Lone twins - feeling cheated
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 Joy Gillespie, who is 60, feels cheated too. Her twin Roy (“You can’t say Mum didn’t have a sense of humour, we were Roy Barry and Joy Beryl – ‘Roy Boy’ and ‘Joy Bell’”) died of cancer when they were 44. “I still feel very bitter that he hasn’t been around to see his children grown and settled, and his grandchildren. He should have been here to celebrate our 50th and 60th birthdays.” (Joan Woodward’s book quotes a woman in her seventies whose identical sister died when they were in their forties: “It was decreed by my mother – at the funeral service – that January 7 would no longer be acknowledged as the twins’ birthday, as there were no longer twins! The date therefore was of no consequence and would no longer be recognised as a birthday.)
Joy’s mother used to dress her twins in matching clothes but – as is usual – they each had their role to play. Roy was the scientific one, Joy was artistic; she was bold where he was shy. From their mid-teens Joy and Roy had been mates; her girlfriends almost considered him “one of the girls”.
“The older we got the closer we became, I could tell him anything; if I was really fed up I could talk to him, he was part of me,” Joy says. When she was pregnant with her first child he had morning sickness; when she went into labour he was admitted to hospital with suspected appendicitis. “I could tell when he was going to phone, and I always knew when he wasn’t feeling well, even if we weren’t together.”
On the day he died the hospital had decided to discharge him: no more could be done and they needed his bed. “I’d gone to the Red Cross to pick up a commode for him when suddenly I felt cold and the hairs on my arms stood on end. I said to the woman I was talking to, ‘I won’t be needing this, he’s gone.’” He left her a locket which she never wears: “It’s too precious, I’m afraid I might lose it,” she says.
“We were both pretty sensitive, but I didn’t realise till the end how strong he was. I just went to pieces when he died. I think that had quite a lot to do with the breakdown of my marriage; my husband kept saying I had to pull myself together but it was like I’d had an arm severed. I lost interest in everything and didn’t want to go out and eventually he met someone else.”
For several years Joy felt that as cancer had claimed Roy it would take her too. “Whenever I had a pain I’d think ‘that’s it, I’m going to die’ and in fact the doctor did say I should have a chest X-ray.” This sort of fear is common among surviving twins, although when I put this to Ruby Colson, 85, whose twin sister Peggy died of cancer when she was 79, she dismisses it briskly. “I’m me,” she says. “I didn’t think I’d get it too.”
Ruby claims that Peggy was the dominant twin, but admits that – answering a research questionnaire, Peggy said she was. Peggy was sensible and practical, she looked after her “little” twin sister and was always one step ahead. “Even when we were small she never stopped talking. I’m only beginning to realise now that I can get a word in edgeways and she died six years ago, can you believe that?” She still feels bereft, particularly when anything important, anything she would once have shared with Peggy, happens. Ruby and Peggy had telepathic moments, sending each other the same birthday present, buying the same dress. Written by Serena Allott Read page 4 of the Lone Twins
This article was created: 4 October 2006.
This article was last edited: 15 February 2007.
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