Things Can Only Get Better

Here I am supposed to be preparing for a wedding service and reception of a family friend and I am agonising about the crowd of people I will meet there. The Overseas Fellowship of Nigerian Christians' Conference also started yesterday and we should have been part of it, but again, I am not sure I can cope. I have arrived at a compromise for the wedding, I told my wife I will attend the Church service and celebrate with the couple as they begin a glorious journey into the future.

I am told, things can only get better, am not there yet, but it does help to know I will not always feel like this.

My grieving is not straightforward at all, I can cope with work as if I have completely recovered but when it comes to other occasions am not so good.

I just read an article, which paints a rather extreme position of how I feel, not exactly but close, it states in 'A Singular Pain: When Death Cuts the Bond of Twins' http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/01/fashion/01twins.html:

"When their twin dies, the remaining ones often experience profound survivors’ guilt. They have problems with other intimate relationships. Birthdays bring on mourning, said Dr. Nancy L. Segal, professor of psychology at California State University, Fullerton, and director of the Twin Studies Center.......Those who aren’t twins seem largely unable to appreciate the depth and complexity of twin bereavement, therapists and twins themselves said."

The truth, is that yesterday was a rough day, I thought I was making significant progress, but alas its not the case.

The responses of people have continued to be helpful but am not sure how many of my African friends would see how this could help me or even them in the future, nevertheless, I had to do something and I believe God has led me to this. The reason might be because in Africa we are good at expressing sympathy in the immediate aftermath but thereafter it becomes the elephant in the room, which no one speaks about.

I think the crux of what I am going through is expressed in this quote from the article above:

“Those who come into the world with another person may not think about the possibility that their twin might die apart from them. But almost always, one twin dies before another. From that moment, twins say, the uniqueness of life as a twin carries over into the grief they feel."