Lone twins - the importance of remembering
Few people understand the emotional agonies suffered by twins when one of them dies – even before birth. A support group has now been set up to help them live with their loss But perhaps because Peggy lived a natural life span, Ruby can look realistically at their relationship. They didn’t – as Simon and Patricia have fancied – lead parallel lives. Peggy hated school, Ruby loved it; aged 14 they both sat for art school exams and Ruby passed while Peggy didn’t (“I don’t think she ever forgave me for that”). Shortly after that Peggy asked their father if she could leave school and take on their late mother’s role. “She did it beautifully, whereas I couldn’t cook at all when I got married.”
After the war they both moved, with their husbands and their babies, into their father’s house, which is still Ruby’s home. “We battled like all siblings battle and there was quite a lot of competition about whose baby could stand first, that sort of thing. I don’t think she ever forgave me the fact that my first grandchildren were twin girls.” Nevertheless, they were always close. “She was the same as me but different, we belonged.”
In Ruby’s sitting room there is a small photograph of her twin granddaughters tucked into a larger picture of Ruby and Peggy with their husbands Ron and Gordon all posing together, with the women in very similar dresses. It’s one of the first things you notice when you walk into the house and it immediately shrieks “twins”.
Simon and Patricia have nothing like that, but since they joined LTN both have created mementos for their twins: Patricia’s is a poem that she wrote for Joan, Simon’s a eucalyptus tree in the garden. Both light church candles for their twins, especially when abroad. “I’ve lit them in all sorts of obscure places like a monastery halfway up a mountain in Greece, it makes me feel she’s visited those places too,” says Patricia.
Simon also lit a special candle on his 40th birthday, in a corner of the room in which he was hosting a grand dinner for his friends. “Unlike lots of lone twins I’d never found my birthday particularly difficult, but my 40th completely overwhelmed me.” He sought help from others at LTN and one woman told him she had laid a place for her twin at her 40th birthday. “The candle was a powerful thing for me. One friend asked, almost critically, why it was there, and I felt able to say ‘I don’t care what you think, it’s there for me, not you.’” Written by Serena Allott. The Lone Twin, Understanding Twin Bereavement and Loss by Joan Woodward, is published by Free Association Books (020 7388 3182), at £16.95. Contact the Lone Twin Network by post only at PO Box 5653, Birmingham B29 7JY Read page 1 , page 2 , page 3 of the Lone Twins
This article was created: 4 October 2006.
This article was last edited: 15 February 2007.
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