The Lone Twin

This text takes the reader through the closeness of being a twin, including its negative aspects and their need to be different to one another. But what happens when twins are separated, especially by death? The text examines death and bereavement of twins, including the parental attitudes to the surviving twin, the surviving twin's guilt, coping, bereavement in childhood and adulthood. The book also covers the psychological effects in later life for children who lost their twin at birth. Throughout, the book is illustrated by the words of lone twins themselves.

More than thirty years ago, David Loftus’s cherished identical twin, John, passed away. Ever since, a day hasn’t passed without David feeling the loss. In 1987, after recovering from a brain tumour, John contracted meningitis and found himself back in hospital for treatment. David, as always, was by his side. They were opening their twenty-fourth birthday presents when a fatally miscalculated routine injection forced John into a coma. He died within two weeks. Over the past year, David has spent an hour every day remembering John and recording his story by hand. Diary of a Lone Twin is the product of that daily ritual – a powerful and deeply personal account that covers everything from enchanting and charmingly evoked childhood vignettes to the acute loneliness and raw pain that followed John’s death. In sharing this beautifully written diary, award-winning and internationally acclaimed photographer David Loftus provides a rare insight for anyone who wishes to understand the bond between identical twins, and the unique bereavement of a lone twin that few people will ever experience.

'It's hard to cry with sadness while you're laughing with love' This is the story of a much-loved young woman, who died much too early, and the way that she lived her life in the fullest way she knew, right until the very end. This is the story of my sister Nicole's journey with breast cancer, from her diagnosis to her death. But the story goes beyond that, in the same way that Nicole took everything beyond the ordinary. It's also a story of how she managed to live her life, really live it, in the most expansive definition of the word, the whole way through, right up until her last heartbeat. A woman who turned the intrusion of cancer into her life into something that she used to expand her, that made her bigger in so many ways. It's the story of a woman who looked for the lesson and the gift in every moment, and not only treasured it, but used it to create more. It's the story of what it's like to be the sister of a woman who carried this off. It's the story of how you get through it as an outsider, how you help, how you hinder, and how you come out the other side. Living life with a sister with cancer was a challenging but enriching experience - it changed the way I live my life. I hope reading our story gives you something too.

On her death bed, Laurel Richardson’s older sister whispers a deep family secret about Laurel’s birth. The secret upends Laurel’s life. In this outstanding example of literary sociology, the reader joins Laurel’s search for identity, wholeness, and forgiveness.

The prize-winning, “exceptionally moving” memoir of a family boat trip, an IRA bombing, and a teenager’s loss of his twin brother (The Telegraph). Christopher Ewart-Biggs Literary Award Winner and PEN/JR Ackerley Prize Nominee On an August weekend in 1979, fourteen-year-old Timothy Knatchbull joined his family on a boat trip off the shore of Mullaghmore in County Sligo, Ireland. By noon, an Irish Republican Army bomb had destroyed the boat, leaving four dead. The author survived, but his grandparents, family friend, and twin brother did not. Lord Mountbatten, his grandfather, was the target, and became one of the IRA’s most high-profile assassinations. Knatchbull and his parents were too badly injured to attend the funerals of those killed, which only intensified their profound sense of loss. Telling this story decades later, Knatchbull not only revisits these terrible events but also writes an intensely personal account of human triumph over tragedy—a story of recovery not just from physical wounds but deep emotional trauma. From a Clear Blue Sky takes place in Ireland at the height of the Troubles and gives compelling insight into that period of Irish history. But more importantly, it brings home that while calamity can strike at any moment, the human spirit is able to forgive, to heal, and to move on. “A minute by minute story of what happened that day, and what happened afterwards.” —Daily Mail “This is an extremely moving book. Beyond providing a phenomenally detailed evocation of his own family’s trauma, Knatchbull has lots of wise things to say about how we survive horrors—of all kinds—in our lives.” — Zoë Heller, author of the Booker Prize finalist Notes on a Scandal “A very poignant, clearsighted, heartbreaking but ultimately positive account.” —Hugh Bonneville, The New York Times

This is the first book-length collection to focus on the performance and theatre work of Lone Twin - Gregg Whelan and Gary Winters - a duo recognised internationally as one of the UK's most inventive performance collaborations.Over the past decade they have made over thirty projects located at the cusp of live art, theatre, and performance writing, travelling the world with theatre shows, collaborative public projects, durational events and a six-year cycle of performances about bodies, water, journeys, and chance encounters.The book contextualises, documents and analyses Lone Twin's work. It explores their interest in live performance, journeys, places, language, narrative and image, and includes original interviews, essays, performance texts and photographs. It has been designed to engage creatively and critically with the duo's evolving concerns and diverse modes of practice by adopting a range of theoretical and interdisciplinary perspectives. The collection locates Lone Twin within a contemporary landscape of experimental performance making, and seeks to pay homage, in a deliberately playful manner, to the participatory and optimistic energies that characterise the duo's creative work.

In 1961, Michael Rockefeller, son of then-governor of New York State Nelson A. Rockefeller, mysteriously disappeared off the remote coast of southern New Guinea. Amid the glare of international public interest, the governor, along with his daughter Mary, Michael’s twin, set off on a futile search, only to return empty handed and empty hearted. What followed were Mary’s twenty-seven-year repression of her grief and an unconscious denial of her twin’s death, which haunted her relationships and controlled her life. In this startlingly frank and moving memoir, Mary R. Morgan struggles to claim an individual identity, which enables her to face Michael’s death and the huge loss it engendered. With remarkable honesty, she shares her spiritually evocative healing journey and her story of moving forward into a life of new beginnings and meaning, especially in her work with others who have lost a twin. “The sea change began one November day in 1961. I remember the moment before. A window in the corner of my parents’ living room drew my attention. A windblown branch from an azalea bush scratched the surface of the glass, making a discordant sound. My father stands out clearly, his figure powerful and solid next to the soft, down-pillowed sofa. By the window, my two brothers and I are clustered around my mother, wary, and watching him. It was barely two months since Father had separated from her. And just days before, he’d called a press conference, choosing to publicly expose his affair and his decision to remarry. Father held a yellow cablegram in his hand. Mike, my twin brother, was missing off the coast of New Guinea. Missing . . . The ‘s’ sound. Like a thin knife, it slipped deep inside me. No resistance, just a sharp, knowing pain and then shimmering silence.” —Adapted from Chapter One