It's Time to Share a Sacred Memory from the Day My Twin Died

Copyright Micah Strutzenberger 2022

You may wonder why I have chosen to go back to this very terrible day in my life, the day my twin Maria was killed. Believe me, it has not been easy. I have prayed and anguished my way through the remembering.

But I chose to go back because I want to share a memory that I have never shared with anyone before. It is a memory that I have held close to my heart as a precious treasure for many years. For a long, long time I couldn’t even fathom the thought of telling anyone about it – until now.

Something has been stirring within me for the last couple of weeks, a compelling sense that I need to get this memory out. I need to tell others.

So, here it is.

Honestly, in a way, relaying this part of my story feels like I have gouged out a piece of my warm, quivering heart and put it on a platter. I am so uncertain about sharing this memory, even while I feel deep down that I need to. Please read with care. I only do this in hopes that my story will comfort and encourage you in your own story of heartache and hardship.

Two crumpled cars in the long grasses of the ditch beneath the hot Mexican sun. The smell of burnt rubber. A long chain of vehicles stretching far in either direction along the winding Mexican highway. The vehicles would be at a dead-stop for hours as civilians and ambulance crews worked feverishly to pull the victims from the horrific car accident that had just happened.

My twin Maria had been driving our little Chevette as we followed our parents in their small pick-up truck through the mountains of eastern Mexican.

My parents had been driving a few car lengths ahead of us when the crash occurred. They heard the awful screech of brakes. My dad glanced in the rearview mirror where he saw black smoke burst from colliding vehicles. He never told us when he realized that it was his twin daughters who’d just hit another car coming the other way head-on.

The next thing I remember is the feel of a hand on my arm. Someone guided me out of the passenger side of the Chevette and led me to the side of road. I sat on the hot asphalt beneath the blazing sun.

What had just happened?

I felt dazed and unable to see clearly. I had no idea that blood trickled down my face and oozed from my right knee.

Then I felt and heard rather than saw my dad beside me. I don’t know if he knelt or squatted near, taking my hands in his.

“You’ve been in an accident. Maria’s hurt very badly. What should we pray?” I remember those words of my father’s as clearly as if he had just said them to me now.

My answer tore out of me in anguish. “Just pray she’ll live,” I cried. “I don’t care if she’s a vegetable. I’ll take care of her the rest of my life.”

My dad prayed and left to help with extricating my twin’s broken body from the driver’s side of the car. I didn’t see any of it, though I sat, still in a daze, nearby. Perhaps it was God’s merciful act, temporarily blurring my sight.

The next thing I recall, someone helped me into the back of the ambulance. Maria already lay on a stretcher. My mother sat beside her. To this day, the memory of the sound of my twin’s gurgled breathing, evidence of the damage to her lungs, slices to my very core. “I can’t,” I cried. “I can’t listen to her breathing like that.”

I didn’t know it would be the last time I would be with her alive. Had I known, I would have stayed. I would have pressed close and reminded Maria that I loved her. I would have said good-bye.

But in that moment, my own body and mind in shock from the force of the accident, I only reacted to what has happening in front of me. And what was in front of me, the obvious terrible trauma to Maria’s body, felt like more than I could bear.

Someone helped me out of the ambulance and into my parents’ pick-up truck. I sat beside my dad as we drove to the hospital.

While we were on the way, a vehicle pulled up beside us. Dad rolled down his window. I didn’t understand the exchange between my dad and the person in the vehicle as they talked in Spanish, but when they were done, I knew in my spirit what they had just told him.

Maria, my twin, the one I’d spent nearly every waking and sleeping moment with since we’d been born 21 years before had died.

I don’t recall any of what my dad and I said the rest of the way to the hospital. We may not have spoken at all. I do remember taking his large, rough hand and holding it as we drove.

At the hospital, both I and my mother were given beds.

After witnessing her daughters’ horrific accident and sitting beside Maria in the ambulance when she died, Mom’s body physically couldn’t cope. Her blood pressure spiked dangerously high and she was too weak to move.

For me, the horror of all that had just happened had not fully registered in my body and spirit. I was still in shock, and the shock was like a protective blanket, keeping me from bearing the full brunt of the emotional, mental, and spiritual trauma I had just experienced all at once.

I didn’t understand why I had to stay in the hospital at all. I was able to walk and speak. Physically, I felt okay. Yet, a C-collar was tucked round my neck and later some hospital attendants came to wheel me to a room where they stitched up the gash in my knee.

Although I didn’t feel I needed the bed, after receiving the treatment on my knee, I returned to the hospital ward with my mother.

There I laid down on a white-sheeted, hospital bed. My mom lay in a separate bed beside me. 

We were alone in a large room with huge, white fans slowly turning the hot air above us. Louvred windows and a damp cement floor did little to cool the air.

We lay beneath the huge white fans on those white sheets in that white-walled hospital room in Mexico, mother and daughter. A mother who had just lost a daughter. A daughter who had just lost a twin.

I don’t know for how many hours my mom and I lay on those beds together.

Our bodies breathed in and out. Our hearts beat. Our blood moved in our veins. Yet it was as if our spirits had been crushed of all life. For a long time, we couldn’t speak, couldn’t cry.  

And then my mother said something into the stillness. “Jesus,” she whispered. “Jesus.”

She turned towards me, “Just say the name of Jesus, Michelle. Just say Jesus.”

And, so, I did. Still in shock, still not fully understanding how my life had just been instantly shattered into a million pieces, I echoed her words, “Jesus. Jesus.”

This is the first time I’ve shared about this moment. It has always felt too sacred, too precious, to allow anyone else to read or hear about it.

It has also felt extremely exposing, as if I am peeling off our skin and showing our raw flesh.

I am not sure why I’m sharing the memory now except something in spirit feels compelled to do so, strongly compelled.

My mom and I had been instantly and utterly broken by what had just happened to us.

We desperately needed something in that moment, something to hold onto, something to keep us from being absolutely devastated by that trauma. And I believe, I am convinced, that Jesus answered us by giving us His name. By the Holy Spirit, He put His name in my mom’s heart and then on her lips. Her ability to remember and then to speak and pray His name aloud proves His presence and help. It was further proved as I listened to my mom and then followed her example.

Both of us said His name a few more times. Then we were quiet again.

Nothing supernatural in the usual sense of the word happened after.

No brilliant lights. No heavenly fragrance. No melody of angels singing. No vision of Jesus.

I don’t remember a difference in feeling afterward either. No comforting internal warmth. No pervasive sense of peace.

Yet, I would dare to call what happened in that hospital room that day a supernatural occurrence.

How else did we have faith enough to say the name of Jesus only hours past the most traumatic experience of our lives except through the power of the Holy Spirit?

Jesus was already with us

Jesus was already with us in that room. Before we said His name, He was with us. He had been with us as we drove that winding Mexican highway. He was with us when the crash happened, with us when Maria took her last breath, and He never abandoned Maria’s side as her spirit left  this earth. I am absolutely and fully convinced of this because Jesus promised it.

“And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.” Matthew 28:20 (English Standard Version, ESV) records Jesus as saying.

My mom and I didn’t need to say Jesus’ name to get Him to come to us and help us.

I think sometimes in Christian circles – and I have been guilty of this – it is as if we hold what I would call an erroneous image of Jesus. We picture Him waiting outside the terrible darkness that we have found ourselves inside. Our view is that He is eager and willing to help us, of course, but He is waiting for us to cry out before He leaps into action.

Yet we are told in Scripture that even before we call out to God, He answers. Isaiah 65:24 says, “Before they call, I will answer” (ESV).

That day, that horrible, dark day in the lives of our family, God was answering before we called. He knew just what my mom and I needed in that very low, terrible time in our lives and He gave it to us before we even asked.

Many of you may have also faced your worst day. Maybe you said the name of Jesus. Maybe you didn’t. I am not trying to offer a formula for how to respond to our most horrible traumas. I am just sharing the gift Jesus gave us in our darkest time. If you reflect on your story, you may be able to pick out a gift that He gave you too, exactly what you needed to help you through – before you even asked for it.

A few scriptures about the name of Jesus:

Psalm 124:8 Our help is in the name of the LORD, the Maker of heaven and earth.

Proverbs 18:10 The name of the LORD is a fortified tower; the righteous run to it and are safe.

Psalm 20:7 Some trust in chariots and some in horses, but we trust in the name of the LORD our God.