October 5th

Oct 6

Today is October 5th, the day my identical twin sister Erin died 33 years ago. This date is as important a life day to me as my birthday, but it can be hard to talk about because death makes people sadder than birth.

Erin was in the hospital her entire life. They knew something was wrong partway through our gestation and those birth defects turned out to be omphalocele and a complete exstrophy of the cloaca. In layman terms, all of her guts below her diaphragm were spilled out of her bod. This only happens in about 1 in 400,000 births and while it didn’t look great, the doctors were pretty convinced they could fix her and she would be fine. Long, long story shorter– they were human and incorrect, and she got increasingly sicker over the spring and summer, and by the fall she was ready to die.

I don’t like saying I *had* a twin because I still have one, she just isn’t living. Although, I can’t say what my life would be like if I had a living twin, I also can’t say what my life would be like if I didn’t have any twin at all. But I can most certainly see how my life and my family’s lives are different than others because of this experience. For me, it’s been a pathway to questioning existence from a very early age. In many ways, I’ve thought of myself as an anomaly because the same setup, the same DNA, the same EVERYTHING was so messed up for her and so fine for me. She struggled more and was far sicker than I’ve ever been in my life and I’ve always lived with knowing how close I was to being the twin that wasn’t well and the responsibility of being the twin that’s healthy. Being the twin that lives for two.

Although it’s morbid, I do feel relief in knowing that no one’s physical form survives this world. And that’s not even what matters! What really matters are the connections our souls make to one another. And whether those connections last for 6 months before our brains can even remember or an entire lifetime there really isn’t much difference because time is only one lens through which we experience life.

I feel Erin constantly and her soul remains as present in me as my own. I know there is a part of me that isn’t just me but is also completely all that I am, which has transcended further than I alone would be able to go. She is my guide and I am hers as I navigate the physical realm she didn’t experience. It also helps me understand how much we are all connected, not just me and my twin, but every soul physically living or not. One consciousness spread out like the branches of a tree.

Erin lived exactly as long as she was supposed to live. We all have a purpose that we don’t get to understand and I HATE to not understand something. I want to know everything. I want to know why she died, I want to know why I live and I want to know what the point is. But I think the real answer is embedded in the act of asking. We just are because we are, and we all have to make peace with that.

<3 Reb