An Illusion of Coincidence

I returned to Iowa for a weekend in July just months after my wife’s death. It was one of those rare mild weekends that Midwesterners appreciate during hot, humid summers. I had gone to see her mother, connect with family and friends, and to select a stone for Cathy’s grave. The trip was fraught with conflicting emotions. I was glad to be there with Cathy’s mother, Gayle, yet memories appeared around every corner and each bend in the road.
That weekend, I had occasion to attend two “country” experiences. The blue grass concert Saturday night in Pattonsburg, Missouri, was to be treasured. The quality of the music was equaled only by the quality of the pie served. The next morning, we went with an aunt and uncle to the Broadhorn country church at the edge of a cornfield seemingly in the middle of nowhere. It was a unique experience for a city guy reared in a Pennsylvania coal-mining town. I appreciated the sheer simplicity and energy of the service and remained to talk with one of the older members about the origin of the church. Cathy’s aunt Joy introduced me to the organist who had recently lost her husband. We shared a brief conversation and a common bond. She handed me a small religious tract on death and grieving. I tucked it in my back pocket, and later back at the house tossed it unread into my case.

The following day I left for Kansas City to fly back to Phoenix. I arrived early and had a few hours before the scheduled departure. I read the newspaper, began a novel, and practiced the timeworn craft of people watching. The clock crawled through the minutes, and I used the time to edit a poem that was vexing me. Rummaging through my case for my journal, I found the booklet. I began to read a different view on my status. Whether it was fatigue or just the omni-presence of emotions in my grieving, I was driven back to a grief experience fifty years earlier.

My family lived in a nice house a few miles outside of a town in central Pennsylvania. It was a great place to grow up. I roamed the fields and forest with my only kid neighbor, Johnny, and our beagles Captain and Blackie. The dogs were cousins and seemed to be as good friends as were Johnny and I. We lived the carefree lives of young boys with idle hours on sultry summer days.

My childhood Eden ended when my parents took my brother and me into town to see a dilapidated duplex on a street of row houses. I learned that we were soon to move there. I was devastated. I did not want to move into town much less into that dungeon of a house. However, at ten, it was not my choice, and I must confess, my mother turned it into a beautiful home for which I have fond memories. The one compromise was that I could take Captain with me. I was little prepared for the experiences that would arise out of that decision.

The house sat on a corner just six doors from a church. Used to running freely, the confines of the house were stressful to Captain. Not since he wore a cast on a broken hind leg as a puppy had he been so constrained. The only thing worse for him than being housebound was the peal of the bell at St. Peter and Paul’s. Captain’s baying rivaled an English foxhunt. Whether in pain, joy, or simple response, he would howl during and beyond each carillon. Unfortunately, the bell rang regularly calling the parish to mass. Our popularity as newcomers rapidly waned, and requests turned to complaints. Captain was exiled to the country to rejoin his cousin. My one concession had vanished.

A tan cocker Spaniel puppy assuaged my sadness when it appeared on my next birthday. He was the perfect dog for a small boy in a small house. Perfect, until the day he ran out onto Maple Street, and was hit by a car driven by a local minister, Reverend David Wilkerson, who traveled the street regularly. Buffy was dead. Frustration, guilt, and anger flooded my mind. I was frustrated because I did not know what to do. I felt the guilt of allowing him to run into the street, but I was angry with the Reverend. My memory is that he was more concerned with his car than the death of a puppy or the feelings of a youngster. I remember him walking around the car looking for damage. I remember him lashing out at me for letting the dog loose. I remember my anger when he blamed me.

Later that day, my dad and I buried Buffy in the forest, the process of healing the grief began, and eventually only the anger remained. Whether the memories of that day were the reality or not they lingered as the source of a fifty-year resentment toward the Reverend. For a while, I casually followed his career. I read his book, The Cross and the Switchblade, which was later made into a movie. I heard once that he moved to the Mid-west to begin an evangelistic ministry, but eventually I lost track of him, and he faded from my memory. He had not been a presence in my life, but fifty years later here I was, sitting at KCI, and my mind had transported me in time to a vivid memory and a simmering anger. I realized that all these years had passed and I had not forgiven a man, who seemingly just by coincidence was caught in what to a small boy was egregious behavior.

My mind returned to the present, and I began reading again. “No matter how much pain and suffering wrack these mortal bodies, none of it is worthy of the comparison to the unspeakable glory that awaits those who endure the passage.” Though the perspective was not from my religious frame of reference, the thoughts expressed were comforting. The booklet ended with a prayer including, “Most of all, deliver me from the bondage of the fear of death.” As I finished, a woman’s metallic voice announced that my plane would begin boarding in a few minutes. I slid the booklet inside the cover of my journal and readied myself. My thoughts haunted me. My wife had just died, yet I was focusing on the death of this puppy. Had I turned a “minor” into a “major” as a friend of mine describes it? Why had my brain resurrected this memory? The voice called my group, and I boarded.

Sitting there with my journal in my lap, buckled in, seatback in the upright position, aware of exits and oxygen mask procedures, I awaited takeoff. We rumbled down the runway, and the thrust of the jet engines pushed me into the back of the seat. I closed my eyes aware of a force that still holds me in awe. We rose into the air and turned westward toward home. I lowered the tray table and retrieved my journal expecting to return to my writing. I opened the journal, and there staring me in the face was the answer. I had glossed over the cover of the booklet until that moment, but right there in white shadow print was the answer to my question, Ultimate Healing by David Wilkerson, the very same pastor. I could scarcely believe what I was reading. How appropriate that the cover was printed in a shadow font and that the title and his name remained hidden from me until that moment. The power of the jet engines shrank in comparison to the thunderbolt of recognition I experienced.

After fifty years, for an act for which he had no responsibility, Reverend David Wilkerson had made amends. I found forgiveness in that moment, forgiveness for him for the accident, and forgiveness for myself for resenting him for so long. At a time in which my emotions were so raw and my grief so dominant, he was there to console me. Was this simply a coincidence?

Was it coincidence that one Sunday morning I attended a small country church in Iowa? Was it coincidence that Joy’s friend gave me the copy of Ultimate Healing? Was it coincidence that I ignored the cover? I do not think so. I believe it was the illusion of coincidence and that God does work in mysterious ways. Reverend Wilkerson’s ministry had reached across the years to help me begin to heal in a time of grief of such greater significance than that of the loss of a puppy. Reverend David Wilkerson had completed the grand circle, the circle of love.

“An Illusion of Coincidence”
Copyright 2010 © Michael J. McCabe
All rights reserved.