For about as long as I can remember, I’ve had a weird, unhealthy obsession with identical twins, and not just the Barbie twins pictured at right. I like to secretly study them — look for similarities in speech, mannerisms, etc. — nothing perverted, I think, just a quirky curiosity, I guess. I’m particularly intrigued by how close many of them remain as they journey through their lives — I know these identical twin guys in New Orleans who are both in their 30s, both relatively successful, but they work together AND still share a house together. It’s sort of weird.
Anyway, all of this gets me to this story that just cross the wires a few minutes ago about a pair of 92 year-old twins who just died on the same day, in the same hospital, of the same thing (heart failure). Yeah.
Reports Yahoo:
Identical twins Julian and Adrian Riester were born seconds apart 92 years ago. They died hours apart this week. The Buffalo-born brothers were also brothers in the Roman Catholic Order of Friars Minor. Professed friars for 65 years, they spent much of that time working together at St. Bonaventure University, doing carpentry work, gardening and driving visitors to and from the airport and around town.
…
They died Wednesday at St. Anthony Hospital in St. Petersburg, Fla., Brother Julian in the morning and Brother Adrian in the evening. Both died of heart failure, said Father James Toal, guardian of St. Anthony Friary in St. Petersburg, where the inseparable twins lived since moving from western New York in 2008.
“It really is almost a poetic ending to the remarkable story of their lives,” St. Bonaventure spokesman Tom Missel said. “Stunning when you hear it, but hardly surprising given that they did almost everything together.”
Words cannot express how freaked out I am by this story. Time for a Friday afternoon drink, I think.
(Pic via)
