Of course there are coincidences, otherwise we wouldn't be able to play Snap😄
Back in 1999 I woke from a dream in which I'd seen a long-lost sweetheart; he hadn't been in my head for years, but I called his name in the dream and he turned and we recognised each other. The odd thing is, when I woke, I didn't remember calling that particular name, or seeing his face (it had been well over 30 years) but somehow I knew it was him.
I'd thought of trying to contact him through his university college during the years after I last saw him, but he'd been depressive, and there'd been a bit of suicide talk, and I was too afraid of getting the reply that he was no longer with us: I wanted to remember him as I'd known him.
But now we have Google. So I typed in his name – there's only one person with that first-last combination) and found a Web page, definitely him, despite the big heard, which led me to an email address.
His short reply came back instantly (well, it would, he worked in the computing department of the same university) and he told me when he'd been married and when they'd separated, and the names and ages of his two children.
My first daughter was born two years after his, and they had the same name. It was a name that became extremely popular twenty years later, but at the time was so rare that many people couldn't spell it. Not only that, but his son has the name I was going to give both my daughters had they been boys.
OK, that was coincidence #1
I started a long reply, "ten things about me, then ten things I remember about you" which included us winning a class in a music festival playing a sonata for clarinet and piano. I hadn't heard that piece played live since that day in 1963. My writing was interrupted by my having to take my kids'' choir for a fund-raising concert; we sat in the audience waiting for our turn, my head absolutely full of my first real love. I glanced at the programme to see how many more people there were before us, but didn't look to see what they were playing, so it shook me to the core to hear the opening of the same clarinet sonata! Surely coincidence #2
A few days later, with a couple of minor coincidences behind us, I went with two singers for a fund-raising event for a new operatic society. It was in a school, we were a bit late, and we needed the loo, but we found it, with three cubicles free, so as we went in, I sang, from The Mikado, "Three little maids from school are we, We've come in here to have a pee" - we all laughed, and dashed into the school hall just in time to hear the opening number. It was "Three little maids from school".
Six months after all this I moved in with him, we married, after waiting for two divorces, a couple of years later, and after 20 happy years, he died of a heart attack while doing what he loved – walking the dog – three years ago.
