A tricky social situation I’d never thought of: what do you do when your identical twin dies?

Well, you bury and mourn him or her, of course, and then go through their stuff. (You know it will fit you!) But here’s what I’m getting at: when you show up at the funeral, many of the deceased’s friends, co-workers, etc. will never have met you. I’d guess that somewhere around a third of them might not even know he or she was a twin.

In other words: there will be whispers, pointing, dropped drinks, maybe screams. You will be widely assumed to be the dead, come back to life.

I’d never considered this problem before (believe it or not!) until last night, when I was talking to an eightysomething widow who lives in my neighborhood. Her husband was an identical twin, and this very thing happened at this funeral. His twin lived across the country, most of the mourners had no idea who he was, and the funeral was disrupted by mass confusion.

I don’t know if there’s an etiquette book to cover this scenario, but–to tide you over until Miss Manners weighs in–here are some Ken Jennings-approved suggestions on how to handle it.

1. If you are the twin, wear a disguise. Not a costume, like a zombie version of your dead sibling. That would be in poor taste. Just something simple to reduce the resemblance: changing the color or style of your hair, for example, or adding a big port-wine birthmark to one side of your face.
2. Conversely, you could perform a similar operation on the twin in the open casket: a tasteful little fake mustache, for example. This is a tempting option, since a dead body will obviously be less inconvenienced by cumbersome cosmetics than you will. What will he or she care? Be warned, however: many attendees might remember what he or she looked like before the change.
3. Embrace the problem. Attend the funeral as a walking piece of performance art: the deceased, as their loved ones would like to remember them. Perhaps you could install yourself at the entrance to the church, performing one of the deceased’s favorite hobbies (juggling, yoga, playing a favorite song on the tuba, reciting all the words to Rex Harrison’s patter songs in My Fair Lady) in tribute to your late twin. A small signboard (or addendum in the invitation) could warn attendees of this touching tribute, so they know not to be surprised.
4. Arrange to die together. Twins are always doing nutty, parallel stuff like that, buying the same neckties and whatnot, so no one will think anything of it.

If anyone tries out any of my tips in real life, I would love to hear. One in 285 U.S. births results in identical twins, which means that 1 in 143 American funerals will be for a twin. And in (almost) every case, one twin will be the first to go, thoughtlessly leaving the other in an awkward social situation! This is a real problem that happens thousands of times in this country every day. Time we stopped talking about the problem and did something about it!

Edited to add: Ed Toutant, leveraging the kind of free time only available to game show zillionaires, actually did the math and discovered that this only happens 18 times a day in America, not “thousands.” How dare he get in the way of my alarmism with mere statistics?