A True Story of Death, Hope, Synchronicity, The Spirit of the Deer and

The numbers 44 and 444 have been showing up for me so much the last 2 years. I always paid attention to numbers and signs and have since I was a kid. It’s not even something I try to do, it just happens. It somehow feels like part of the game of life. Follow the signs, you’re on the right path, find the right number and you win the prize. Something like that. My daughter, after all, was born on 11/11/11. That was an insanely difficult time of my life, her birthdate gave me hope, maybe it’s silly, but maybe I needed the silly little hopeful sign to keep going.

When I was 14 years old a very close friend of mine died in a fire, he was a football player and his number was and is eternally number 44. At 14 years old life began to get pretty complicated for me, well the truth is that it was complicated before, but it was the age 14, when Ed died, that I realized how complicated life was going to be.

Ed and I used to meet halfway between our houses and walk up to the train tracks behind the Mcdade Mall to smoke cigarettes and throw rocks and the moving freight trains when they passed. A week before he died we went to the “Wall”, a store in the mall where they sold CDs and black light posters. I bought the Kansas single CD, ‘Dust in the Wind’ and the lyrics to that song were exactly the way I felt about life at the time.

I close my eyes

Only for a moment, and the moment's gone

All my dreams

Pass before my eyes, a curiosity

Dust in the wind

All they are is dust in the wind

Same old song

Just a drop of water in an endless sea

All we do

Crumbles to the ground, though we refuse to see

It was at this time that I was beginning to feel depression, something that would creep up on me from time to time throughout my life. Ed and I would talk about it. Though our friendship was brief, unexpected and unaccepted, it was deep and meaningful to me and it passed through my life like dust in the wind.

In the early hours of the morning on November 17th,1996 I woke up to sirens only to be informed at about 7am via phone call that Ed had died in a fire in his home. There are many layers and complexities to this story and this relationship, but I will leave it at that.

I wasn’t seeing the number 44 until last summer, 2023 and I just realized that this was the year Ed would have been 44 years old. A friend was running a Surf Board contest for a long board that was actually really lovely and perfect for me. He asked me if I wanted to buy a raffle ticket and then offered me the choice of a number from 1-100 and without hesitation or thinking, I said 44. 2 weeks later he informed me that I won and we went to pick up the beautiful board. I put my hand on the board and thought “thank you ed.” I needed a win.

A few weeks later the kids and I packed up for our annual summer visit to Pennsylvania and the Jersey Shore. It was going to be a quick trip, one week in Long Beach Island and one week in PA where my kids would do a computer coding camp and an art camp at Swarthmore and Villanova colleges that would have me commuting a couple of hours each day during the very short stay.

The backroad commute to Villanova University would take us past the SS. Peter and Paul Cemetery where Ed was buried with his sister, Kristen and her friend Sandy who also perished in the fire. As we passed the fields that surround the long gates of the cemetery, I pointed and said to my kids, that is where my friend Ed is buried, with his sister and sister's friend that died in a fire when I was a kid. At that very moment we all looked over and saw 3 deer standing there. Then later that afternoon, my mother joined me for the commute and as we approached the long road that runs along the cemetery gate on Sproul road, I told her about the deer and as the words were coming out of my mouth we realized, there they were again, the 3 deer.

I know there are a lot of deer in PA but I still believe wholeheartedly that this was a sign. Another thing about deer and my family and spirit- When my mother took our beloved pup Chloe to be put down, also up on sprout road, her and my father encountered a very large stag deer on the way home. The deer was right in the middle of the road and caused them to have to stop and wait for him to cross, looking him directly in his big eyes while he crossed. Wait, there is more, here in Mexico where deer are very few and far between- 2 very large stag deer ran out in front of my truck the night my dog Roxy wandered off into the jungle to die. When I saw them I knew she had left this world. Then the night my grandfather passed in North Carolina with my Aunt Joni, Aunt Joni returned home from the hospital and went out to her back porch, took a seat and looked up to see an all white albino stag deer in her yard staring at her.

Now I don’t know what this life is, but I do know that there is this mysterious sense of comfort in these stories and these experiences. I feel this in my bones like a mid fall breeze in Pennsylvania when you can feel almost instantly the change of the season and know that life cycles cleanses and restores those painful parts of your soul and maybe just maybe your heart expands just a bit to hold it all.