It allows us to embrace rather than resist incoherence and change. For this reason the story does not provide a coherent whole. Not does it provide closure. It attempts instead to find language that captures the everyday complexities of trauma and the messy business of survival: pain, guilt, confusion, fear, anger, hope. And love.
About the author
Laura Adamo teaches a variety of courses in both Women's Studies and English at Mount Royal University in Calgary, Alberta, Canada. Her areas of expertise include feminist theories, semiotics, fiction, creative nonfiction, and drama. She is also in the process of completing her doctoral dissertation on the representation of twins in women's contemporary fiction and drama through York University in Toronto, Ontario, Canada.
For an updated list of works published in TRIVIA, please see this author's contributor page.
For an updated list of works published in TRIVIA, please see this author's contributor page.