When I was 11, my world was turned upside down when my mom tragically died in a freak beach drowning. She had always been an excellent swimmer, but a rip tide caught her, and despite her best efforts, she was pulled under. The waves were relentless, and in an instant, my mother was gone. I remember my dad being absolutely shattered. He didn’t know how to function without her, and neither did I. Our world felt hollow, and we struggled to adjust to the absence she left behind. In the years that followed, I tried my best to keep the memory of her alive. I looked at old photos of her,
and I kept telling myself that I had to move on, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that something was missing. I didn’t just miss my mother—I missed the life we used to have before tragedy struck. Flash forward to last month. I was in Paris for work, standing outside a quaint café near the Seine. My mind was distracted by the beauty of the city when my eyes caught sight of a woman who looked uncannily like my mom. I froze. The resemblance was too striking to ignore. My heart pounded as I walked toward her. I felt an unexplainable pull,
like the universe was urging me to speak to her. I walked up to the woman and hesitated, unsure of how to approach the situation. “Excuse me,” I started, my voice trembling. “I know this might sound strange, but you look so much like my mother. Her name was Sarah. She passed away years ago, but I—” The woman’s eyes widened, and she took a step back, as if the mention of my mother had brought back memories she wasn’t prepared for. After a brief pause, she spoke softly. “I had a twin sister named Sarah. We were adopted by different families when we were babies. I… I didn’t know her well,
but I did try to get in touch with her many years ago. We spoke once or twice, but we never really connected. Eventually, we both decided it was best to move on.” I was speechless. The words felt like a punch to the gut. My mother had a twin? And she had tried to reach out to her? It was something I had never heard about, something that my father had never mentioned. The woman apologized for my loss, gave me a brief hug, and then patted me on the shoulder as if she were trying to offer me comfort. Before I could ask anything else, she turned and walked away, disappearing into the crowd. I stood there, stunned, unable to comprehend what had just happened. The woman who could have been my mother’s twin had just walked away, and I would never see her again. I couldn’t bring myself to tell my father about this encounter. Part of me was afraid that it might somehow disturb the fragile memory of my mother we had carefully preserved. But another part of me wondered what else she might have known about the life my mother had before us.
