Two Years to Live
Was My Identical Twin Brother’s Suicide Also a Death Sentence?
by David Graham-Caso
CONTENT WARNING: SUICIDE & TRAUMATIC GRIEF
It was an obvious recommendation, really — the parallels were eerily specific. Just a few months since my identical twin brother killed himself, someone suggested that I read “Her,” a memoir written by another identical twin whose sibling also died suddenly and tragically.
The reasons for the recommendation soon became clear — the author was using her writing process to help cope with many of the same complicated and unique emotions I had been struggling with since finding out my identical twin brother Kevin chose to end his life last October. Guilt, anger, shame, anxiety, intense depression, and an inexplicably large loneliness all dripped from the early pages of the memoir, and I quickly began feeling hopeful that I would be able to find comfort and a form of companionship in between the covers of the the book.
By the time I reached the end of the first chapter, however, I had found something else. As I read, hoping to find a description of grief that would help me understand my own complicated emotions, I unknowingly barreled head-first into a passage that would plague my subconscious for the foreseeable future. It read:
“I researched our situation and read somewhere that 50 percent of twins follow their identical twin into death within two years. That statistic did not discriminate among cancer, suicide or accident. The second twin goes by illness or the intolerable pain of loneliness. Flip a coin: those were my chances of survival.”
. — Christa Parravani, “Her” page 23
Could this be true? Was my twin brother’s suicide also a prolonged death sentence?
It’s the kind of dubious statistic that is compelling, not just because of the severity of the implications if accurate, but because of its undeniable “truthiness” (the Stephen Colbert-defined term that refers to something that “feels correct”, even if it isn’t actually true). After all, it sounds depressingly plausible that twins often soon follow each other into death. You have to figure that a certain amount of people die of predetermined genetic disorders, and that people with identical genetics would be predisposed to die of those disorders on similar timelines. Of course, the most obvious implication of the statistic is that twins tend to die within a few years of each other because the cataclysmic grief that consumes someone in the wake of such a tragedy leads to the surviving twin following their sibling in suicide. (While this wasn’t something I was concerned about personally, it did make a certain amount of sense). While I have no medical expertise or knowledge (political science major over here), it also stands to reason that grief and stress have physiological affects on the body that could accelerate someone’s demise. Then again, the stat could be bullshit and not based on any research at all (“read somewhere” isn’t exactly a standard citation). “Lies, damned lies and statistics,” indeed.
The thing is, I’m not entirely sure the universe isn’t trying to make sure that if the aforementioned isn’t a real statistic, I help make sure it becomes one.
In the past few months, I’ve tested positive for COVID, nearly went into full renal failure because of massive kidney stones that have required a series of surgeries to treat, and have been diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder. I have gone from a healthy 37-year old to a hobbling precondition in what felt like a nearly overnight slide into disrepair. And with each diagnosis, each new chapter in my rapidly growing tome of medical history, I can’t help but feel the specter of this statistic haunting me, looming nearby and taunting me with my mortality.
The last near-miss, for example, nearly didn’t miss.
On the evening of June 8, I was at home, staying up and waiting for the Loki premiere to become available to watch online, when I began to feel a pain in my lower back. About a week earlier I had noticed blood in my urine and made an appointment with a urologist, but with the large number of people making appointments as COVID lockdowns lifted, I wasn’t going to be able to see a doctor until later in the month. The pain kept getting more intense and I finally decided I needed to wake up my wife to talk about getting me to an emergency room. We called her dad, who lives nearby, to ask for him to come stay at our house with our kids while we got to the ER, but the pain eventually got bad enough that I stopped protesting my wife’s preference to call an ambulance and paramedics arrived soon afterwards.
Within the next few hours I would have my first ever ride to the hospital in an ambulance, my first time ever visiting the emergency room as a patient, and my first ever time having to be admitted to the hospital. The CT scan showed that my left kidney has been blocked by a massive stone — likely for a very long time — and was not functioning at all. That wasn’t the source of the pain, however. The pain was coming from a series of what looked like two stones in my right kidney that had Voltron’d their way into a large blockage in my right ureter, luckily still allowing a small gap in the center of their formation. Without that gap and the one working kidney to fall back on, I would have been looking at full renal failure and, as the doctor told us, it is very likely that my wife saved my life by ignoring my objections to calling an ambulance and getting me to the ER. (This has left me both terrified, and eternally grateful and appreciative that the love of my life is such an amazing person.)
A few tele-health meetings with specialists later and I began a series of surgeries to get the stones out of my functioning kidney and then relieve the pressure on my bad kidney, before finally removing the stone that is presumably large enough to require a melodramatic mission made up of drilling experts and an Aerosmith song to break up. After that, they will be able to test how well my kidneys operate under more normal circumstances and see if it is a better idea to either keep or remove the kidney that has been so severely damaged.
The ordeal has been painful and frightening, but more than that it has been a foreboding reminder of that damned statistic. I can’t help but think about the Pythic prophecy from “Her,” and whether or not I get to have a say in the matter of if I live more than two years past my brother’s death. The last thing I want to do is follow the example of King Laius and end up unintentionally forcing my fate in the attempt to avoid it (really would prefer to avoid any associaiton with that story all-together, thank you very much). Maybe it is the competitive spirit ingrained in identical twins, but the more I feel that specter peeking from the shadows, the more I’m inclined to act in a way that shoves the statistical likelihood of my death in the next two years directly down that haunting idea’s personified throat.
I don’t know if it is true that “50 percent of twins follow their identical twin into death within two years.” But I know that I am going to do everything I can to make sure I tip the balance of that 50–50 hypothetical to favor a long life for survivors.
My brother liked the phrase “throwing your cap over the wall,” a fable we first heard paraphrased by President Jed Bartlet on the West Wing. The story was about young travelers, who when confronted with a seemingly insurmountable obstacle in the way of their journey, tossed their favorite hats over the wall, knowing that they now HAD to figure out a way over. It was about committing yourself to something you weren’t yet sure how you were going to accomplish, and Kevin usually referred to it when making big life decisions.
So let this be my cap over the two-year, most likely bullshit statistical wall that has become such a specter haunting my subconscious. Regardless of the odds of seeing the other side, I think it is worth committing to doing what I need to do to stay healthy and living. To follow the doctor’s orders for life with one good kidney, and to make sure I continue with the therapy, medication, and grief work that has helped me get this far. Most of all, I am going to continue enjoying and holding close the daily reminders of why it is so important that I hurdle over that wall — the people who love me and make my world an amazing place.
Will my twin brother’s suicide change me forever? Undoubtedly and indisputably. But was my twin brother’s suicide also a death sentence? Not if I have anything to say about it.
I’ll let you know in October of 2022 how it worked out.
Read more about my brother here: https://variety.com/2021/film/news/scott-rudin-kevin-graham-caso-assistant-1234954914/
