I Can See Clearly Now (DMV Part 6)

In May we were driving to the eye doctor. Lily needed new glasses. I’d been putting it off. I could no longer delegate this to the other parent. We took Barrett’s road-worthy car and were driving on the Edens, the route he and Lily always took, to his house as well as to the eye doctor, which was in a northern suburb. He was always delighted to take her, due to his love for both driving and Lily. So a couple months after he died, I am driving their familiar route on the Edens Expressway when my passenger says, “I feel my dad.”

“You do?” I say, to stall, to check in and see if I too feel him. I don’t.

“How do you know?” I ask, not because I don’t believe her, but because I wonder how she will articulate it. “I just know,” she answers.

I totally understand. We drive on. It’s not surprising that she would feel him in his car, on that expressway, going to the eye doctor to which he had always driven her. And yes, it could have been…memories. Especially since I didn’t feel him. But.

But.

We get to the eye doctor and are asked to sign in. Out of habit I take the pen but Lily says, “Mom. I can sign myself in.” I hand her the pen and she writes her name and then pauses.

(Hold on. I am going to pause too, right now, just to ask: how many Barretts do you know? Really. Stop a moment and ask yourself.)

Lily gestures with the pen, and I look at the sign-in pad and the name above hers: Barrett Adams.

Barrett. Somehow he arrived before us.

What if “coincidence” is an amazing alignment of the Universe in which a cosmic wink is provided? Do we believe enough in the goodness of the powers that be to allow for the possibility of that level of synchronicity?

Really—how many Barretts do you know?

Postscript: for those of you who have any interest in the guru/spiritual growth aspects of these stories, I want to add that yes, I was interested in seeing just who this Barrett at the eye doctor was. And I had nothing to do but wait. At some point I heard a mom say, “Barrett! Sit down!” and I looked up and he was about five or six, performing some antics (a.k.a. experiencing the joy of being alive) in the reception area, and the message of that moment for me, upon seeing his joyful being, was: rather than imagining our Barrett as the always-wrong, disappointing ex-husband, when I connect with him from now on, I am to imagine him as the full-of-potential, energetic little Barrett that he no doubt once was…before I was even born.

<See Parts 7-9>