As you can probably tell, I have been very reflective as of late, and I’ve come to wonder a lot of the facets of life. There are too many things that happen that are coincidence, so I tend to think something is out there in the universe. I guess it echoes the theme of my statistics teacher “Trust chance.”
I went to my classes on Wednesday, February 21st, 2007. My goal was to leave around three and return home by four. So I got to driving. There was a little snow on the ground, and it was cloudy. So I drove, with my ipod in and loud.
As I pulled into the driveway, it was the strangest thing ever. The house was sad-you could tell it from 600 feet away. Along the driveway flew a prayer flag, in yellow, red, green and blue. Another was draped in my parent’s bedroom.
So I drove up and parked, and unloaded the laundry that I had brought with me (I will still not miss an opportunity for mom to do my laundry so I don’t have to) I remember entering the house and the thing that was the weirdest? Silent.
My house had never been silent before that. In case you have no idea, I grew up on a farm. Whenever my father was working, he’d have 96.9 FM talk on, or a radio station. Whenever he was in the house, it’d be the business channel. Even when he was sleeping, he snored, so the house was never quiet.
But this was new, this was silence. I was greeted by my mother, my brother was somewhere else. We sat there and talked for a little bit, amongst a few flowers and sympathy cards. This was death…this was grief.
So we passed the hours. That night we sat around as a family and picked out songs that reminded us of him, songs that he loved, and even songs he thought he knew the words to, but made up lyrics.
The next day was the wake. A lot of people showed up, and by that I mean a LOT of people. I talked to a lot of people, shook a lot of hands, and did anything rather than focus. At the end we played fight mass, with members from the Umass Band clapping along. I don’t know if anyone there can ever look at fight mass the same way again.
This is where coincidence comes in. My freshman year of high school, our marching band played Moulin Rouge, including the Can Can. However, my father was unhappy with the directors decision at the time with no high kick line.
Then, here at Umass, again the Can Can came up. This time there was a high kick line by the colorgaurd. At what else? One of my parent’s favorite bands, Chicago. He started out the season disliking one of our songs-Non Nobis Domine. Eventually by the end of the season, he liked it. But why did the Can Can come up again? Why did Chicago come up again?
Whats even more strange, is the what happened after the reception at our house. Me and my girlfriend got in my car, and I had a griffin iTrip. Non Nobis Domine came on when I put on the car, so I thought “oh funny, this is what I must have been listening to when I got out of the car. However, it noticed it wasn’t the marching band, it was the original. I stood there in shock (for nothing EVER came in on that station, it was blank which gave me good reception for the iTrip) Somehow, Non Nobis Domine was playing. After the song ended, the station faded out.
Side Note- Even stranger when I was writing this article, Non Nobis came on shuffle. Very Strange…
So back to my original topic, where do we go? I don’t know, I’ve never been a religious person. I do believe there has to be some sort of afterlife, some sort of way people can still comunicate with us. There’s too much coincidence in a lot of things for there not to be. We can never know, at least not until we are the ones who are gone.