Being born a twin or multiple is a unique experience not afforded most of the population. Although it has been on the rise for the last 30 years, it still only represents 3% of live births in the nation. I was born a twin with my twin sister in 1955 the last of 7 children that my mother gave birth to. I was born a twin, that is all I knew. I was born with a buddy; a relationship I took for granted; I had no idea no one else shared this wondrous kinship which was our world. That is until she died and I was untwinned. As in the lyrics from the old Joni Mitchell song Big Yellow Taxi :…you don’t know what you have till it gone…

On March 23rd of 1984, eleven days after my twin sister Sandy and I celebrated our 29th birthday together; she and her two boys were killed in a terrible auto accident. She left behind a very distraught husband and a set of thirteen-month-old boy/girl twins. This event took the whole family by shock;  We had three caskets in front of the altar. I was devastated and could barely breathe. A short time later my 9 year old son is diagnosed with terminal cancer; I had to breathe; I had to put the grief for my twin and her boys on the back shelf…where it stayed for a long, long, time.

My son Kelly died in 1987 after two years of fighting cancer; it won. I was exhausted and on grief overload and I retreated from the world. Lost for awhile lost in excessive work and alcohol I functioned at a base level. A level where there is no joy, no zest, no initiative, no anticipation, just getting done what had to be done. Apathy ruled the day;tears ruled the night. The alarm clock my nemesis. I was not alright.

Eventually I found my path out the darkness of nights and  processed the grief for my son proactively and shared it with the world publically with a book about our journey. Published in 2002 it propelled me into a world of grief and loss I was unaware even existed. I eventually became a national speaker on grief and loss, presenting Proactive Grieving seminars in almost every major US city with for grief support groups, non profits and foundations.

In 2015 I was asked to speak at the Twinless Twins National conference held in Nashville. This was 30 years following the Death of my twin sister. Most of my presentations in those years were with bereaved parents, as my sisters loss was overshadowed by my son’s loss. My grief for my sister was still on the back shelf. Not forgotten; not denied; but postponed, and delayed. Imprisoned by survival in a purgatory of forgotten dreams and nightmares my grief was filed deeply away in the amygdala of my brain…waiting.

I keynoted about my twin, our life, her death, my life before, my life after, my life today, my hopes for tomorrow.