Thursday, September 30, 2010

Starting again

Four years. I abandoned this blog four years and some days ago. Trying to inject some life back into my life, I took antidepressants, but found that I couldn't write. Or read -- anything longer than magazine articles seemed impossible to focus on. People kept piling books on me; they're all still sitting on the shelf. Some of it might have been the work as an editor; after reading books all day and trying to fix things in other people's writing, reading for fun is like the busman's holiday.

But fast-forward four years, and I'm no longer on the antidepressants, for good or bad. And I'm thinking more and more of writing, about a lot of things, but mostly about my sister.

So, I should go back and start at the beginning. I don't want to forget it all, even though it is still so hard to accept. It's the most important thing that's ever happened to me, and defines who I am now, here at the middle stages of my life.

People who are at least a little wise know you don't forget a death of a sibling easily. They know you don't just get on with things. There aren't a lot of wise people in my life anymore; by now, everyone expects that I'm supposed to be back to normal. It's been five years, after all. I don't think any loss is that simple, but the loss of a twin makes it so much harder. To figure out how to stand on your own two feet instead leaning on that other back, doing whatever you do together, is something no one ever prepares you for as you discover what twinship is about, every day of your life.

Now I've discovered different things about that twinship as I've gone along without it. What it meant to me being part of that pair, and as an individual. And the nice thing about abandoning this blog is that now there is no one out there who remembers it, and I can write to my Imaginary Reader, to borrow a phrase from a friend. I can tell you, Imaginary Reader, about what it was like to grow up with a twin, what she was like as a person, and what it was like to lose her, and in doing so, remember the things that were important.

So, back to that beginning. The day I first knew she was going to die was the day she called me to tell me that she had a cyst on her ovaries, but that "the doctor isn't worried since I've had them before." But she had a strange, lingering cough, she said, bronchitis that wouldn't go away. And I knew that it was cancer the moment she said that.

Our mom had died from ovarian cancer seven years before. I had learned as much about the disease as I could, and everything Karen told me about her health clued me in. Of course I couldn't say anything, other than that I was concerned, and I hoped that they would schedule the "minor" surgery soon, since they'd already delayed for a long time while the doctor waited for the cyst to disappear.

The thing about the way cancer goes is that you never stop believing, from somewhere deep inside that's impervious to reason or experience, a miracle will happen and the person with cancer will be cured. Even at the moment of their death, you believe that somehow, some way, they will open their eyes and you will all breathe a sigh of relief at this narrow escape from its terrible clutches. Even then, when I first heard she was having surgery, I believed Karen would die, and yet I didn't believe she would -- some way, she would escape it, because she was my twin, and you couldn't lose your twin. It was unimaginable.

Yet there I was, imagining it. Nebulous though it was, the possibility had formed in my mind; in my heart, I knew even then it would come true. It was a probability, a certainty. All I could do was tell her that I could come down if she wanted me to and see her through the surgery, and express my concern that it might be something more, so please be careful. It's pathetic how mundane we are, even when faced with something we know will be terrible.

After that, I waited. I never spoke of what I believed then, nor through the rest of her treatment and death. Over the course of my life, I've kept a lot of terrible secrets for others; this was the first one I kept for myself.