OUR DAUGHTER’S TWIN SISTER DIED AT NINE DAYS OLD AND WE HID IT FOR 18 YEARS — AT HER PARTY MY HUSBAND BROUGHT SOMETHING FROM THE GARAGE AND SAID, “I STARTED IT THE NIGHT SHE DIED.”
My daughter had a twin sister who died nine days after we brought them home, and for eighteen years we let her believe she had been born alone.
Rosie was eleven minutes younger.
Six pounds, one ounce.
The coroner wrote SIDS, which means nobody did anything wrong.
That turned out to be the hardest part.
If somebody had made a mistake, I could have hated them.
If a doctor had missed something, I could have blamed the hospital.
If I had rolled over in bed or forgotten a feeding or done one terrible, irreversible thing, I could have spent the rest of my life punishing myself for something specific.
Instead, our baby went to sleep.
And didn’t wake up.
There was no villain.
Just an empty crib.
I took that crib apart myself while my husband, Daniel, was at the funeral home.
By the time he came back, the mattress was gone, the sheets were in a trash bag, and the wooden frame was stacked against the garage wall.
Daniel stood in the doorway staring at it.
“You took it apart.”
“I couldn’t look at it.”
He nodded.
Then he went into the garage and closed the door.
That was the first time.
For the next eighteen years, every September 9th, my husband disappeared into that garage for about an hour.
I never asked why.
I thought I knew.
I didn’t.
Our surviving daughter was named Hannah.
For nine days, I had two daughters.
Then suddenly everybody behaved as though I had one.
That wasn’t cruelty.
It was survival.
Hannah was nine days old.
She couldn’t understand death.
So we told ourselves we’d explain when she was older.
Then she was five.
You don’t sit a kindergartner down and say:
“You had a twin sister, but she died beside you before you were old enough to remember her.”
