Natalie M.
Natalie M.
Natalie M. is a writer from California. She is now a senior in college, studying Film, Political Science, and Creative Nonfiction. She has loved writing as long as she can remember, and got her start writing stories in crayon about her stuffed animals. Now, she writes nonfiction essays, film and television scripts, and comedy sketches. She is active in her college's comedy scene, and loves writing that toes the line between the silly and the serious.
If my brother ever dies
I am a skeptic, and an atheist. I do not believe in ghosts or miracles or that Jesus was the son of god. But I believe that if my brother ever died, I would wake up with a jolt. With a sudden ache, or a stab in the gut, or a pounding, wailing heart. I believe that in my nightmarish sweat, under the wash of the moon, I would feel him go. I believe that my body would know before my mind. Sometimes when I wake up with a stomachache or a cramp I wonder if my brother has died. But then I go back to sleep peacefully, because if he did, I wouldn’t wonder, I would know.
My brother was born one minute before me, and he never lets me forget it. “When I was your age, it was 12:06,” he’ll say at 12:07. “When I was your age, the light was still red,” he’ll say as the light turns green. When I tell people I have a twin brother, they ask me if we look the same, even though fraternal twins share the same amount of DNA as regular siblings. No one is ever satisfied with this answer. “But you’re still twins,” they’ll respond, as if our joint sojourn in the womb should have shaped our appearances somehow. I’ve become irrationally defensive of the science behind this matter. We are not identical. Yet, when I see a photo of us together, I notice something uncannily similar about the way the light hits our eyes.
My brother is slender and pale with dark brown curls and a goatee that I wish he would shave. My brother wears cable knit sweaters, combat boots, and corduroy pants. My brother collects propaganda from former Soviet countries. My brother speaks Russian. My brother likes old, pretentious whiskey. Maybe because of the taste, or maybe because it’s old and pretentious. My brother thinks that lots of people are stupid. My brother doesn’t like anything just because he’s supposed to. My brother is unbearable to watch Jeopardy with, or play trivia against. My brother has just recently accepted that he has to greet old relatives with a hug. My brother and I order the same meals at restaurants. We must have synched our palettes in the womb. My brother always keeps about three close friends. He makes friends easier with women than with men. My brother adores our mom. My brother is a libertarian at heart, but his socialist girlfriend has been swaying him. My brother and I both like Seinfeld, crosswords, and espresso. My brother and I hate the same parties, but I will make an effort to appear social, while my brother will occupy a corner on his own. He’ll catch my eye across the room and grin at me, pleased with himself for detecting that I’m not having fun. My brother is me if I didn’t pretend.
. . .
When my brother was younger, he wanted to die. He would bang his little head against the wall and proclaim “I wish I were dead.” He would draw himself sprawled on the ground with x’s for eyes and a small, pink tongue protruding pathetically from his mouth. Sometimes he would draw the cause of his death as well: a fiery explosion or a ferocious piranha or the incompetent plane that dropped him to his tragic, if whimsical, fate. But the focus was never on the disaster, the malfunction, the beast. The focus was on him: stick-limbed and crudely crayoned, and undoubtedly, fantastically, dead. For the sake of my parents, who received these drawings, it’s a good thing my brother wasn’t a very good artist. It’s a good thing he had only a cartoonish notion of death. Then again, maybe if he knew what it really meant to be dead–that he wouldn’t be an x-eyed stick but a cold, bloated, puppet of himself–he wouldn’t have made these drawings. Maybe, I hope, if he had understood death, he wouldn’t have dreamed to die.
These drawings landed my brother in our elementary school’s “Friendship Circle.” It was a lunchtime discussion group for troubled children, led by the school counselor, where I’m positive no friendships were ever made. It was for dorks and losers, and my brother quickly talked his way out. I’m not sure if Friendship Circle cured my brother of his desire to die, or just taught him to hide it better if he wanted to eat lunch in peace.
. . .
My brother learned to read in his closet. Eager to catch up to me, but reluctant to admit it, my brother taught himself. Alone, in the middle of the night, by the glow of a flashlight and behind two closed doors. My parents were stunned to discover he had been doing this, and even more stunned to realize it had worked. My brother doesn’t like to be seen trying. I wonder what else he has struggled with alone in the dark.
. . .
My brother is particularly accident-prone. Many late-night emergency room visits were made on his behalf. When he was six, my brother slipped in the shower and busted open his head. My parents dropped me and my sister off at the neighbors’, and took my brother to get his skull stapled back in place. Once we knew he was fine, the whole thing became a joke. Staples in his head. But no matter how many times my brother explained it, the accident never quite made sense. The bloody indent suggested he had hit something sharp, but the floor of his shower was flat. One time, he said hit the shower handle, but the next time, he said it was the door. My parents insisted he take them to the shower, the scene of the crime, and help them understand what had gone wrong. He tried, but it just didn’t track. The force of the mystery dissipated with my brother’s scar. The questions were abandoned, unanswered. How had he fallen? And why hadn’t he screamed?
When my brother was 12, he hit his head on a rock jumping off the swings. When he was 15, he got a vicious sunburn on his entire body, and left trails of flakes for weeks. When he was four, he snuck off the train at the wrong stop. I’ll never forget the fire in my mother’s scream when she noticed him gone, right as the doors unceremoniously closed. He would have disappeared into London had the conductor not opened them again. When my brother was five, he opened the car door right into his face. When he was two, I bit him (that’s on me). When he was 13, he got a concussion. When he was 18, he got a concussion. When he was 19, he got a concussion. When he was seven, he sleepwalked out of our hotel room, down the elevator, into the lobby, and out to the streets of Munich, Germany at 2am. When he was one, I pushed him out of our crib. My brother is good at getting hurt, and getting lost. He’s good at giving our mother a scare.
. . .
When I was 16, it rained in the summertime. This was an unusual occurrence in my dry California hometown. Lightning flashed and trees shook like scared chihuahuas and the sky bellowed at us to stay inside. My brother, also 16, had not come home. He was working his summer job at the kayak rental stand, down by the lake. There was no cell signal, and he was already an hour later than he said he’d be. My mother paced around, fretting, as if each step could beckon him closer. Finally, she decided to drive. I don’t know what she expected to find: my brother’s thunderkissed body soggy in a ditch somewhere? My dad, in defiance of what he saw as my mom’s needless worrying, refused to join. I went with her. I was not afraid, because I knew in my body that he was not dead. I sat silently in the passenger’s seat of the car, which shook like the trees in my mother’s anxious hands. Soon, we would get a call that my brother had come home, that he was upright and warm and spared by the storm. But we hadn’t yet, so my mother was afraid. She drove recklessly, her eyes glued to some distant point in the darkness where she imagined my brother just barely alive. My mother would not have been so worried if it was me or my sister who hadn’t come home. Not because she loves us any less, but because it has always seemed more likely that my brother could be dead.
I, like my mom, feel a duty to ensure that no one in my family dies. I read once that people over 45 shouldn’t shovel snow because of the risk of cardiovascular death. The cold temperature constricts the blood vessels, increasing blood pressure, and reducing oxygen delivery to the heart. The physical exertion of shoveling elevates the heart rate, creating what experts call a “perfect storm.” At our new house in Massachusetts, my dad shovels snow in his 60s. Last time I was home, I watched crime shows on the couch while he cleared the driveway. I checked on him during every commercial break to make sure he hadn’t died. I peeked out the window to confirm his body was still vertical, and not sprawled on the asphalt in a fit of cardiovascular rage. I should’ve just offered to shovel the snow myself.
. . .
In 1996, three scientists studied what people believe about worrying, and sorted the beliefs into negative and positive consequences. People believe that worrying disrupts their lives, worsens their problems, and causes them emotional distress. “Worrying stops me living for a moment,” someone said. People also believe worrying can motivate them and help their analytical thinking. “In order to get something done I have to worry about it.” None of these beliefs are wrong. Worrying can lead to anxiety, poor coping, delayed problem-solving, and lower confidence. It also leads to productive coping and information-seeking. What more, these beliefs are not mutually exclusive–many people believe worrying both hurts and helps. Worrying is rife with paradoxes, and it confounds researchers. The study didn’t specify how it defined “belief.” Do people really believe two contradictory things? Or do they believe one thing, and know another?
Sudden death is rare in the young. It can be caused by various conditions–hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, long QT syndrome, Brugada syndrome–none of which, I believe, my brother has. However, on the freakiest of days, when god is frowning upon the world just wrong, sudden death can be caused by a forceful hit to the chest. By a baseball, an elbow, or a knee. If the hit occurs within a certain window in the heart signaling cycle–a window that lasts only fifteen milliseconds–it can trigger ventricular fibrillation. The heart beats so fast it doesn’t pump blood. The victim collapses. He might call for his mother, or god, if he can. He might pray, he might regret. The organs cry out for oxygen. Cells begin to die. The brain is the first to go. It swiftly sweeps out the thoughts, the hopes, the flaws, and closes its doors. The other organs last longer–the liver, up to two hours–but what is a person without their brain? On the freakiest of days, if a person is hit in the chest, he can die within six minutes. His mother is jolted awake from a nap. His sister is slammed with a sudden wave of nausea. They wonder why, god why, he wasn’t hit fifteen milliseconds later? They wonder what might’ve been if they had only worried.
…
Most scientists dismiss the idea that twins have any kind of telepathy. But some have tried to prove it. A 2013 study employed four sets of identical twins, exposing one twin to stimuli–like loud noises or heat–and monitoring the other’s physiological responses. While most of the twins’ responses were ambivalent, or could be accounted for by chance, one of their responses was uncanny. The twin felt what his twin felt.
In 2024, Swedish researchers performed a similar study. Over 91 trials, one twin received a stimulus, while the other’s electrodermal activity was monitored. A blind judge was able to guess when one twin was stimulated, from the other twin’s skin, in 18 of the 91 trials.
Nearly double what chance would expect. The participants themselves were not aware when their twins were being stimulated. Their bodies knew what their minds did not. Scientists acknowledge that twins can be deeply attuned to each other’s thoughts and feelings. They can mirror each other’s behavior, and share in each other’s pain, in a way that’s nothing short of miraculous. However, scientists attribute this not to telepathy, but to shared DNA and upbringing. My mother agrees that my brother and I’s bond is one of shared experience. “If you’ve been through all your years together,” she says, “in the same relation to the same other people, your experience is more like each other’s than anybody else’s.” Of course, studies on telepathy focus on identical twins. My brother and I are not. I lack his height, goatee, and performatively deep voice. He lacks my pink skin and ability to bear a child. We share only half our DNA–a completely unremarkable amount–and thus are not of interest to researchers. Scientifically, our residence in the womb together is nothing of note. It was just the first of many shared experiences.
. . .
When my brother and I were little, we passed the summertime together. We were too young for jobs, but old enough to be left home alone, in a suburban neighborhood isolated from other children our age. We watched sitcoms, we built forts, we walked dogless to the dog park to play with other people’s dogs. Sometimes joined by our older sister (though she was often too cool), we Razor-scootered around the same looping blocks until our ankles turned to dust or one of us scraped a knee. We cooked tortellini, we made movies, we crafted potions, we invented worlds where monsters were real but never actually bit. We rode bikes, we started a lemonade business, we dirtied our shoes in the wet, itchy grass. Even then, it crossed my mind that these
hours spent with my brother were some of the best. But I never told him, and he never told me. These thoughts were too kind to be said aloud.
Now, my brother and I are always a plane trip apart. Our parents moved from California to Massachusetts, away from the monuments to our youth. I see him a few times a year, but often have to settle for the gravelly, two-word sentences he cranks out over the phone. . . .
“When they’re little,” my mother says, about her children, “you worry about their health, because they do things like eat batteries, and when they’re crying, they can’t tell you what’s wrong.” Now that we’re in our twenties, she worries about car accidents and plane crashes. Kidnappings and roofies and secret fentanyl. Sharks, alligators, riptides, storms. Bad people, bad choices, bad timing, bad luck. My mother tracks flights and glues her eyes to the window when someone’s later than expected. She maintains a steady diet of crime shows and tragic news stories so she can text us, “don’t go to Miami” or, “don’t do drugs.” “If I can understand how and why this happened, I can prevent it,” she believes. My mother’s anxieties manifest in a recurring dream. “I dream that I have to go to the bathroom, but all the toilets are in the hallway in a public place. And they’re already full of poop, all the way up to the top. I have to poop in the hall, and it just keeps coming. There’s no end to it.” We laugh as she tells me this. I’m no Freud, but it seems my mother is afraid.
My anxieties don’t craft any toilet-related dreams. Instead, I lie awake. I think about the people I love and what could hurt them. I think about the fleshy gadgets that comprise us all and how easily they glitch. I think about miracles, which I don’t believe in, and heaven, which I believe in even less. I curse myself for not believing in anything that could bring me peace. What
brings me peace is thinking. Thinking the monsters away. I don’t believe in a god protecting my family, but I believe in myself, wide-eyed and woeful and worrying into the night. . . .
The 1996 study about the believed consequences of worrying compared these beliefs with measures of psychological health. The belief that worrying hurts is correlated with psychopathology. But so is the belief that worrying helps. Another paradox. However, no one is worse off than the people who believe it hurts and helps. Can you imagine the cycle? Can you imagine the way it twists your brain? These people experience more depression, anxiety, and negative cognitions. These people worry themselves insane.
I once told my mother she ought to worry less. “Worrying,” I hypocritically preached, “doesn’t do anything.” She was quick to reply, “Yes, it does.” There’s a magic to the way my mother and I worry. It’s as if we can worry events in or out of existence. If we pace enough steps, lose enough sleep, Google enough symptoms, we can keep hearts beating, blood flowing, cells alive. Apparently, we’re falling victim to the logical fallacy post hoc ergo propter hoc, which assumes causation between events simply because one follows the other. My brother hates logical fallacies, so he hates worrying.
“I wouldn’t worry about something I can control,” he says. “I’d just control it.” “What about things you can’t control, like sudden death?” I ask.
“Sudden death is the ideal outcome, in terms of ways of dying.”
“Even at your age?”
“Well, would I know I’m dying?”
“No, but doesn’t the idea bother you?”
He pauses for a moment. And then: “‘I’m careful. I look both ways when I cross the street. I do what I can to prevent sudden death, but, shit happens. I’d rather get hit by a bus than die over 18 months of cancer. I think most people would.”
“You don’t want to tie up your loose ends?” I ask, in a plea for him to treasure his life as much as I do.
“No,” he says. “Absolutely not.”
My brother thinks that there’s no need for me to worry. But I have always worried and he has never died.
. . .
My mother knew we were twins before the doctor did. She can’t quite say how. She didn’t feel two eggs depart her ovaries. She didn’t count placentae. She didn’t hear our heartbeats through her organs, flesh, and skin. But when she saw a pair of hearts on the fuzzy sonogram screen, she grinned with satisfaction. Her body had known before her mind, and before my dad, who was indignant. “This is ridiculous,” he asserted, after the doctor left the room. “This guy doesn’t know what he’s talking about.” My dad is a man of science, but here, he couldn’t face it. We like to remind him of this story, especially now. Now that we’re grown–that we’re two whole people with friends and enemies and diplomas and facial hair–his denial seems even more laughable. Of course we were twins. What else would we be?
. . .
Many mothers of twins say they “just knew.” It’s a gut feeling, or a uterine feeling, more accurately. Some women know because of how sick they are, how big they get, the wear on their bodies from housing two. For others, it comes in dreams. They dream there’s two of everything:
two trees, two doves, two moons. I wonder if these mothers really knew, or if they just think they knew because they turned out to be right.
. . .
My mother recently sent me a photo of my brother holding an AK-47, a type of assault rifle that often finds its way into the news. The photo was taken at a bar in Latvia, where my brother is studying abroad, where he has found himself quite lonely. “Your brother found a bar with decommissioned weapons,” my mother’s text read. “Apparently, after two drinks, he can assemble an AK in less than a minute.” There is nothing inherently disturbing about the photo, yet, in looking at it, I cannot help but feel disturbed. I know my brother has a penchant for vintage weaponry. I know he’s a know-it-all with fast hands and a high tolerance for booze. I know he has a good mother and a gentle, rational mind. But the photo looks like any other photo of a young man holding a gun. Like the villain in one of my crime shows or my mother’s tragic news feed. He’s lanky and pale with overgrown curls and an itchy-looking beard. The bright light on his face illuminates a smattering of acne that suggests an incomplete prefrontal cortex, and his eyes, which look just like mine. He wears a cable-knit sweater, khakis, and a leather jacket he showed me over Facetime. He stands shoulder-width apart, against a background of faceless drinkers, and holds an AK-47 as naturally as I hold a pencil. He doesn’t smile–he never does–but he is happy. When I look at the photo, I see x’s in his eyes.
. . .
The 1996 study conceptualized two different kinds of worrying. The constructive kind, that helps us do our tasks, raise our children, look both ways to cross the street. And the pathological kind, that keeps our eyelids droopy and puts a jitter in our hands during heavy storms. The researchers didn’t find evidence, however, that these types of worrying are functionally any different. That you can have one without the other. That you can set your alarm for work and then sleep without wondering what monsters lurk nearby.
. . .
Something is always wrong with my mother, at least, according to her. Her hand has a lump. Her skin bleeds spontaneously. Her elbow needs surgery. Her joints are all wrong. My mother is healthy, and only 52, but she sees a dermatologist, a sports medicine doctor, and a hand surgeon, in addition to her gynecologist and primary care physician. My mother is a seasoned worrier (I learned from the best). I don’t have to worry about her because she worries about herself.
My mom tells me I worry the most of all her children. “It’s just built-in,” she says. She thinks that my brother worries but doesn’t share it. He worries alone in the dark. My sister hardly worries at all. “Do you worry about me less, because I worry more?” I ask my mother. “No,” she responds, “I don’t trust any of you to worry about yourselves.”
Alzheimer’s runs in my dad’s family. There is a test that could determine if he carries the gene, a test he refuses to take. He doesn’t want to know. My dad once received a calendar from the Alzheimer’s Association. He almost hung it up in his office. Then, he realized that the calendar was informative: on every page, there was a warning sign for Alzheimer’s, or a tip for preventing the disease. He threw the calendar away. “I don’t want to worry about that,” he said, which means I must.
. . .
Research shows, unsurprisingly, that women worry more than men. A 2003 study suggests a few reasons for this. First, women have lower self-confidence. We attribute our misfortunes to ourselves. Second, women display more negative problem orientation, which means we view problems as threats. Monsters, even. Third, women engage in more thought suppression–pushing thoughts out of our brains. Lastly, women tend to ruminate, to think persistently about our problems. We avoid our thoughts, and we dwell on them. Apparently, this is a lethal combination.
I didn’t know it was possible to suppress a thought. When I try, it just comes back stronger.
The research is always framed as “why women worry” instead of “why men don’t.” Maybe men don’t worry because their women worry for them. Because their wives and daughters watch them shovel, track their symptoms, and lie awake to bless their stars. . . .
On a sunny afternoon, I call my brother in Latvia for the first time in a while. He sits awkwardly on the top bunk of his narrow, gray bedroom, bending his neck to keep his head from hitting the ceiling. He is pale (like always) and needs a haircut (like always), but he looks well. I expect the call to last no longer than half an hour. It’s late in his timezone, and my brother, while chatty in person, doesn’t take well to the phone. He surprises me with the honesty and abundance of his words.
“When people ask me if I like being a twin,” he tells me, “I say, ‘I wouldn’t know, I’ve never not been a twin.’” Even so, he thinks we have something of a twin connection. He cites that we communicate a lot through knowing glances, and that we both think breakfast should be savory, not sweet. He suspects that I was conceived after him, because I was smaller when we were born. “Wouldn’t I have come out first then?” I ask. “I would’ve been closer to the exit.” He considers this for a moment. “I think we got mixed around a few times.”
Later in the call, my brother reveals, matter-of-factly, that he and his long-term girlfriend have broken up. He’s all alone in Latvia. He lives with a host family who doesn’t speak English, and whose pre-teen son has a habit of staring at him while he eats. His program is full of “snobby Italians.” He has one person he considers a friend. He hasn’t told anyone in our family about the breakup. I ask him why, why he insists on struggling alone. But we’ve been through this before so I already know the answer: “Nobody asked.”
We talk about which child is each of our parent’s favorite. My sister is my dad’s. My brother is my mom’s. I am both their second pick. I should really go, but I can’t miss this opportunity to hear my brother speak so freely. What if he dies tomorrow and I hung up on him today? He asks me if I ever miss the sunset over the windmills in California, or the coo of the morning dove. Who is this person? Who is this new dawn of my brother, who keeps me on the phone for hours, who reminisces about birds and windmills? I recall how the dove and the sunset bookended our summer days. “Yes,” I tell him. “I miss it all.”
. . .
The 1996 study ends by discussing “chronic worriers.” Apparently, such people like to claim that their worrying helps. They swear to god that they’re doing something, even if it causes them extreme distress. Does that make us liars? Or stupid? Maybe it makes us faithful. Chronic worriers sustain their habit through a series of metacognitions, or thoughts about thoughts. Worriers believe they can prevent the worst by imagining it. That there’s magic in their heads. They must see the disaster, the malfunction, the beast. The clearer the picture the better. Worriers believe they must avoid optimism, as to not tempt fate. That if they forget to worry, or decline to let the worries in, they might find themselves standing over a body. Cursing god, cursing the
cruel laws of the worry universe, but mostly cursing themself for not obeying. Worriers also believe that they cannot change. They believe that worrying is their birthright. That it’s built in. . . .
If my brother ever died, and I woke up with a jolt, I believe my pounding heart would beat my body to a pulp. To pointless chunks of flesh and bone that would glisten in the moon, and surely melt before the sunrise.
Works Cited
Austin, Daryl. “Is ‘twin telepathy’ real? Here’s what scientists say.” nationalgeographic.com, 12 August 2025, https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/article/science-of twin-telepathy.
“Cardiac Arrest.” my.clevelandclinic.org, 26 November 2025, https://my.clevelandclinic .org/health/diseases/21736-cardiac-arrest.
Davey, G. C. L., et al. “Beliefs about the Consequences of Worrying.” Cognitive Therapy and Research, vol. 20, no. 5, 1996, pp. 499–520. https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02227910 Robichaud, M., et al.. “Gender differences in worry and associated cognitive-behavioral variables.” Journal of Anxiety Disorders, vol. 17, no. 5, 2003, pp. 501-516. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0887618502002372?.
“Sudden death in young people: heart conditions often blamed.” mayoclinic.org, 07 April 2026, https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/sudden-cardiac-arrest/
in-depth/sudden-death/art-20047571.