family – Serendipity Me

Yes, it’s been a while. And I realise that my thousands of Serendipidy followers — I know you wish — have been concerned. “Has she got COVID? Is she still there? We miss you,” I hear you cry. Ok so I might be hyperbolising a bit. But I am ok. Still here. No COVID. Just that groundhog day is not very interesting. I wonder why with my busy diverse lifestyle. But come April 24^th when I get my second vaccination willy-nilly I am coming out!

You know that thing when you say that’s a coincidence, I was just about to……. well really is it a coincidence or is it something else. It happens so much in my life that I am reluctant to believe in the randomness of it. Synchronicity is why I called my blog Serendipidy (Serendipity was not available) that and because I just love the word. I am not a particularly airy-fairy kind of person but I do believe that the mysterious life long relationship that we have with natural phenomena has all kinds effects on what we do, how we think and what we feel. The events which happen to us are not by strict cause and effect but because there is acausal relationship between the inside and the outside, a sort of cross talk between mind and matter.

I am not alone Dr. Jung believed in a underlying kind of ‘field’ affecting a whole different level of experience. I have vague memories of reading his book in psychology class which focused on Synchronicity.

I wonder what Jung would have made of my experience this week. One of my sons had asked me for some photographs of him with Tod so I delved into my huge box of photographs in search of the said pics. In so doing I found a photograph of an old friend I had not seen for 40 years. He was also the close friend of another friend so I sent her the pic with a message “look who I just found.” Neither of us have seen this man or spoken to him for 40 years. Today I received a phone call.

“Its Sally thank you for the photo you sent me. It’s very odd though.”

“Why” I replied.

“Well about 2 hours after you sent me the photo, I got a phone call from a friend in Cornwall who told me that this other friend (the one whose pic I had sent – no names for obvious reasons) was in hospital as he had just tried to kill himself.”

Random – Or is it? more like synchronicity – something urging me to find the pic. If my son had not asked me for the photos, I would not have found the pic of my old friend, I would not have sent it to Sally so did that somehow influence this person in Cornwall to call her? Who knows? But you have to admit it is very odd.

I have had many many experiences like this but perhaps the most bizarre occurred when my brother was dying in hospital and I camped out in his hospital bedroom. In that week before he passed, I began receiving emails from and/or about people who had passed many years before. Including one from the editor of Woman’s Own which said “Thank you for sending us the idea for a feature on living with my mother who has dementia we would like to commission you to write it.” My mother had been dead for 8 years then. But the most bizarre was a message from my friend Kate who died 3 years previously giving me directions to our joint close friend Penny’s funeral. Even Tod who was a huge cynic had goose pimples. The emails were in a loop and kept coming until my brother died, and then they all stopped. So, what was that about?

This whole photo experience has propelled me along a path that is long overdue. Collating and organizing the photos that go back nearly 5 generations.

Two enormous boxes. Great great grandparents, long lost cousins, numerous holidays snaps, way too many naked baby pics, weddings, barmitzvas, parties, 135 school photos and then they abruptly stop as digital takes over. When I am no longer here my children will be looking at some of these pics and saying “who are all these people?” So, I see it as my responsibility to name them – well as many as possible. Although the naked baby pics all do look a lot alike!