Tue, 7. July 2009
Just A Coincidence
Some people like to read things into events such as coincidences but I have always believed that concidences are just that. Others deny that coincidences happen at all - but I can testify that sometimes they do.
I never overslept in the mornings and always made a point of being at the office early. Only once in my entire forty-five year working career did I ever oversleep. It was the day my Dad died. I had moved to Australia fifteen months earlier and the day before I had been water skiing with my friends from the Young Liberals, without a care in the world. It had been great fun but skiing was hard on the legs and it was a tiring day. I went home and slept like a log that night.
While I slumbered, my Dad suffered a heart attack on the other side of the world and died. If my alarm clock went off at it's normal time of seven am, I did not hear it. I did not awake until I heard the sound of loud knocking on the front door of my rented house in Sydney. It was nine fifteen am. The postman was on the doorstep. He asked for me by name and then handed me a telegram envelope - before beating a hasty retreat, obviously aware of the terrible news that it contained. Years later I reflected on the amazing coincidence that the only time that I had ever overslept on a work day, enabled me to be on hand to receive the only life shattering telegram that I have ever been sent.
Strangely, another very unusual coincidence, later related to me by my Mother (verified by my Aunt), also occurred in England on the same day. It was her experience the day that Dad died died in the garden of their home in Shropshire. Apparently my Mum found him on the ground and sought help from neighbours that were driving past, their car laden with luggage. When it became apparent that it was too late to save Dad and there was nothing they could do, the neighbours went on their way.
Later that evening, on the first night of their week away, after a two hundred and fifty kilometre drive, the couple decided to unwind with a drink at the bar of the holiday resort in Dorset where they had decided to stay. They began to relate their experience to the resort owners but did not get very far because the owners already knew the details. They were my Uncle Charles and Aunty Gwen, who by then had been contacted by my Mother.
Bizzarely, this couple, living close to my Mother, had stopped to assist her on the death of my father in the English Midlands, then driven all the way to Dorset on the South Coast and by incredible coincidence had picked my Mother's brother and sister-in-law to relate it to!
Of course, it's just a coincidence that the above two 'one in a million' coincidences both occurred on the same day.