COINCIDENCE?

I've talked about this in bits and pieces.  This is the whole story:

It's  about events that transpired on the nights of January 27 and 28, 2012.

I’ve enjoyed many live performances at the Ark, and this year decided it was time to provide them some support in the form of a paid membership.  One of the perks of that membership was being able to purchase tickets for the Ann Arbor Folk  Festival, which took place on the two dates mentioned above.  I bought the tickets well in advance, and, thinking that either my son or my brother might enjoy attending with me, I bought two tickets for each night.  The event was at Hill Auditorium.

On the first night neither my son nor my brother was able to attend with me, so I sold the extra ticket and attended alone.  I arrived early and promptly headed into the auditorium.  As I sat alone in my seat, waiting for the entertainment to begin, I couldn’t help but remember several performances Gwen and I had seen there—at Christmas with the grandkid, The Nutcracker;  a gathering of my brothers and sisters when we saw Garrison Keillor and his Prairie Home Companion show.  One of the more memorable performers we saw there was John Denver, before he became famous and a folk icon.  When we saw him it was just him and his guitar, alone on the big stage.  I longed for Gwen to be sitting in the seat next to me.  After 50 years of attending events with the one who completed me, although I know it is important to get out and do things on my own, it is not easy, and a now familiar melancholy feeling came over me.  “This show better be good,” I thought to myself.

A short while later a couple, perhaps ten years younger than I, arrived and took the two seats to my right.  I stood up and shook hands with the man and we introduced ourselves.  By then his wife had taken off her wraps and was seated next to me.  I shook her hand and said: “Hi my name is John.”  “Hello,” she said, “my name is Gwen.”  Who says wishes don’t come true?  “That name makes you pretty special to me,” I said, and then explained that my wife’s name was Gwen and that she had died in November of 2011.  They were a delightful couple, and I enjoyed talking with them until the show began.  In the course of that conversation I learned that the Gwen sitting next to me was a bookkeeper.  The year before we married my Gwen worked as a bookkeeper.   “What a coincidence,” we said.

It didn’t end there. . .

On the second night of the Festival I asked my friend Mary to attend with me.  She and I met through a bereavement group in which we participated, and we sometimes attend the same church.  Mary was divorced, and then she met a man named Jim with whom she fell in love.  She and Jim had been in a loving relationship for several years.  Jim died about a month after Gwen did, so we had that in common; learning to live without someone whom we dearly loved.  She is a good friend.

We were looking forward to being entertained by Glenn Campbell, Nanci Griffith and Emmy Lou Harris.  In particular we hoped that Nanci would sing a song that was made famous at the recent Occupy rallies around the country.  Mary, with her sardonic sense of humor, said that it should be the theme song of those of us who never quite know what to say to others when they ask if we are alright.  The song, which Nanci did lustily belt out during her performance, is called Hell No, I’m Not Alright!”

Our seats that night were in the mezzanine, my seat the previous night had been on the main floor.  We found our seats, and I related to Mary the story about having Gwen sitting next to me the night before.  Two people arrived and took the seats next to us.  It was Gwen and her husband!  This was getting stranger by the minute.  We had purchased our tickets at totally different times.  What are the odds that we would be seated next to each other two nights in a row in completely different sections of the auditorium?

No longer amazed at what was occurring, I introduced Mary to Gwen, then turned and introduced Mary to Gwen’s husband.  “Hello,” he said, “my name is Jim.”

Coincidence?  I think not.