Lucky Coincidences?

I knew a Pastor once who said there were no such things as miracles. Instead, she called the Dailies. She also believed there was no such thing as coincidences; they were simply meant to be. I’m not so sure about either one of those statements. I think there have been many coincidences in my life, and in some respects, some have been miraculous. They range from excellent luck to wow! Let me explain.

Had I not signed up for a noncredit music appreciation class, I would have been sitting in the lunchroom and never met my husband. I had no particular reason to take that class, but I already had two lunch periods on my schedule. Sitting in the lunchroom for hours was not my idea of fun.

The kitchen in the house we bought in 1970 was virtually nonexistent. To make it function, it needed a total gut job. We were so lucky to find a fabulous kitchen guy who was a master carpenter. He took pity on us when he came to see the space and figure out a design. We knew our budget was small, but he worked with us to get the most bang for the buck. The carpenter was a very short man. That worked in my favor. I was only 5 feet ( sadly, I have shrunk since then!), and he was not that much taller. My whole kitchen was scaled down to someone my height, which made life much easier. I wonder what became of that kitchen after we sold the house. I always thought of it as a coincidence. I can’t remember where we got his name from and why we took a chance on him. It paid off.

In the early 2000s. My husband and I took a trip with friends. It was supposed to be a fabulous river cruise down the Rhine River. We flew into Budapest, Hungary. We stayed at the hotel all set and settled in for the overnight visit before boarding the boat. We went to the hotel restaurant and ordered an early dinner. My husband ordered a hamburger. I am still trying to remember what I had and what my friends had. As he started to eat the burger, he said, “It tastes strange.” We told him to stop eating it, but he was convinced it was a sauce or some seasoning he wasn’t used to. About 24 hours later, he was pretty sick. We made our first stop on the boat, and after a few hours, he started going to the bathroom. We returned to the ship, where he spent the next few days in the bathroom. The river level was very high due to heavy rains, and the area lasted for more than two weeks. The water rose so high that the boats, such as the one we were on, could not pass under the old scenic bridges. We got to Linz, Austria, and were put into dock for the remainder of the trip. It became apparent that he needed medical attention, and we took a taxi to the nearest hospital. No one spoke English, but the staff was terrific, and we managed to get him to the correct department and the right doctor. He had suffered from food poisoning. They hydrated him through an IV, and he started to feel better. The doctor had several X-rays and blood tests taken, and before they released him to continue on the trip, she sat down with us and tried to explain something that concerned her about the X-ray and specific blood values. We didn’t understand anything, except go to your doctor and show him this when you get home. Our last stop was Prague, Czech Republic, where he could finally see the sights. He still wasn’t feeling terrific, but at least he could leave the bathroom.

When we arrived home, his blood pressure was sky-high. We were back in the ER, and they ran their tests and compared them with the ones we showed them. Although the food poisoning incident was not the cause of what was happening to him now, it was discovered that he had bladder cancer.

A coincidence that saved his life.

It will be eight years this Oct. that my sister passed away. We were exactly seven years apart. Having the same birthday as your only sibling was weird! Anyway, our lives didn’t intertwine much, and we rarely spoke and saw each other once in a blue moon. My sister suffered a stroke when she was 61. She was, according to her doctor, the least likely person to have a stroke.

Nevertheless, she recovered slowly but not completely.

Several years later, after moving back to New York from Florida, my sister developed an infection that went untreated while living in a senior facility. My niece (her daughter) called me to tell me she was in the hospital, and the doctors said that they didn’t think she would recover.

I promised to get there as soon as possible, so I took a train from Richmond to New York. The plane was, for some reason, prohibitively expensive. From Penn Station, I took the train to Great Neck, where my great-niece picked me up to drive me to my sister's hospital. When I got there, the weather was raining and gray.

I immediately went up to the room. My niece and niece-in-law greeted me and said that the doctors didn’t know what was keeping her alive. She was unconscious. I walked into the room to see her, and she seemed to be lying peacefully, not in any pain. She had a tube going down her throat; they said not to assist breathing but to pull out the liquid. It made a steady humming sound, and then a slurping sound as fluid was eliminated. I sat down in a chair next to the bed. There was another person on the other side of the curtain. I wanted to talk to my sister but felt uncomfortable with the other person there. My nieces had left the room to speak with hospital personnel.

I noticed the rain had stopped, and the clouds had somewhat dissipated. The sun was coming through a vacant spot in the cloud cover. I looked back at my sister and saw a white translucent shape emanate from her shoulders and around her face and head. I yelled out to the others in the hall, and they came running. “Something is happening,” I said. I told them about the white shape, but they didn’t see it. When it lifted completely, the machine stopped pulling out fluid, and I knew she was dead. The sky once again darkened.

She waited for me to be there; it could not be just a coincidence, although I can not prove it, but I believe it.