How’s this for coincidence:

We made an offer on a house this week (maybe we will get the place, maybe we won’t–a lot depends on boring stuff–offer acceptance, house inspection, the banks not collapsing again–HA! I jest on that last one. Sort of…)

and…

3,000 miles away, on the other side of my life and this country, my godmother’s home is now for sale. This is the same place I grew up next to and hung around in, drank coffee in the kitchen and sipped cocktails on the deck. It’s a place that is as close in my heart as the home I actually grew up in–literally and figuratively–since the properties sit next-door to each other and my folks still live in the house I grew up in.

But because Darlin died last year at age 90, having lived a long and loving life as the wife of my godfather, the mother of 6 and the godmother of a few lucky kids–including me–her home must now be sold.

And I am reeling in the strange coincidence that her home should be for sale at the same time that I may be buying a house.

I push away the sad comparisons–like how special moments were shared in her house and now it’s going, the memories fading–and pull toward me the happy ones. Like how Darlin’s “in the real estate market” at the same time I am (I’m pushing that one but I either smile or I cry so I choose smile.) How we shared so much–her motherly caring of me, my daughterly adoration of her. How when she got older she suffered from breathing issues and how with metastatic breast cancer I did too. How I would call her as she was attached to her oxygen mask and she would perk up and in her special way of speaking say “Why Ann, it’s so nice to hear from you Dah-lin!” (since she always called the little ones in her life Darlin the name stuck back on her. We always called her ‘Darlin.’)

There are many more comparisons I could make between her life and mine, but I won’t. Time is short and my point is made: Darlin and I had a special bond.

And maybe, 3 months after her death last December–to the week–here we go again: her home for sale, my attempt to buy my home–happening at the same time. They say there are no coincidences in life–at least that’s what I’ve always heard.

When it comes to me and Darlin, I’d have to agree.

Posted March 30th, 2012 by