Defying the Pattern

Dearest Rachel –

You’re probably well aware that the human mind sees patterns where none actually exist. It’s how concepts like pareidolia come into being; we see a pair of similar marks balanced atop a slightly larger mark, and instinctively imagine a face (two eyes and a mouth; there may be more, but that’s quite sufficient for our imaginations). Nothing in life is a coincidence, especially after three or more occurrences; there has to be something lurking in the background, be it sinister forces of man or the Hand of God Himself, causing this or that thing to take place. Occam’s Razor aside, we just can’t seem to accept that things exist without applying a certain pattern to them.

I say all this not to claim any sort of moral high ground, but to acknowledge I’m as guilty of doing so as any human. There’s no superiority I can latch onto in making this statement, apart from the fact that I’m willing to make it about myself in the first place. They say the first step toward recovery is in acknowledging that you have a problem; and this is my first step.

In fairness, I didn’t see a pattern in the first quarter of every odd-numbered year until Kevin’s accident. Up until then, things just… happened. The fact that your parents both passed on in March – 2017 in Bill’s case, and 2019 for Jo – were mere coincidence. After all, they were getting up in years, and while Bill’s stroke was sudden in its intensity, it wasn’t entirely unexpected, since he’d just suffered a smaller one three months prior – it was what convinced him that they would need outside help for their final years (well, months, as it happened) together. And Jo had been declining for that much longer; indeed, the only thing that kept Bill’s passing from hastening her end was the fact that she was already gone far enough that his absence didn’t register with her for more than a few moments. We had to learn that there wasn’t much point in explaining what had happened to him each and every time she asked after him – or worse, attempted to go out to search for him. In any case, I suppose there was but a one-in-twelve chance of her departure being in the same month as his, so we didn’t give the matter much thought.

But then, you went over the hill less than two years later. Now, I don’t have to explain how much of a shock that was; I’m still talking to you about it all after four years. But it did leave me wondering; what could happen – or, more to the point, who would leave – in 2023? To be honest, I thought it would be my dad, as he’d been dealing with one thing or another since before your mother’s final decline, but as 2022 began to wind down, his condition appeared to be stable. There didn’t seem to be any reason for it to suddenly fail – although in fairness, his original attack of sepsis was pretty sudden, as well, so there was no reason whatever might take him wouldn’t strike just as suddenly.

Of course, nothing did happen to him (at least, not until the end of 2023, but he’s rallied back from that yet again), but what did happen was every bit as sudden and out of the blue as anything I could imagine happening to Dad. The accident that claimed Kevin was beyond shocking – and yet, these are the sorts of things that seemed to happen every other year at this time of year.

So I’ve been waiting for the shoe to drop yet again during the first quarter of this year, just like it has for the last eight. After all, Dad’s health, while steady, is still just as fragile as it’s been since you were around, and it’s not like he’s getting any younger. In fact, there was that episode some sixteen months ago where, once again, we thought we were going to lose him. I’m pretty sure I was thinking at the time that “he can’t go yet; he’s supposed to hang on until the beginning of 2025!”

Of course, now that the first quarter has come and gone, I’m not sure how to react. There’s no real place to be breathing a sigh of relief; just because he’s defied the pattern (which, to be fair, probably wasn’t there in the first place) doesn’t mean that he’s going to live forever, after all. Time comes for us all, and while every day he looks as healthy as he did the day before (take that how you will), it won’t always be that way. This just means I’m not going to be expecting anything to happen like I have been (however silently, since I didn’t want to invoke the situation by speaking of it), which makes it just like any other one of us.

Then again, who’s to say any of this has to do with him in the first place? It didn’t apply last time around, after all. I had a dream about a week ago about something happening to Twofeathers, as it happens, and I haven’t heard anything from her since then; maybe I’m expecting news from the wrong source, like last time around. Maybe the pattern is intact, and I just don’t know otherwise yet. I hope that’s wrong, too, but without confirmation, well…

And then, of course, there’s the fact that it’s not a pattern, after all, but just a series of events that just so happened to occur every other year at around the same time. I shouldn’t have read anything into them before, and now there’s no point in trying to do so going forward. Things will happen when they happen, and no amount of worrying about it will prevent it when it does; I just have to make peace with the renewal of uncertainty again.

While I do that, honey, keep an eye on me, and wish me luck; I’m going to need it.