Experiences of improbable “coincidences” happen to all of us on a regular basis. They have the feeling of being magical or otherworldly, but are they? How improbable does an event, or series of events, have to be before we put it into the realm of the “great unknown?” This story of finding old photographs of my brother is an example where I have to conclude that I just don’t know. It remains a mystery to me.
Experiences of improbable “coincidences” happen to all of us on a regular basis. They have the feeling of being magical or otherworldly, but are they? How improbable does an event, or series of events, have to be before we put it into the realm of the “great unknown?” This story of finding old photographs of my brother is an example where I have to conclude that I just don’t know. It remains a mystery to me.
On a summer night in 1954 my brother was coming home from his grammar school graduation party with a friend in a station wagon driven by his friend’s father. They pulled onto a main two lane road from a side road; the driver of the car on the main road was going too fast, and did not have his headlights turned on; he crashed into the side of the station wagon without applying his brakes or slowing down. This was before the days of seat-belts, and most of the occupants of my brother’s car were thrown out of the windows. My brother’s friend who had been sitting in the back seat with him went through the side window first, and died instantly from a piece of glass though his head. My brother followed him out of the now open hole, and landed on the ground. The dead boy’s mother was killed. The father, who was driving, managed to hold onto the steering wheel and was severely injured but did not die.
My brother had lots of very severe injuries; the most severe one was that his liver was torn in half and almost totally destroyed. He was in the hospital for a long time. He was in the critical care unit, so I couldn’t visit him except to stand in the parking lot below his second floor room and wave to him. It was good to see his face through the window, even though we couldn’t talk – at least I knew that he was alive.
He was still extremely sick for weeks after coming home. I remember that he kept a two pound coffee can next to his bed that he would periodically fill with blood and mucous with a great hacking, body contorting, cough. He couldn’t do much except lay in bed. I would stay and talk to him as long as a seven year old boy could. The memory of his coffee can full of blood and mucus remains vivid to this day.
After a long time his liver finally did that amazing thing that livers can do; it healed and regenerated itself. Then there was the legal action trying to get him some compensation for the events of that night, but with little success. The lawyer wasn’t very aggressive and ended up settling the case for almost no money. I heard the discussions about this, but was too young to understand or care. I had my older brother back, which was all that mattered to me.
About ten years after the accident I was walking around the plaza at our home town of Sonoma. The town has a large square in the center of town which is ringed by old Spanish style buildings containing various stores, restaurants and other establishments. Many of the buildings are separated by narrow alleys leading to courtyards in the back out of sight from the plaza. Most of these courtyards were used as parking lots for the people who worked in the stores.
As I was walking past one of these alleyways, I had a strong desire to go through the alley and explore the back of the building to see what was there. This was not something I had ever done before because I had always felt that the alleys led to private property and were off limits to me. I screwed up my courage and went down an alley to the parking area. There were several 50 gallon garbage cans lined up on one side of the parking lot. I felt compelled to go to them and lifted the top of one of the cans. The can was full of trash, but right on top was a bunch of large, black and white photos. I picked them up to see what they were of, and found that they were a set of nighttime photos of an automobile accident. For no particular reason, I “stole” the photos and took them home.
When I next saw my brother I showed him my find. He immediately recognized the photos; they were photographs of his accident! Over the years I had often heard stories, but this was the first time that I was able to see any photographs or other evidence of the accident. I guess it was just a coincidence, but it was totally out of my normal way of doing things, and it all seemed so “natural” – every action felt like the right thing to do at the time.