I paid 25 cents to light a little white candle

For the last few months, I've felt like I've been seeing the number 424 unusually often. The number 424, or the time 4:24, or the date 4/24, or a 4 and a 24 next to each other. Some of you reading this already know why that number would have meaning to me. For anyone reading who doesn't know, it's because my wife Cara passed away on 4/24 - April 24, 2015. I was already feeling like I was seeing this combination of digits with uncanny frequency prior to the events I'll describe in this post. That's important background for the events I'll describe.

This year, on April 24, I traveled to Detroit to see a concert by one of my all time favorite bands, Typhoon. They're a band whose music, with lyrics grappling with mortality, was my own personal soundtrack to Cara's battle with lung cancer, so the date of the show was eerily fitting. It was even more weird to consider that the most recent previous Typhoon concert I attended had taken place on June 12, 2018 - that is, my and Cara's wedding anniversary. Significant concerts taking place on significant dates - a long running theme of my life and my blog!

It was really great to see Typhoon again for the first time in years. The band's lead singer Kyle Morton is an amazing person who I've befriended through conversations at previous Typhoon shows; unfortunately, I did not get a chance to catch up with him this time due to the band's very understandable COVID precautions. During the show he talked about how weird it was to be back out on the road playing in front of people but also how important it was, how there's such a big essential part of life that was missing when we couldn't have those in person gatherings. He also thanked people for wearing masks during the show - he has had some very serious health issues and is a kidney transplant recipient, so trying to avoid COVID is more important for him than for most people in our age bracket.

The show, along with visiting some very close friends in Ann Arbor earlier the same day, was a great way to mark an April 24. It was also not the first time I saw an important concert on April 24.

On April 24, 2018, I saw the Decemberists at Cleveland's Agora. They were a band Cara and I both loved and whose music had had some significance to our relationship. One of the highlights of that show was the performance of "Grace Cathedral Hill," a beautiful song from the Decemberists' debut album Castaways and Cutouts. I remember muttering "wow" upon my recognition that they were playing the song, because I was so happily surprised.

This has all been a prelude to what happened to me last week. I traveled to San Francisco last Wednesday to attend a meeting on Thursday and Friday where I'd discuss my research into asthma with other asthma researchers. That was what was supposed to happen, anyway. But then, on Wednesday, I realized I was feeling sick, with a sore throat and other symptoms of a respiratory infection. I took a COVID test and it was negative. On Thursday I took another COVID test and it was again negative. But I was still feeling sick. Apparently I'd come down with a cold. My symptoms had definitely made me wonder if I had COVID, even though I'm triple vaccinated and had an omicron infection at Christmas. It wouldn't be impossible. Despite apparently not having COVID this time, I still didn't want to expose all the other people at the meeting to my illness, especially considering that if they caught it, not only would they get sick, but they would have the added stress of wondering if they had COVID.

So I told the conference organizers what was going on, and then ended up with a bunch of time to kill in San Francisco, while feeling sick enough to not want to attend a meeting but not sick enough to be utterly incapacitated. I ate a lot of takeout meals. I watched a lot of playoff basketball on TV. I wandered around a lot on Wednesday, at first not realizing quite how sick I was feeling. I wore a KN95 mask whenever I was in an indoor space and tried to keep close contact with other people to a minimum. Thursday I mostly spent relaxing at my hotel, hoping I'd feel no longer sick by Friday morning, but this didn't happen. On Friday I again wandered around a lot, since at that point I was clearly missing all of the meeting and there was nothing else to do. The weather, thankfully, was beautiful the whole time I was there.

It was very disappointing to have traveled out there for the meeting and not get to participate in it, but on Friday I really managed to take advantage of my free time, and by the end of the day I came away from it thinking, oddly, that perhaps my illness had been... fortuitous?

I noticed that the famous "Painted Ladies" houses that are across the street from Alamo Square Park, as seen in the opening credits of Full House, were a couple miles' walk from my hotel, so I went there, and it was really nice just hanging out in that park for a while and taking in the sights and sounds and sun.

Heading back, I picked up some food, ate it in the park across from city hall, and then was looking at my phone trying to see if there was anything else interesting that wouldn't be a huge amount of extra walking, and I saw this:

Oh! Grace Cathedral, like in the Decemberists song! Well, I pretty much have to go, was my thought process, and then I scrolled through the music on my iPod, selected Castaways and Cutouts, hit play, and set out toward the cathedral.

I've always had a thing for cathedrals. The National Cathedral in Washington, D.C. is one of my favorite buildings anywhere. Grace Cathedral is another really nice one.

There's a line in the song that goes, "I paid 25 cents to light a little white candle," and because I'm a huge freaking nerd I of course decided, I should pay 25 cents to light a little white candle while in Grace Cathedral. (This was in addition to a $12 admission fee for visitors that I did not realize I'd have to pay until I was inside, but I decided, why not.) I first did some wandering around the inside of the cathedral, admiring the beautiful architecture and artwork and stained glass.

The whole time I was there, I was thinking of the song and of that Decemberists show that had taken place on 4/24. Eventually I decided I was ready to go and pay 25 cents to light a little white candle. I headed over toward a candle lighting station. While doing so I glanced at my watch.

The time was 4:24.

Long time readers of my blog might remember that I have a thing for noticing and pointing out weird coincidences. By now it's happened so much that things I would have once viewed as astounding coincidences, like the Typhoon show being on 4/24, I now kind of shrug my shoulders and laugh about. But this, especially in light of my already feeling like I was seeing those digits strangely often - this was a special one.

So I went, and I put a quarter in a donation box, and I lit a little white candle.

And then I stood there for a minute and talked to Cara. It's not something I do often, at least not in a direct way. But in this moment it felt like I was supposed to. I'm glad that I did.

After leaving the cathedral, I resumed my wandering, and resumed listening to the Decemberists on my iPod. The song "Grace Cathedral Hill" had not yet come up prior to my arrival at the cathedral but came on shortly after my departure. I stopped walking while listening to the song and just admired this view:

It gave me a very peaceful feeling, something I haven't had a whole lot of recently.

That night I caught a red eye flight from San Francisco to Washington DC before connecting back to Cleveland. I managed to sleep for most of the flight. Upon landing in DC, I was dismayed to receive a text message that my flight to Cleveland was cancelled and I'd have to select another flight. But this turned out to not be a problem because the flight had been replaced by another flight at the identical time. So the cancellation turned out to have no effect on my day, except for one thing, which is that I was issued a new boarding pass with an interesting combination of numbers on it:

Then, after I arrived in Cleveland, got to my car, and started driving home, I laughed when I noticed that the first gas station sign I saw showed a price of, you guessed it, $4.24.

Signs from Cara? Who knows, but it's nice to think that maybe they could be.

Thirty-six

Thirty-six is an interesting number.

One thing that makes thirty-six interesting is that it's both a square number and a triangular number - a square triangular number. Square numbers include (of course) 1*1 = 1, 2*2 = 4, 3*3 = 9, etc. Triangular numbers include 1, 1 + 2 = 3, 1 + 2 + 3 = 6, etc. Thirty-six is equal to 6*6 and it's also equal to 1 + 2 + 3 + 4 + 5 + 6 + 7 + 8. Square triangular number.

image source

I learned that bit of trivia as a child and for whatever reason it popped into my head shortly after midnight on my 36th birthday last week (although to be honest I had to use Google for help because I had forgotten the term "triangular number," even though the concept was in my head).

There are infinitely many square triangular numbers, so 36 isn't unique in that sense, but it occurred to me that because the previous number in the sequence is 1, and the next is 1225, 36 is the only square triangular number that can be the age in years of a person who is capable of comprehending and appreciating the fact that their age in years is a square triangular number. Interesting? Well, to me, anyway!

Of course, that's not the main reason 36 is an interesting number for me.

I'm sure a lot of people can relate to feeling a certain way when their age reaches that at which someone close to them died. A parent, perhaps, or perhaps a sibling or a close friend. And for me, it is undoubtedly surreal that my age in years is now the same as the age at which my wife died.

I'm currently reading a sci-fi short story anthology edited by Isaac Asimov called Where Do We Go From Here? Published in 1971, the book includes stories from the previous few decades, and each story is accompanied by a short discussion by Asimov of the scientific concepts in the story as well as some suggested thought exercises and study topics for intellectually curious readers. A very interesting book.

The first story, "A Martian Odyssey" by Stanley G. Weinbaum, was published in 1934 and is about the first manned mission to Mars, which the story envisions taking place in the 21st century (but amusingly only ten years after the first man reached the Moon, in the story's timeline). In the story, intelligent alien creatures are encountered on Mars, along with an alien artifact, a "little crystal" that gave off light that "destroyed diseased tissue and left healthy tissue unharmed."

The story closes as follows:

"I should like to see," he murmured.

"Yeah," said Harrison. "And the wart cure. Too bad you missed that; it might be the cancer cure they've been hunting for a century and a half."

"Oh, that!" muttered Jarvis gloomily. "That's what started the fight!" He drew a glistening object from his pocket.

"Here it is."

And so our protagonist has absconded with a potential cure for cancer.

I chuckled to myself at this ending.

I was stunned when I read Asimov's words on the next page:

It was the first published science fiction story of Stanley G. Weinbaum who, at one bound, became the most popular author in the field. It was not just the realism of his alien other-world creatures, but it was also his light and easy style, a far cry from the creakiness of the writing of most of the s.f. authors of the early thirties. For two years, he retained his popularity and then, as suddenly as he came, he vanished, for in 1936, at the age of thirty-six, he died of cancer.

This was a few days before my birthday. I was already thinking of the deeply personal significance of my turning thirty-six. The age at which my wife died, of cancer. So to read those words, after reading that story? Very surreal indeed.

This might seem like a mopey post. It's not meant to be. All in all, I feel pretty good about where my life is right now. And I don't mind being thirty-six. I just find it interesting to think about and make note of things like this. They help give life flavor.

Incidentally, in Asimov's discussion of another story in the book, he discusses some odd coincidences, including a story featuring an ichthyologist named Vernon Brock that was read by a real ichthyologist named Vernon Brock who "promptly wrote to" the story's author. Asimov concludes:

Such coincidences abound everywhere. What do you think of them? Suppose I said, "No matter how weird such coincidences may seem, it would be far more weird to have no such coincidences." Would you agree? There is a branch of mathematics called probability that deals with such things among others, if you are interested.

This is, by an even wider margin, the least likely thing that has ever happened

Over the years - especially the last few - I've enjoyed cataloging the various strange and unlikely coincidences that have happened to me in my life. The list of these coincidences has grown at an accelerating rate in the time since Cara's diagnosis and death, sometimes even making me tempted to question the nature of reality. Bizarre coincidences that have happened to Cara and me - ranging from Cara correctly predicting her bib number (666) at a cycling tour to me randomly hearing the minor '90s alt-rock hit "Here's Where the Story Ends" on two separate occasions on the day of Cara's calling hours - were the theme of the blog post This is, by a wide margin, the least likely thing that has ever happened that I wrote last year in February. I later described several other remarkable coincidences, all of them related to the timing of significant concerts, in my November 4 blog post.

The latter post was both an account of my first date with Cara and a review of the first show of the first, and last, Temple of the Dog tour that I attended on the tenth anniversary of that first date. I say "and last" because yesterday brought the news that Temple of the Dog's lead singer Chris Cornell, best known for his band Soundgarden, committed suicide the previous night, after a Soundgarden show in Detroit, at the age of 52. I was shocked and deeply saddened at the news, perhaps more so than by any other celebrity death in my lifetime. Cornell was an amazing talent and his music really meant a lot to me. It's so sad when someone with so much to offer the world feels that he no longer wants to be a part of the world and acts on those feelings. I've certainly experienced depression myself, but never suicidal impulses. There's so much about the workings of the human brain that remains such a mystery. But help is out there. When you're depressed, it often makes it harder to seek out that help. That's one of the awful things about depression. I'm not judging Cornell, because I have no idea what he was going through, but I wish deeply that he could have found the help he needed to get out of that dark place, just as I wish that for everyone dealing with similar feelings. Don't give up on getting better. Do everything you can to find that help. It's worth the effort.

(Speaking of the mysterious workings of the human brain, last night I had a dream in which I was going to a therapy session, and in my dream Chris Cornell was my therapist, and I realized he wouldn't be there because he had died. That's one to ponder for a while.)

In happier news...

Something truly amazing has happened to me. Along with it have come several more astonishingly unlikely coincidences, and since I so enjoy doing so, I decided to write about them.

On March 2 I was sitting at my desk at work when a message popped up on Facebook Messenger from someone I did not know. "Hi, I'm EB," read the message. "How long have you been part of the "Young, Widowed and Dating" group? I've just joined the group. I lost my husband Todd to brain cancer in 2014."

(It should be noted, amusingly in retrospect, that the full title of the Facebook group is "SUPPORT GROUP: Young, Widowed & Dating - Not Dating Site" - that is, the purpose of the group is explicitly not for members to solicit dates with other members.)

I enjoy meeting new people, so I responded to EB's message, and we had a very nice chat. Soon, our chats became a regular thing. We became fast friends. As the weeks went by, I began to realize that meeting EB, it just kinda reminded me of, well, meeting Cara. Yet EB lives in Nashville, and I was already dating someone in Cleveland who I liked, so I wasn't intent on pursuing a relationship with EB. It was nice to have someone to discuss the whole "young, widowed, and dating" thing with, though - someone else who really "got it." We both enjoyed sharing some of our dating adventures with each other. We also both enjoyed reading each other's blogs. These glimpses into the inner workings of each other's hearts and minds definitely helped draw us to each other.

Early in April, the woman I was dating and I had a discussion about our future and basically both agreed that, although we really liked each other and enjoyed spending time together, it probably wasn't going to become a serious long-term relationship. We are still friends, for which I'm grateful. It's actually pretty wild to me that, because I had never dated anyone before Cara, this is the first time ever that I've been dating someone for a while, and then ceased to be romantically involved with her, but she's still alive. So I'm definitely glad to still be friends!

Already, even before this conversation, I had been starting to wonder if EB was a better match, but I was reluctant to give up a pretty good thing here in Cleveland for a maybe in Nashville. Now I felt no such reservations - and I had suspected since very early in our friendship that EB might be interested in me - so I went ahead and asked her out. And obviously, as I wouldn't be writing this post otherwise, she said yes! We made plans for me to visit Nashville on the last weekend of April. And it was then that the coincidences began to pile up once more, in shocking fashion.

Shortly after we agreed to try being "more than friends" I was "Facebook stalking" EB and I noticed that she was friends with someone with whom I had three mutual friends - EB, and two other people. Intrigued by this, I looked at this friend's profile. The two other mutual friends were both involved in Cara's lung cancer charity event Breathe Deep Cleveland. I quickly realized that this person who was somehow friends with EB was the niece of one of the lead local organizers of the event and had come from Nashville to the event and led a Zumba warmup before the walk/run. I decided I had to ask EB how she knew her. Imagine my surprise when, on the same day, EB said that she had an amazing story for me!

EB has a four-year-old daughter named [redacted]. [redacted] has a nanny. EB was talking to her nanny about me, and when the nanny asked to see a picture of me, EB showed her this picture:

"Is... is he wearing an Afternoon Naps shirt?" [redacted]'s nanny asked.

Afternoon Naps were a local Cleveland band that Cara and I loved. We became friends with the two lead members of the band, Tom and Leia, who even attended our wedding. It turned out that [redacted]'s nanny used to live in Cleveland - and had dated Tom - and had helped design the t-shirt I'm wearing in that picture. Oh, and that picture was taken when Cara and I were in Pittsburgh for a Belle and Sebastian concert at which we saw some of our friends including Tom and Leia - and [redacted]'s nanny was also at that concert.

I was completely flabbergasted at this story. And then I asked EB how she knew the other friend of hers with whom I had a personal connection, the one I had discovered.

EB started laughing.

That other friend? [redacted]'s preschool teacher.

So despite the two of us never having lived anywhere near each other, we share not just one, but two astonishingly unlikely personal connections. And we had each, independently, discovered one of the two connections, and had simultaneously been looking forward to sharing them with each other! We have both spent a lot of time just marveling over these connections and at how our lives came to intersect.

Those weren't the only weird coincidences that happened in April.

At one point in one of our conversations EB asked me what my middle name was. "Michael," I replied, to her surprise, for Michael was also her late husband Todd's middle name. I reasoned with her that this wasn't that strange because Michael is an extremely common name. Then I found out that [redacted]'s middle name is [redacted], given to her because it's EB's mother-in-law's middle name. It's also my mother-in-law's middle name. So okay, those two middle name coincidences taken together? Pretty strange.

Another astonishing coincidence happened in the middle of the month when I received a sympathy card from the vet's office for the recent death of Cara's cat Mitters. When I opened the card, I realized that the text on the inside was very familiar. It was the same text on the cards that were handed out at Cara's funeral. I immediately had to go and find one of those cards. I placed them side by side, verifying that the words were identical.

Then I flipped to the fronts of the cards, and it hit me.

Not only did both cards have identical words, they also both had double rainbows - not just rainbows, but double rainbows - on the front. At this realization, I just broke down laughing. I just laughed and laughed for several minutes. It was all just too much.

A little more than a week later, I was in Columbus and went to visit my mother-in-law Joyce. I told her all about the exciting developments in my life. For by this point in time, although I had still not yet met EB in person, the two of us had grown very, very close, adding near nightly Skype sessions to our communications (something, I might add, that considerably reduced the potential awkwardness of meeting for the first time in person - hooray for technology!). We were both extremely excited for my trip to Nashville and impatient for it to arrive. I also told Joyce about all the recent weird coincidences. The personal connections EB and I discovered. The middle names. The cards for Mitters and Cara (which I brought to show Joyce in person). "Hey, you up there, are you trying to tell me something?" she said, perhaps only partly in jest, looking up at the sky.

Upon telling Joyce that I would be going to Nashville the following weekend, she said that she would be worried, just as she had worried about Cara going to Cleveland. "It's like that Megafaun song, 'Worried Mind'," she said, referencing a song by a band Cara and I liked. (Joyce has an old iPod that we filled with music for her to enjoy.) She went on to sing a snippet of the song.

And here was one of the very strangest coincidences of all the strange coincidences I've experienced. For out of all the more than 10,000 songs that are on my iPod, the one that I was in the middle of listening to when I arrived at my in-laws' place? It was "Worried Mind." (And no, there's no way Joyce could have heard it playing, because when I pulled up she was inside with the door closed, and the windows of my car were rolled up.)

Driving away afterwards, listening to the rest of the song from where I had left off when I parked, I broke down laughing again.

As I remarked to EB later, sometimes it feels like the whole universe is some weird practical joke being played on me.

But wait, there's more!

April 29 brought my trip to Nashville. The date of the trip has an odd significance. It's not completely coincidental, because I noticed it ahead of time and sort of did it on purpose (which is perhaps weird), but objectively speaking, that weekend did make the most sense for my trip, and the fact that the opportunity even presented itself for things to work out this way is rather wild. Anyway, April 29, 2017 was two years and five days from the day Cara died. And EB was born two years and five days after Cara was born. Therefore, when I met EB in person, she was exactly the same age, to the day, as Cara was when Cara was last alive.

Pretty strange, but I'd like to think of it as a good sign.

The trip went amazingly well, as did EB's first visit to Cleveland two weeks later. Finding true love again after having had it and lost it is... really something. It's hard to put into words. It's probably hard to understand if you haven't experienced it yourself. And I feel like it would be nigh impossible to form a connection of such depth with someone who hasn't experienced the things I have. I feel very lucky right now.

There was one more funny coincidence in Nashville. On my last day there, EB suggested we pick up [redacted] early from preschool and go have ice cream before I departed. She said there was a really good ice cream place called Jeni's. "Is that the Jeni's that's originally from Columbus, Ohio?" I asked.

"... Oh yeah... it is," EB said, a little embarrassed that she had forgotten, for she knew that I had grown up in Columbus, and she said that the main thing she knew about Columbus was that Jeni's was from there.

It was a real trip to walk into the familiar setting of a Jeni's shop while in a city that was completely new to me. And there in the Jeni's in Nashville I was served ice cream by a woman with a tattoo of the state of Ohio on her forearm. I asked her about it and she explained that she was from Ohio. The tattoo was notable because Cara too had a tattoo of Ohio on her forearm.

In fact, I had just shown a picture of that tattoo to EB earlier that day while telling her the story of my own tattoo, which was done by the same tattoo artist as Cara's Ohio tattoo. Jeni's ice cream was something Cara and I enjoyed many times together, including, most notably, after our wedding, while still decked out in our wedding attire. I'd like to think of that encounter with a woman with an Ohio tattoo in that Nashville Jeni's as a little sign from Cara.

I also love that I can share all these stories with EB without feeling the least bit awkward. Cara and Todd are very much a part of our relationship, and it's a very good thing.

April 2017 was probably, all told, the most amazing month of my life. Life is really weird. Right now, it's really weird in a good way.