Story

Once upon a time I had a mother. She was born on Christmas day sixty-two years ago. She had three children: A son born in 1971; a daughter born in 1974; and another son stillborn in 1974--my twin brother.

At my mom's memorial, one of her colleagues (an anesthesiologist she worked with), asked me, "Who was the one with the twin?" The question caught me off guard and I stumbled over lists in my head. Relatives. Friends. Brother or sister pairings she may have mistaken for twins. And then finally: "Oh! That was me!" And then, more sullenly, "That was me." "She talked about the twin a lot when we worked the OR together," she explained.

I never did learn the story about how my twin brother had died. When I was little, I would ask my mom whether it was my fault. "Did I eat all the food inside your belly? Did I take up all the space?" My mom always assured me that I hadn't, but she would stop short of saying anything more. I don't know how long he lay by my side without a heartbeat.  I don't know what my mom was like during those first few months of raising me without him. I don't know. We never spoke about it.

Years later, after she was diagnosed with cancer, she would ask the air what it would have been like if he had lived. Years later from that, this past June and standing in front of the hospital where she was receiving yet another albumin infusion, I had the same thought. It was as if that missing something--another shoulder for both of us to cry on--was what was making life so much harder than it needed to be.

And maybe life would have been easier if we were able to take up that narrative thread instead of this fraying one. Maybe. But who knows. What we have is what is. We're driven by the narratives we envision, but only live out just the one. Choose your own adventure--or perhaps more like a mad lib. So tempting to go back and make it play out better, sound better, look better, feel better.

And so we live [insert adverb] ever after.