Twins

I feel like there are two ways of dealing with Connor's loss as it pertains to Colby.

Of course, the path we chose was to remember Connor and to live our day with his memory.  This means that we have a little "shrine" to Connor in our bedroom.  It has his ashes, pictures, bookmarks my brother made with his picture, flowers from his service, a poem, his turtle, a precious moments, and my turtle "bus" (when I was just a few months pregnant with the boys my mom and dad went to FL on vacation and, since I love turtles, my mom got me a souvenir that was a "stack" of turtles.  It has 5 turtles, but our family only had 4, so my mom told me the bottom turtle was our "bus" and the other 4 were Johnny, me, and the two babes).  We talk about Connor often and we plan on telling Colby about his big brother.  We don't want Connor's memory to "dominate" Colby's life because we want him to know that he isn't any less important just because his brother passed away, but we do want him to know his brother is important too.  And watches over him.  I'll always tell Colby he has a brother and I hope he understands and is proud to have Connor as a brother.

The other choice we had was to pretend that Connor did not exist at all.  We could hide his memories and we could chose not to let Colby know he had a brother- a twin.  I can't bear the thought of this choice, but I do often wonder about it.  I have found myself wondering for a long time what it would be like if we chose this path.  By that I mean, without anyone telling him, would Colby know he had a twin?  Would he know that something (someone) was missing?  You hear all the time about the connectedness of twins, so I wonder how true it is and if it pertains to IVF fraternal twins?  ...  My curiosity isn't worth the pain it would bring me, but it's just something I think about.  

Remember the book I talked about? The Colby Chronicles book from Christmas?  Although every entry touched me, I often think about what my cousin's wrote.  I could go grab the book, but then I might disturb Colby who is peacefully sleeping, so instead I'll go from memory.  My cousins talked to Colby about the connection that he and his brother share.  That, although Connor isn't here, he is still an important and integral part of Colby.  That forever Colby and Connor knew each other first and knew each other the best, that Connor couldn't be Connor without Colby, and Colby couldn't be Connor without Connor.  (It was written so much better by my cousins!)  Their words were exactly what I always want Colby to understand: That the two of them are forever linked, forever brothers.  And for that reason, I could never pretend that Connor didn't exist because, though Colby is his own person (and an exceptionally amazing one at that), he is who he is because of his past- because of his brother.

Look at those eyes!  And the drool...