My sister Jan died July 17, 2019 at 68½ years old. She had early-onset dementia and for the last 5-6 years she remembered little. I shared a version of this essay at Jan’s funeral.
I was very close to Jan in her early years, you see I’m her Irish twin. An Irish twin is a brother or sister who, though not a true twin, was born less than a year apart from a sibling. Jan and I were born 12 days less than a year apart. (Jimmy Fallon introduced me to the concept of Irish twins, he also is one.)
We behaved very much like twins until we started school and they separated us. As is often the case with twins, we had complimentary personalities. She was the bold and assertive twin and I the quiet and shy one. Jan spoke up for me and stuck up for me. If somebody gave her a cookie, a candy or other treat, she would say, “And one for my brother too!”
We had a pet chicken named Mary Ann. She had escaped from the coop but hung around the barn, knowing where to get grain, water, etc. We taught Mary Ann a few very modest tricks, such as walking on a rolling barrel, and fantasized about making her a circus act.
We both learned to drive tractor at the same time. For whatever reason I figured out the technique for backing a wagon into the shed before Jan did, so she decided that she would handle driving the tractor forward and I would handle those situations in which driving in reverse was required.
In both grade and high school, Jan was always one of the cool kids and I was a hopeless nerd. She tried to help me out by getting her friends to talk to me, but I was hopeless. One time she even went so far as to try to teach me some dance steps for an upcoming dance party. I had no rhythm.
In college she majored in Early Childhood Education and I in Agriculture, so we had no classes together, though we both went to UW Madison. We did share a car so we could go home to help on the farm on weekends, so we talked.
After college I joined the Peace Corps. After I’d been in El Salvador about a year, Jan came to visit. We traveled together and talked a lot. It was somewhat of a role reversal because by then I spoke Spanish (at least at survival level) and she didn’t. So I had to speak for her.
Later I helped her look for jobs at English language schools in Costa Rica. I often think that if we’d been successful she might never have become a Madison firefighter. But that became both her profession and her passion!
I miss Jan a lot. We come from a family of nonhuggers and she taught me to hug! We could always talk; for the last 5 years we haven’t been able to, now it’s permanent.
