A sister is a gift to the heart, a friend to the spirit, a gold thread to the meaning of life.
- Isadora James
What can I say about my heart? For that’s what she is – my heart. In the dark, sacred silence of the womb, before we were born, our souls met and were united.
Before the world laid eyes on us, I knew her. I shared with her my secrets. And she, in turn, shared hers.
Six and a half months later, we were born into the screaming brightness of the noisy world. Puny and weak, we weighed less than five pounds put together. Even so, a battle, staggering in enormity, was waging war for our lives.
After giving the blessings of God, along with the last rites, the attending priest shook his head and watched as nurses gently placed us in the same incubator.
We almost died that first night, but we didn’t. The priest stayed with us, and he prayed throughout the long, weary hours.
The county hospital in Ellensburg, Washington, became our second home for the first two years of our lives. Jenny had problems with her heart. I had problems with my lungs. During those two years, the staff constantly separated Jenny and me, when they’d find me almost suffocating Jenny in my clinging effort to be close to her.
Then one day, miraculously, the long battle for our lives suddenly ended.
We were given clean bills of health. We were allowed to leave the hospital.
And so our new lives began.
Jenny and I shared everything. When we got mumps at seven years of age, Jenny got hers on the right side of her face; I got mine on the left. In the same bed, we wiled away our time by telling jokes. Though it hurt to laugh, we laughed anyway, because instinctively we knew it proved to be good medicine.
When my first tooth was pulled, the same day in a different city, Jenny had her first tooth pulled. We had measles and chicken pox and everything else in between as we grew up, and we had them at exactly the same time. Throughout it all, we laughed. We laughed because our illnesses, like everything else we shared, were experiences that proved to make us strong.
She is dark, Jenny, my twin. I am fair. She is stormy. I am sunny. We are opposite sides of the same coin. Totally different, yet completely the same. Seriously devoted to one another’s welfare, we have a serious way of looking at life, but we also have seriously crazy funny bones. There is uncanny unspoken communication between us. All that’s needed to send us into gales of laughter is a raised brow, a dimpled cheek or the subtlest nuance of the slightest glance. At these times, people look at us askance wondering what they missed. There is no point telling because there is no understanding.
An early marriage of mine went bad. As a single mother feeling helpless, I appealed to Jenny. She came to the rescue. She moved in with my daughter, Lisa, and me, and she helped raise my daughter. In those early years, Jenny proved herself strong. She was unselfish and giving, and she worked tirelessly to keep the three of us thriving.
When Jenny married some years later, though I was happy for her, I felt abandoned, emotionally forlorn, spun out of orbit. It was a frightening experience to feel alone in the world. With her out of my life, I felt flat, as if part of me was missing. Everything became dull for me, without color, without substance. It was then I wondered, belatedly, how it had been for her in the years when I had been married.
Eventually, Jenny asked if I would move to the same town so I could be near her. I complied gladly.
I was fortunate. I was just in time for Jenny’s first son, Orion, to be born.
When complications arose with her second son, Lenny, it was Jenny’s prayers that trounced the strong arms of death that tried to wrest him out of her arms.
Today the boys are strong and growing, and Jenny and I, still living in the same town, are as entwined with each other as ever. After half a century of life, like fine old wine, we are blended, taste and flavor, aroma and color, enjoying the fine mixture of who we have become.
But last week, Jenny found a lump. The doctor said it could be cancer. In her car, we held hands and prayed.
As I looked out the windshield at the snow falling so quietly and gently as if it didn’t want to disturb our silent shock, I remember thinking that having Jenny in my life was something I had, taken for granted. Maybe it was because she had always been there. Whatever the reason, Jenny not being in my life was something I could not compute. We were too tied, too welded, too one.
With a sense of unreality swirling around us, we talked about death, of what to do after, in case the verdict turned bad.
Her boys would become my boys, the sons of my own heart. Her concern for them would become my concern, she told me.
“Of course, how could it be anything else?” I answered, surprised that she felt that she had to ask. “But Jenny,” I added sternly, looking her in the eye, willing her to strength, “you are not going to die. Not yet.”
Bowing our heads, we again prayed, asking for grace, and then lifting our heads, we looked at each other in complete understanding. That sense of preciousness grew as we talked and prayed and watched the snow fall, until, with aching sweetness, it overflowed, spilled, gushed out of our heavy hearts. Twin preciousness. It gave us hope.
We held hands, our eyes never leaving the face of the other.
I hold Jenny now, more than ever. And she holds me. We will be each other for eternity.
- Janet Hall