Coincidences

This a stupid piece, a light piece I wrote a while ago. Might fit the holiday spirit.

Let it be said that I don’t believe in coincidence.

But still, I could tell you a few stories, things that happened.

I once buried a friend. She died far away from us, this meaning my group of friends. She died in a distant city. This girl, she passed away of medicine poisoning. She used to live with me, used to live with my BFF. Truth is, she lived with us so much, she actually ended up dating my BFF. I disliked it at the time but that’s what it was. They had this thing, this on and off thing, waaaay after she left the flat, way after my best friend left the flat

When she died, we discovered her native town, her old acquaintances. We were kinda, I don’t know how to put it, but outsiders, we didn’t fit into the frame but still, we were the ones who were with her, the latest. I remember her mom knowing who I was. And this, this was strange. I distinctly recall, this beautiful older woman gripping my left arm while trying to walk. I remember her saying I was as she had heard, I remember I did not know what to think. There was this dude, he was the deceased’s new boyfriend, he also seemed out of place and so he hanged with us, before finally admitting, that he’d been dating her for only two weeks, and he thought he felt less hurt than my best friend appeared to be.

At this point in time, we hadn’t spoke me and my best friend for well over two years. A dumb story, not that important, looking back ten years later. Dude was crying way, way too much. But you see, he never really went out with her, he lived with her at some point, they fucked and they loved one another without ever admitting it.

Because that’s what lame people do. But lame people die too.

And so here he was, with his broken dream, his broken heart and a bunch of us feeling out of place. We silently waited for the family to leave, for the old friend to leave, just to, you know, be together as a crew. On this grave, I made a promise, and I don’t really give a fuck if it sounds stupid to you. I explain to ashes, that I would come back, just to tell her how Breaking Bad ended.

This is one of the rare promises that I kept.

Still, what I distinctly remember is the grey heavy sky above Nantes, this cloudy mess which will always remind me of the west of France. Wanna hear a good story?

We talked one by one to this grave, I assure you. And when came the time of my best friend saying goodbye, I shit you not, the sky opened. But not all the way. It was a distinct patch of light which befell upon him and the cold hard rock which imprisoned one of our loved ones.

Still, I don’t believe in coincidences. I mean it. But…

There once was this old man who lived next door to my flat. We talked for a bit when we had the time. Through our conversations I learned that he once was in the war in Indochine, this was the war which led to the creation of Viet-Nam and Cambodia and I forget the third country. He told me, this was why he disliked war, for he had done it. And this old man, he distinctly remembered some mission when he was knee deep in the swamp and the enemy forces told them via microphone that they had received some mail back at camp, instead of shooting him and his teammates. He said, when the enemy knows when YOU received mail you know this war’s lost.

I liked this old guy, one day he complained I had made too much noise during a party and I listened to him, and I apologized. One day, he also said to me, he lost is parent during world war II, that the Nazis executed them. And that he never really understood before he got older. Looking me straight in the eye, this old man said: This is why I never went to Algeria when they sent me for the war. I said to them: “My parents died to invading forces, you had me when I was eighteen on the whole Indochine thing, but am older now. I won’t kill people who want me out of their country.” For this, he spent the whole war in military jail, he told me.

I know he spoke to classroom full of children, hoping to make them understand how fucked up war really is. And he still did memorial stuff for he knew some of the guy who died and whose names were on the stone monumenst.

Those last few years, I know he moved, I used to see him when voting and stuff, for even after moving out, he still was the president of the vote office right next to my home. That’s until he disappeared. And I wondered.

Today, I woke up, exercised, slept and wrote a bunch. I fast too. And really late decide to throw away my glass recycle bin. So, I looked at my mail and being an unemployed piece of shit, I don’t look at my mail. In our free city newspaper, that I never opened in my life, there he was, my old pal. He was dead, in April, during the pandemic.

You know, I don’t believe in coincidence, but still…