“Funny, insightful, and deeply moving...”
—Kerry Kennedy, author of Being Catholic Now
- Click to buy from:
-
-
-
Jul 2010
7th
Strange but sympathetic
Okay, I know it's creepy and strange, but it moved me nonetheless in terms of twinship and how powerful the bond proves to be.
This week, news reports described the nutty discovery that a 91-year-old woman, Jean Stevens, in Wyalusing, PA had dug up her husband and twin sister to keep their corpses in the house with her for company. She'd missed them and wanted them closer. Especially her twin.
"I think when you put them in the (ground), that's goodbye, goodbye," Stevens told the Associated Press. "In this way I could touch her and look at her and talk to her."
Her sister, June, whose back she rubbed while she was dying of cancer, was well turned out in her "best housecoat," and sprayed with Jean's favorite fragrance.
"I'd go in, and I'd talk, and I'd forget," Stevens said. "I put glasses on her. When I put the glasses on, it made all the difference in the world. I would fix her up. I'd fix her face up all the time."
Yes, it's taking twin love too far, but it goes to something true that I heard over and over again in my interviews with twins: very often, there's something ineffable, unshakable, incomprehensibly deep about the bond between twins, and there isn't always logic -- or even sanity -- to that entwinement.
So Jean and June were back together, even though only one was breathing. Though Jean lost her bearings, it's not beyond understanding. She couldn't let her twin go just yet.
- Category:
This doesn’t have to do with Jean Stevens but I was wondering if there are other identical twins with very different intelligence scores? I read with interest in Abigail’s book that identical twins usually have very similar IQ’s. My identical twin girls scored over 500 points different in their SAT scores. I was wondering if there are other identical twins with similar experiences?
(Coincidentally, my deceased mother-in-law was named Jean Stevens—-kinda weird that I should go to Abigail’s website for the first time today.)
By Laura on Jul 18, 2010