Coincidences

I don't intend to bang on about it, but I wanted to tell you about a series of very strange coincidences concerning my Pip's departure that seem to somehow fit together in a comforting jigsaw.

The first occurred when instead of the walk I was scheduled to write for Cornwall Today, I did another one nearer home. (With Pip being ill at home I had much less time.) The walk I wrote about was near the Pandora, and detailed how we met, where we did our courting. His exploits oystering. And how we fell in love. That was the one in print when he died – I'd taken it into hospital on Christmas Day and showed the nurses – boy was he proud.

The second coincidence was that one of the nurses on HDU had lived next door to us about 10 years ago. “I remember you!” she said, her eyes crinkling up in a smile. “Drinking red wine round your kitchen table!” The day before he died, we had a chat in the kitchen when I was looking for a plastic cup. I told her about Pip, how he wasn't expected to live long. It turned out she'd lost her 21 year old son to bowel cancer. He died 10 days after his wedding. “I can talk about it now,” she said, “but the most important thing to learn is to accept death. Don't try and pretend it hasn't happened.”

The third coincidence concerned Pip's love of jazz. He used to play the cornet in a jazz band and Louis Armstrong was his hero. Pip died at 3pm on Boxing Day, and at precisely that time, High Society was on TV. At the beginning of this legendary film, Louis Armstrong and other musicians are playing – so Louis played my Pip out of his life. How very fitting and how very delighted he would have been.

The fourth was that the editor of Cornwall Today, who is currently on maternity leave, sent me a message saying that her mother and partner were inspired by my walk and they all did it – guess when – on Boxing Day. “I thought of you and Pip as we walked,” she said.

The fifth was that the Registrar who registered his death has a relative who lives at the end of our street, whom she calls in to see every day. When she heard what I did, she asked what I wrote. I told her and said that I also write for Cornwall Today. “Really? She said. “My copy's just arrived this morning. There's a piece on a milliner called Holly.”
“I wrote that,” I said.
“Oh!” She laughed. “There's also a walk around Mylor I want to read – my husband drove the ferry there in the summer.”
“I wrote that walk too,” I said and pointed to the death certificate. “It's all about him.”

If you put that in a novel no one would believe you.