Dear David,

 I'm sorry that you lost your brother, but I'm sure he was around you. there's always a part of our minds that we have trouble accessing--the pre-verbal information we couldn't share with anyone else. He could come and be with you to share time then and I'm sure that he did. he still knows that you think of him and I get the feeling that he has aged along with you in your thoughts of him. I think the fact that both you and your mother survived was what your parents clung to during those first horrible months.

a cousin of my husband had just more months to grieve thanks to ultrasounds, although thank God those were more the blurry kind they had when I was pregnant. They had been expecting fraternal twins and one of them died. It would have put the other twin at more risk to remove the dead twin, so she got to walk around for 2 months knowing she was only carrying one living child. They put all their focus the son that was still going to be with them. it was some form of birth defect with the other twin.

We don't stay infants when we go back to Heaven, just like we don't stay 100 like my Grandma was. It's the age we were when we felt our best--it wouldn't be Heaven to be a baby or to be an outer age that didn't reflect how we felt inside for Eternity.I think that your brother has been keeping pace with you just as he would have  done here so he can still follow your journey with you. It's not the only thing he does, but he does come around.

It is pretty well established that twins have a closer bond with each other, even if they were fraternal twins. I think that works better than being an identical twin because you don't have the problem of being mistaken for the other one all the time. I know that if you can tell which one is which,  it pleases them. And for the people who don't even try...we were supposed to know which twin was which by the color dress they had on. Except they got bored and traded clothes half way through at a family gathering.

Laurie--I read about your son because I knew how much you loved him and I thought that would make another person who knew how special he was and how much he accomplished to help other people during his short time here. not too surprising he's still working on helping people who have been through natural disasters. i just wish there weren't so many to work on right now.