A funeral, a wedding and my darling sister’s secret wish list ,
Melissa’s tragic twin died at 21. But how better to honour her than complete the bucket list she never even started...
THE night before her twin sister’ s funeral, Melissa Ten nan tc rep tin to her bedroom. It was here, amongst the clothes and books, the bottles of perfume and an old, silent oxygen tank, that Melissa felt closest to 21-year- old Nicole, the girl with whom she shared every childhood memory and whom she had lost to cystic fibrosis.
Bereft and sobbing in the dark, Melissa logged on to Nicole’s computer and came upon a file she had never seen before entitled ‘My Wishes’. She clicked and stared: there was her sister’s bucket list, a meticulous plan of all the things Nicole had wanted to do before she died, from riding a camel to getting married. All things she would never now do.
‘It was heartbreaking to read,’ says Melissa. ‘It was as if Nicole was there. It was just her all over.’ Immediately, she knew what she had to do. ‘Something clicked and I thought, “Right, I’m going to do that. I’m going to do all of it. I’m going to make her proud”.’
Two-and-a-half years later, Melissa has carried out her sister’s last wishes. She has seen the Northern Lights from 30,000ft, learned to juggle and posed for a life drawing class. She has overcome her fear of the limelight to appear on television, gone skinny dipping and climbed the Eiffel Tower. She has even written a book about her experiences, documenting her extraordinary last gift to her sister.
Through it all she has carried her grief at losing her twin, and learned to let go of the person who had been by her side since they were in their mother’s womb.
The only wish left to cross off the list is getting married, something Melissa, now 24, will do this summer when she ties the knot with her fiance Martin. It will be a bittersweet moment.
‘When I got the bug I just wanted to keep going, keep getting on to the next wish,’ she says.
‘But then, three- quarters of the way through I panicked. I thought, I don’t want to finish this because what have I got after it? I started trying to space things out because it was my way of connecting with Nicole. I didn’t want to lose that.’
Growing up in the Govan area of Glasgow, it was never Melissa and Nicole but ‘ the twins’. Born healthy and strong, Melissa was s nine minutes older than Nicole. But from m birth Nicole was small and delicate.
At three months old she was diagnosed d with cystic fibrosis, a devastating genetic c condition that clogs up the lungs and diges- tive system with thick, sticky mucus. Thee only cure – and it is not always a cure – is a lung transplant. Yet few people could tell thatat there was anything wrong with Nicole. She he was smart and cheeky, ‘a bit of a diva’, saysys Melissa, and the polar opposite of her nonnidentical twin who was quiet and reserved.
‘She would seriously talk about the outfits its she would wear on the red carpet,’ she says.ys. ‘She loved being the centre of attention. .I I preferred to stay in the background.’
Despite their different personality traits, the two were inseparable, sharing a strong and mysterious twin bond. Once, when henh they were eight, Nicole fell over and banged her head and Melissa, in another part of the house, felt a flash ash of pain on her forehead. Their motherher was astounded that they were so in sync, but the girls thoughtt it was normal.
‘It seemed perfectly natural to me that Nicole and I were in tune with one another,’ says Melissa.
In the early years, apart from occasional hospital visits, Nicole’s condition was manageable. But one day Melissa came home from school to find nurses in the house teaching her twin how to use a nebuliser so she could breathe. Slowly it dawned on her that her sister was seriously unwell.
‘The hospital visits became more and more frequent. She was missing school more. It got progressively worse. Then when she was 13 she lost a friend who had CF. That’s when we both realised just how sick she was,’ says Melissa.
Doctors said Nicole would not live past the age of 20. But she remained positive, refusing to see her illness as a death sentence. By the time she was a teenager she was spending two weeks in hospital every two months. Melissa would go to see her every day and the two would cuddle up on her hospital bed, giggling, laughing and making plans.
‘She was such an optimist,’ says Melissa. ‘I was far more cautious about things, probably as a way of self- protection, but she was convinced she would beat this.’
As the pair got older, Nicole’s condition continued to deteriorate. While Melissa left school, got a job and spent her weekends out on the town with her girlfriends, Nicole was unable to work, often confined to her bedroom with her computer and her oxygen tank. She pinned her hopes on a lung transplant, but by the time she was referred for assessment, was too poorly to receive it.
‘She lost hope after that,’ says Melissa. ‘I’m pretty sure the bucket list was written when she still thought she was getting a new lung. It was a list of all the things she was going to do once she got the transplant.’
But it wasn’t to be. In July 2013 Melissa went on holiday to Marbella with Martin. She was nervous about leaving Nicole, but her twin insisted she go, telling her she needed a break. Less than a week into the holiday, though, Melissa received a call to say her sister had suddenly deteriorated and was unlikely to make it.
Melissa rushed home. When she sat down by Nicole’s bed and said her name, her twin’s eyes fluttered. It was the only movement she had made all day. Her parents believe Nicole had been waiting for her sister. She died a few hours later.
The funeral was hard. Friends and family dressed in yellow and Melissa delivered her twin’s eulogy.
‘It sounds strange, but we used to joke about it,’ she says. ‘We’d sit and talk about her funeral and what she wanted to wear in the coffin and that I would do the eulogy and she’d joke that I’d have to say certain things about her. So when she died I was really quite determined to do it. I don’t think I’ll do anything that hard again.’
In those dark days that followed, the bucket list became a way to cope. It was a sort of therapy for Melissa, a way to keep going without her ‘twinnie’. ‘Without it, I think I would probably have been in a really bad place,’ she says. ‘I could have let it drag me down completely but because of the bucket list I had something to focus on.’
Some tasks were easily done – ‘save a life’ involved setting up a monthly donation to the Dog’s Trust, and ‘get ten people to sign up for donor cards’ was a doddle thanks to Facebook.
Some challenges, however, required rather more chutzpah. There was the skinny dipping, where she astounding dog walkers on a freezing beach in Ayrshire as she ran screaming from her boyfriend’s car and straight into the sea.
She posed for a life-drawing class despite her nerves, s pending three hours buck naked in front of a group of artists i n Glasgow’s Botanic Gardens.
She even rode a mechanical bull, all the while mentally shaking her fist at her sister for adding it to the list in the first place.
She did her best to rope in friends and family, those who were close to Nicole, in order to make them feel part of the experience. One wish was to go to a football match, which she did with her father Stewart. The pair had rarely spoken about Nicole’s death, but the experience allowed both of them to open up.
For another wish, she roped in all of Nicole’s friends to perform a song in a recording studio. And going to see the Northern Lights was something she did with younger brother, Gary, on a specially chartered flight. When the aurora flared into the sky, the siblings were overcome with emotion.
‘We held hands and began to cry,’ she says. ‘Some tears were happy ones – that I had been given the opportunity to see something so incredibly beautiful. But mixed with them were tears of frustration and sadness that Nicole wasn’t getting to see it too.’
Slowly, Melissa started to heal from her loss. And as she went through her sister’s wishes, she also started to learn things about herself.
Some of Nicole’s desires were
‘She would joke that I had to do her eulogy’ ‘She’s part of me now. When I see me, I see her’
simple, mundane even, reflective of the i ncreasingly secluded and restricted life her illness had foisted upon her. One of her wishes was simply to ‘go to a wedding’. Attending a friend’s nuptials, Melissa could see why she had chosen it.
‘Going to a wedding, you get up at seven in the morning to get ready, you’re out until midnight – in the last couple of years of her life there’s just no way Nicole would have been able to do that. So there were times at the wedding when I’d really just sit back and appreciate that everyone was having a good time,’ she says.
‘It was Nicole saying that it’s the small things that are the big things. And I’ve learnt that from her. I’m a completely different person from the person I was before Nicole passed away. For someone who was such a realist, I think I’m much more optimistic now. I think she’s gifted me that.’
Perhaps the most emotional of all the wishes was when Melissa climbed the steps of the Eiffel Tower with her mother, Agnes.
‘We were laughing and joking going up the stairs and saying, “Could you imagine Nicole doing t his, she’d be coughing and spluttering”, and then we got to the top and saw the view and it was so beautiful, and we realised – she’ll never do this.
‘It was a rollercoaster of emotions. One minute I was elated, the next devastated, knowing she hadn’t done any of it.’
In contrast to most carefree young women of her age, Melissa, who works as an n administrator for a construction company, hash a profoundf d understanding of death, and how fragile life can be.
She says: ‘I think I just went through life in a daze before, to be honest. I didn’t appreciate the value of having a job or a relationship with my family. I just went through it all.
‘I went to work and came home and spent time with Martin and Nicole. But now I’ve got such an appreciation for everything I have.’
So now there is only one wish left: to get married. In autumn 2014, Martin proposed, gallantly stepping in to help Melissa complete her sister’s wishes, and the couple will marry in the summer.
Her wedding will mark a new path for Melissa, not just the start of married life, but the end of her b bucketk t li list experience.
‘I’m worried that when I stop doing it I won’t think about her every day and I won’t have something to look forward to where I can say “Nicole would love this” or “Nicole would do that”. It’s a connection to her.
‘But although I do still think about her every day I’m also trying to focus on myself now – because it’s always been Nicole.
‘I don’t resent it, that’s just the way it’s been. But I’m trying to think about my career, and buying my first house, and trying to focus on Martin and I. All of that is a change for me.’
She chokes back tears. ‘It’s not about letting go of her, but letting go of the pain that came with it all. There was a lot of pain for her. And for me.’
Melissa has her own bucket list now, shorter and more succinct than her sister’s. It includes seeing a cure for cystic fibrosis discovered within her lifetime, and, if she ever has a daughter, naming her Nicole.
Today, she feels more bonded to her twin than ever.
‘It’s almost as if we are connected now. She’s a part of me. My parents feel the same.
‘I have embodied some of Nicole’s qualities, her optimism, her confidence, doing all these things I never would have done.
‘She’s part of me now. When I see me, I see her.’
My Sister’s Wishes, by Melissa Tennant, is published by Ebury Press on February 11, £6.99