I'm seeing stars. Are you seeing stars?

Today promises to be a b*tch of a day. Thanks to having to pick up Helen at the casino at midnight, I got to bed much later than I intended. And now, for whatever reason, have gotten up a couple hours earlier than I had to.

Sunday, it seems, has devolved into the day that the house gets cleaned and this particular Sunday has, for whatever reason, been designated as the one on which the whole family goes apple picking. Oh yeah, it's because this may be the one Sunday out of the year when Helen isn't working or sitting on her a** at the casino.

Maybe what I need to do is designate one day a week when everyone else is cordially invited to go f*ck themselves.

The Forgotten One

If you do an Internet search based on her name, you'll get maybe three or four hits. All of them mentioning her sister. And if, conversely, you do a search on her sister's name, you'll get literally hundreds of hits, with the same two, three, or four mentioning hers. From the moment of conception, through times of unremitting sorrow, she's been the forgotten one.

At least that's what the search results might lead you to believe. And unless you live in an obscure little town in the midwest, bordered by rivers and innundated by cornfields, there's very little else to go on. Just that endlessly-repeated story of a highway tragedy which, a little less than a year ago, spread like wildfire across the Internet.

While it was breaking, I understood that the story was legitimately about her sister. Still in high school, she'd already had a moment in the spotlight with an individual win in the state color guard championships. (Out where the cold winds blow, unimpeded, across the plains, winter guard is a popular diversion among high school students.)

A year later, as a junior, she'd won a place with the Dubuque Colts and as a senior had been recognized by the Colts as "most improved." It was an honor made more sweet by the Colts' top ten placement, that summer, in the DCI championships.

And then the unthinkable had happened. Driving home from the state winter guard championships, where she'd gone with a friend to cheer for her former teammmates, she made a terrible mistake. One that cost her her life and very nearly that of her friend.

Thankfully, as the story developed, it was managed in such a way that how she had lived, not the way she had died, became her legacy. And, in fact, I had no problem with that. Until I discovered that she had a twin, the forgotten one. 

And maybe that wouldn't have bothered me, maybe I wouldn't have wondered about the forgotten one's story, if it weren't for the fact that I grew up as the older brother of identical twins.

Finally, in a Facebook entry hidden behind one of those would-be clever Facebook names, I found her story. Found it in her own words. Found it to be much as I expected.
 
The truth may be that she's not really forgotten. She does, after all, live in one of those small towns where people know their neighbors, share their values, and are known for sharing whatever else they have in times of need.

Indeed, there are other times and places, other circumstances, in which such selflessness might carry the day. But even before I read her plaintive declaration of incomprehensible loss, of unbearable sorrow, I knew that this was not one of them.

To be an identical twin, and to lose one's literal "other half," is to experience loss of a kind that none of us who wish her well, who wish her fully healed, can begin to imagine.

So yes, if only for the sake of our own humanity, let's continue to offer our comfort and support. But let's not think, because the story has cooled and the weather, for a brief season, has warmed, that this is anywhere close to being over. That it can ever be over as long as she lives.

That is what her Facebook says and that is what she needs us to understand...

LPK
for Celeste