When I showed up to Alison’s house, I was surprised to be greeted by her twin sister, Amanda. I had the honour of getting to speak with both of them about their experience.

   Alison and her sister Amanda were born in England, and raised in Burnaby. The two grew up going to a variety of different churches so they could learn about different religions and choose for themselves.

   The two twins both studied education at Simon Fraser University, and ended up teaching English as a second language. Last June, Alison had just retired when she was diagnosed with a rare kidney cancer. Amanda said that receiving the news felt disastrous, “a lot of people don’t realise how connected twins are…it felt like it was happening to me as well.” The twins lost their mother at the age of 20, and described it as a shock to the system “In our society, we don’t talk much about death because we’ve chased it away so much, it’s not part of life anymore, even 100 years ago, you had grandma dying for 6 months in the corner of the kitchen…it was part of life, there wasn’t a hospital to stick someone away in tidily…for birth and death, everything’s sort of tidily shoved away into institutions, and so we don’t get to look at it…I think it’s a little bit of a mistake because we end up feeling sort of infallible.”

   There was discussion among the twins about wanting to be positive so as to avoid feeling lost in despair, but also balancing that with feeling what’s real. Alison said that sometimes she had so many people telling her to be positive that it made her feel guilty when she wasn’t feeling positive.

   The importance of family came up again and again. “It’s not me I’m worried about, it’s the grief I bring on my family.”

   When asked how she could make the most of her time, Alison emphasized wanting to spend time with family. Due to work and family, Alison and her sister have lived apart for much of their adult lives, and are now spending as much time as possible together.