I am a cynic and a skeptic. I don't believe in UFO's, I don't believe in "ghosts" or "spirits" or "angels" bah humbug. I don't believe in ESP or psychic powers. I believe in coincidence. I believe in chance. I believe in the spinning of the roulette wheel and sometimes you pick the right number. I've heard these stories over and over, about how someone will pop into your head at the moment they die. I always roll my eyes and chalk it up to coincidence or whatever. It has never happened to me.

A friend passed away last friday. Someone I've known for 20+ years. A complicated "love/hate" relationship. He drove me nuts but he was still a great guy. We had worked together at the same ad agency for 10 years. It was my first job. He was the art director and I was in production. We had fights like you wouldn't believe. I remember one time we were on a huge deadline with a big project. I called him from my cubicle down the hall from his office:



This went on for several minutes. Not kidding. I kept trying to tell him who I was. That I was a fellow employee who worked with him down the hall. I was about 5'10" and wore glasses? I'm wearing a blue shirt? I hung up the phone and walked to his office. Understand that this happened after I had been working there for several years and we had talked on the phone many times.

There were other incidences where we would be actually screaming at each other in his office over some problem with a project. Most of the people who were close to him have the same stories. Afterwards all was forgotten and we'd go out for a beer.

Eventually we both "quit" that agency and started our own businesses at home. Over the last few years I've worked for him as a freelancer, mostly doing web work which he had no clue about. He wanted to learn it himself but after several training sessions, I told him it would be better (cheaper) and less stressful for both of us if he just paid me to do it.

He also had this odd but appreciated habit of hiring me to help him with a project, and then insisting I stay for dinner. I would go to his house and work with him for a few hours and then he and his wife would INSIST I stay. This always led to a long evening with bottles of wine and talking about the old days. I often needed to say no... but they were so insistent and while he and I were working his wife had already cooked dinner and had the table set. As time went on I would occasionally have to include in my job estimates a disclaimer that I was too busy to stay for dinner because I had too much work to do. I often wondered if I should cut my bill to include dinner.

Last week, on thursday or friday, I realized I hadn't heard from him in a while. I thought I better call him. Suddenly that dark scary thought pops into my head, "What if he died?". What if the reason I hadn't heard from him was because he wasn't around anymore to call me? You know how those things pop into your head? You only think about it for a split second and then you smile and shrug it off as nonsense. Then that train of thought led to another person I've known just as long. She also worked at the same agency and we had worked with him a few years back on a big proposal for one of his clients.

I never did call him. I got busy with something else and decided to call him this week. I wish now I had called. Dagnabbit! I can't remember if our last conversation was an argument or not. I hate that feeling.

Yesterday my other friend called me. Our friend had passed quietly in his sleep on friday, taking a nap. Even if technically it was natural causes it was still totally unexpected. He was only 10 years older than me. Just one of those things. Needless to say the cynic in me was a bit startled.

I'm not sure yet if my cynical side is convinced of anything. I suppose it could still be coincidence. The odds might be long, but it is still just... chance. When you drive down the highway and someone you know pulls ahead of you into your lane... what are the odds?

What are the odds that the young girl in your class in college looks EXACTLY like all of your Mennonite relatives, could easily pass as your own sister, has the same last name as your mother and turns out to be an unknown relative from a distant branch of the family? She doesn't even know what a Mennonite is but stick a covering on her head and she would blend in at the family reunion. That was really weird. We never did find out exactly when the family split off. Apparently one side went west many many years ago, and the other side stayed east. Neither side of our families had any knowledge or memory of that branch of the family.

What are the odds? Is coincidence really simple enough to explain it away? I've always believed it was. Just to put this into perspective... I thought of another friend last week who I hadn't heard from in a while... he's fine. Maybe it is just coincidence.

If I see a UFO I'll let you know.

p.s. As a side note, there will be no funeral, no viewing, just a huge blowout party at his house. A celebration of life. There will be people there I haven't seen in 10 years or more. He would have liked that for sure. This is the first time I have ever looked forward to a "funeral". Is this a bad thing? The Mennonite side of my brain wants to feel guilty about it.

-vern

My condolences to your friend's passing. Don't feel guilty about having a celebration of life, I would want my friends to remember me that way. When I question myself as you are questioning yourself now, I can often hear the answers...

That specific thing has happened to me several times. I know how you feel, and the temptation to blame yourself for not keeping in touch is almost irresistable. You just have to keep telling yourself, "There's no way I could have known..." because really, there wasn't.

What are the odds? Larger than you'd think. We have dozens or hundreds of encounters with other people every day. Though the odds of any specific thing happening may be small, the odds of something or other happening are significant. We look at that one thing and say "woah.." and don't even think about the zillion others.

So you can keep your skepticism intact. Isn't it nice to find out you were right all along?

Vern- yours is a speckled, varied and colorful past. He was a better man for having known you, and you better for having put-up with him. Have big fun at the party and don't drive home after too many...we don't want to be having a 'Vern' party...

Give his wife a big hug for all of us.

well its sort of possible, i read on yahoo that phone usage can lead to telekinesis. like when some one calls you right when your calling them? since you talked on the phone so much there could have been some sorta connection. but thats all based on yahoo...really i think its chance . but that is interesting.

Well, I know the story of my life is beyond coincidence and when ever I talk about it, I refer to it all as blessings. Things have happened in my life both positive (like my wife being pregnant while a doctor is telling us we can't have kids) and negative, yet some how there are things going on outside of our control. Sometimes I hate to talk about it because it seems like I am blessed more than I deserve.

But, I have a very distant friend that was supposed to have twins. I'm afraid to call him because I never received a birth notice. It could be that he just forgot to e-mail me, or it might not. He's the type of guy that will say "Same old stuff" when he could have had a life changing event the day before. You have to directly ask questions to get answers.. And for some reason, it's not a question I want to ask because there were complications from the beginning. So, do I have "that feeling" because of coincidence, or for some other reason?

Also, if that "feeling" wouldn't have popped into your head, would you have called him that day?

The "funeral" was a lot of fun... if you can say that about a funeral.

I wasn't the only one who had that experience. The strangest of all was a phone call the day of the party. Apparently an unknown male had called and spoke in the native language of the dearly departed's family and it could never be traced. It went to the answering machine but someone was there and heard it, yet later, there was no recording and they couldn't find anyone who made the call. They all knew who spoke in that language who would have known him so it was very strange (apparently the last few words of the message heard were very significant).

I don't know... a day like that can be stressful. People are sad or upset... lots of things can be missed, go unnoticed, or misremembered. It could have a perfectly simple explanation. I think we all like to hear stories like this, whether they can be explained or not. I think it was probably some distant relative and the phone "glitched" at that moment causing the caller ID to not be registered and the answering machine "glitched" at the exact same time causing the message to not be recorded... sunspots probably.

-vern

here's a quote from jacob's ladder:

so the way he sees it, if you're frightened of dying and holding on, you'll see devils tearing your life away.
but if you've made your peace then the devils are really angels freeing you from the earth.
it's just a matter of how you look at it, that's all. so don't worry, okay?
relax. wiggle your toes.

-jon