Facebook via Walker and Willis Birthday Walk to Fight TTTS
Siblings have a profound connection, it is intimately interlocked. It surpasses physical barriers with a sense of knowing, fondness, understanding and kinship. The influence and roles they play in each other’s lives are concurrent, powerful and beautiful in its innocence, even during times of loss.
Nine-year-old Walker Myrick has an uncanny closeness with his identical twin brother, Willis. What makes this bond even more remarkable is that these brothers have heartbreakingly never met. Willis, tragically died in their mother’s womb from a rare condition called twin-to-twin transfusion syndrome (TTTS), a disease that affects identical twins who share a placenta. Astonishingly this hasn’t stopped the boys from forming an implicit connection with each other.
Walker often asks to visit his brother’s burial site so he can talk to him. When Walker was just five, to the amazement of his mum, Brooke Myrick, he asked if he could visit his brother so he could tell him about his first day of kindergarten. Brooke recalls turning around and finding him sitting next to Willis’ grave talking to him. “I saw him sitting there and knew I had to snap a photo,” she told Mirror.
Now, at 9 years old, Walker still frequently asks to visit his brother, insisting they go every holiday and some additional days on top of that. “Identical twins are known to carry a very strong connection and I believe it’s still there with my boys,” Myrick says. “Walker has a drive to make sure Willis is never forgotten.”
Facebook via Walker and Willis Birthday Walk to Fight TTTS
Myrick is now fighting to raise awareness of TTTS, which she hadn’t heard of before Willis’ death. “We were not screened for it, nor did our doctor refer us to a specialist or even know that my boys were identical and sharing a placenta,” she says. “We fight for awareness because of the lack of knowledge that our doctor possessed about this disease.”
This March will mark the fourth annual’s Birthday Walk which the family host to try to raise money for the TTTS Foundation.
“Ten years without my sweet Willis does not seem right,” she says. “But Willis lives on through Walker and all he does to fight TTTS.”
What a legacy, what a mark and what a beautiful reflection of kindred spirits these remarkable brothers have already made. Living the life after loss of a stillborn baby I marvel every day at the resilience of the sibling bond. My son was just a toddler when we lost his little brother, born sleeping, and as time moved on I always thought he was to young to carry on his memory. But siblings find a way and now, at four, my son asks about his brother, the baby brother mummy had in her tummy that had to go and live in the sky, and now as he tells me sweetly once again that he is going to play with his brother in the sky in his dreams almost every night when I put him down to sleep, I smile, I smile at the beautiful connection, I smile at the innocence and I smile at the ability children have to look past the physical and to see only the simplicity of connection and relationship.
My son speaking to his little brother on his birthday, he makes sure we see his sunrise.
Thank you Laura for speaking so kindly about my boys and me . I am so sorry you too have known the loss that I know but so glad your little one is remembered by such a loving brother just as Willis is