My brother Barath is aware of my take and interest in seeming coincidences. My regular readers will no doubt recollect the many instances about which I have written in my posts.
Here is a fascinating story as sent to me by Barath.
According to Vedanta, there is no such thing as a coincidence and that things happen that way for a reason. All that is missing is our ability to reason as to why these things happen.
Back in the early sixties (1963-1968) I was member of a youth fellowship in Edinburgh in Scotland. We were a disparate group of youngsters and participated in Sunday worship as well as putting on various stage shows on an annual basis and the Sunday before Christmas, we would hire a coach and visit an old people’s home in Perthshire called Blair House where we would enact a nativity play and entertain the old folks, who used to look forward to our visit as they were mainly left alone and any company was welcome to them. We enjoyed the camaraderie and also found it touching that some of the old folk got to know us individually and would wait patiently to share all their woes and aches and pains with us.
One of the members of the fellowship was a young lady by the name of Joyce McCluckey who was a very vivacious, easy going and likeable girl, was popular with all the boys and of course, I had a secret crush on her but was way too shy in those days to let her know. From time to time I would visit her and her sister in their home in Leith in Edinburgh and her mother would always make us very welcome, I do not remember her father but have a feeling that he had passed away and that the mother was raising them the best she could. Clearly she had made a pretty good fist of it.
The youth fellowship eventually drifted apart and we all went our separate ways. Last year, I was sent an invite by one of my fellow Boys brigader Scott, to attend the 150 year celebrations of the Boys Brigade, and my former brigade the Lucky 4th Leith Company. Lo and behold, who turned up at this reunion but the redoubtable Joyce, vivacious as ever, had been married and divorced, but was working in DURHAM UNIVERSITY as the PA to the Professor of Applied Physics there. I am now in the oil and Gas business and we chatted a while. She had been invited to the Brigade celebrations as she had been a staff member of the lifeboys which was the junior brigade before the kids graduated to the Boys Brigade. I gave her my business card, we promised to be in touch and like most people went home and promptly forgot all about it.
I am now the father of two sons, both solicitors in London and the younger is Simon who is marrying Hannah his fiance in Edinburgh next month. Simon attended DURHAM UNIVERSITY and obtained his law degree there. One of his closest friends is a likable lad by the name of Jonathan Dover whom I have met several times and shared the odd glass of wine! He likes me enough to have shared Facebook and Linked line with me and I have kept in touch with his comings and goings over the last three years. He is a close enough buddy of Simon’s for him to be asked to be an usher at Simon’s wedding in Edinburgh.
Yesterday I received this e-mail from Joyce:
“Hi Barath,
Discovered your business card and just thought I would drop you an email.
I was speaking to my sister-in-law just before Christmas and she was telling me about her son, my nephew Jonathan Dover, being an usher at a wedding in Edinburgh in February. She mentioned a few things and I said “ I am sure I know the parents of Simon”, his father and I grew up together! Anyway I checked with Margaret and Fred (they have been in touch with me since the reunion) and, of course, it was ‘the wedding’, coincidence!”
Now, how strange is that? My son attends the same University Joyce works at and her nephew is my son’s wedding Usher? I wonder if people with greater knowledge of the Universe would state that there must be some previous life connection between Joyce and Barath?”
I am sure that other things will happen and events take place that will bring Joyce’s and Barath’s families closer in the future too. That is how the universe works!
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