Shock, grief, and disquiet
I can think of only two words to describe my day yesterday: bizarre and unsettling.
I should begin by explaining that we rent the top half of a two-family home. My wife and I live in the second floor and half-finished attic while our landlady, Mary, occupies the ground floor and basement. We love Mary because she has always been good and kind to us, often telling us how much she appreciates what good tenants we are. Even so, we have never really developed a close relationship with her or her family, which visits often. She has four middle-aged sons, two of which are identical twins, George and Harry. George lives below us with his mother, and Harry owns and lives in the house next door. We see them together all the time, but haven't yet learned how to tell them apart.
Anyway, Mrs. Happy and I got out of bed yesterday and started getting ready for church. We had slept a little longer than we should have, so I was rushing around brushing my teeth, picking out clothes, etc., when my wife called to me and asked, "Is someone crying?" I knew I wasn't crying, so I looked out a side window and saw about 15 people—including one of the twins, one police officer, and several members of Mary's extended family—loitering in the driveway looking as gloomy as the cold drizzle falling from the gray sky. Then I looked out a front window and saw an ambulance parked in front of the house with no lights going, no siren blaring, and no apparent activity coming from within. Going back to the side window, I observed that everyone's pacing seemed to center around the door immediately below me. With nothing else to go on, I figured someone in my house had died.
I told Mrs. Happy what I saw, and she confirmed my thoughts with her own observations. My mind raced. The death had to be natural, or else there would be more police around, but Mary and George were both equally likely to have died a natural death. Mary is elderly, but in far better health than George. I had not seen Mary outside. I had seen one twin outside, but it might have been either George or Harry. Mrs. Happy claimed to have seen both twins through the window, but then decided that she may have seen the same twin out of two different windows. Everyone outside was crying, but no one was talking, and no one was knocking on our door to let us know what happened.
When we were finally ready for church, we stood at the top of our stairs slightly afraid to walk out into the mournful and subdued chaos below us. As we left the house, we found the one twin in the driveway and respectfully asked what had happened. "My mom passed in her sleep last night," he said. We expressed our sincerest condolences. We stood with him for an awkward moment and, not knowing what more to say, walked to our car. Then began the seriously bizarre and unsettling part of our day.
"Okay, so was it George or Harry?" Mrs. Happy said.
"What do you mean?"
"Which one died? George or Harry?"
"What are you talking about?" I said. "Mary's the one who died."
"Mary? He didn't say Mary! I would've fallen apart on the spot! He said 'My brother passed away in his sleep.' His sleep!"
We talked back and forth for several minutes. Both twins speak with heavy foreign accents, and the one we had just spoken to was emotionally distraught and talking through barely suppressed tears. I had heard him say, "My mom passed in her sleep last night." My wife had heard him say, "My brother had problems with his sleep and he passed in the night." I understand now why many forensics experts say eyewitness testimony is unreliable. We had two completely different recollections of an event that transpired less than five minutes before, and we could not reconcile them.
Neither one of us felt good about going back to the twin and asking him to clarify, but the uncertainty was, as I said before, unsettling. A death in the house would certainly affect our lives, but the effect would be drastically different depending on who died.
I'm running late for work today, so I'll finish this tomorrow.
