A phone call at the end of the workday Friday caught me off guard.

Editor Marta Gouger said, “The twins died. Weren’t they the ones you interviewed?”

For a moment, I wasn’t sure what she meant. Then it hit with a rush of emotion. And disbelief. And sadness.

“Oh, no. This breaks my heart.”

Lori and Dori Schappell, 62, died of undisclosed causes on Sunday, April 7 at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania.

In 2006, the sisters invited me to spend a day.

The invitation was unusual because they had been reluctant to talk to media. They believed they had been wronged and treated poorly in stories done by other news outlets.

They welcomed me into their upper level apartment at a center city Reading high-rise.

I told them my goal was to give readers a better understanding of their lives and routines. My intent was to peer into their hearts and souls.

The hours that followed were unmatched by anything I had ever experienced, before or since.

The interview of those remarkable sisters stands alone in my journalism career as the most challenging, most gut-wrenching and most transformative of all.

Lori and Dori weren’t just any siblings. They were miracles. The world’s oldest female conjoined twins.

They were joined at the head but facing in opposite directions.

Their skulls were fused in a way that made surgical separation just about impossible. In medical jargon, craniopagus twins. At the time, America’s only ones of that kind.

They shared some blood vessels and 30 percent of their brains.

Yet they were separate individuals. Completely different personalities.

I bonded with Lori easily. We talked freely and openly. We even kept in touch later on Facebook until recent years.

She was stronger and more able-bodied than Dori, who suffered from spina bifida and was confined to a wheeled stool.

To get around, they devised a plan. Lori would walk and then pull or push Dori and the stool.

Dori seemed aloof or withdrawn. I thought maybe she wasn’t feeling well on that day.

But Lori said Dori is always that way when she meets a new person. She was very shy one-on-one.

Dori was the creative type. A budding country singer, songwriter and playwright.

She began to call herself Reba. Then years later, Dori admitted that she identified as male and adopted the name George.

Dori just seemed to be searching, driven to find herself. But in that way, perhaps, she was no different from any of us. Part of the human condition.

She told me she was getting into technology.

“I’d like to buy a laptop. I’d use it for a lot of stuff, like to do my writing and my scripts. I could put a song into it, too.”

Her voice was soft. Yet lyrical and resonating.

As for Lori, I admired her strength and unrelenting optimism. She looked out for her sister. Dori called her “Mom.”

While science describes how conjoined twins are born, one unanswered question is why.

So I asked them what they believed. Without hesitation, Lori told me she knew the answer.

She said she and Dori were put on Earth for a purpose.

“God’s creativity is seen in every person. He made us in his own image. He imagines. And then he puts you on this Earth as he imagines. You don’t question the reason. You just don’t question it.”

Lori and Dori were content and happy. They firmly believed they had been created the way they were supposed to be. Completely normal.

Through faith and strength, they not only survived medical odds, but thrived.

In fact, Lori revealed she had a boyfriend. She confided in me that she was engaged.

Naturally, I asked questions about the unique relationship. She opened up and answered all of them.

I wanted to interview her fiance, too. But she asked me to allow him privacy. However, she said I might be allowed to attend and cover the wedding ceremony.

Sadly, it never happened. He died in a motorcycle crash.

Our daily lives are touched by the unexpected, the unknown and the unknowable.

The example set by Lori and Dori serves as an important lesson.

I feel it’s an acknowledgment that normal is the way we were made, no matter how different.

Lori and Dori proved it. They met challenges in ways very few could possibly imagine.

They managed to live a normal life in a world not made for them.

Somehow they grew to see each day as routine.

Yet every small movement was profound.

Look for Saturday’s Times News Spotlight in tribute to the unique lives of the late Lori and Dori Schappell.