NOTE: This article is from the AHP Perspective Magazine – August/September 2012 issue. This article and other articles from prior Perspective issues can be found on the AHP website – https://ahpweb.org/ahp-newsletter-2010s/

Recent personal events are proving to be an evolving story, and one that my family and I are learning from on a continual basis. How we view these events, and more importantly, how we proceed in our lives after these events, is the key to determining if we are to grow or remain stagnant. In July 2010, my one-year-old son, Keegan, died from heart failure after a lengthy hospital stay. Keegan was born with Congenital Heart Disease (CHD), diagnosed with cardiomyopathy (heart failure) when he was eight months old and passed away with his family by his side. While his death was not completely unexpected, we had not allowed ourselves to comprehend what could and would likely happen. As a parent, you fight for your child and do not give up unless you have to. Nonetheless, after he died, it was a situation that we were forced to deal with.

SPIRITUAL SYNCHRONICITY
I have always been what I consider a “spiritual” person, with a faith in God and a belief that spiritual events occur around people all the time. But when significant events occurred to me specifically, I have always tried to glean some information from it to learn from the situation and openly accept it. One example happened on the evening of Keegan’s passing when his twin brother (born without any health issues), woke up approximately fifteen minutes after Keegan’s death and said Keegan’s name for the first time. He was in a playful mood, and considering this was approximately 4 a.m., this was an odd event to say the least. This was the beginning of several occurrences that I describe as “spiritual synchronicity,” all related to the passing of our young son. Jung noted that the synchronicity principle is founded on meaningful coincidences of two or more events “where something other than chance are involved” and that are “connected by simultaneity and meaning” (C. G. Jung, 1973, Synchronicity: An Acausal Connecting Principle translated by R. F. C. Hull, Princeton, NJ: Bollingen).

DIVERGENT PATHS
On two separate occasions after the passing of my son, friends of ours were in a large, local cemetery, filled with winding curving roads. On both of these occasions, each person ended up getting slightly lost while trying to navigate out of the cemetery and found themselves right in front of Keegan’s grave stone. His is the only Celtic cross in the cemetery and they had never been to his gravesite previously. Th e most peculiar aspect of these events was that each friend mentioned to us independently what happened to them and both felt that Keegan was leading them to his gravesite so that they could in turn share this with us to make us feel better about his loss. Judging by Jung’s standards, this appears to be synchronicity at work, with not one, but two similar events happening what seems to be randomly, but with a significant meaning behind both experiences. It is hard to describe the feeling that I had after hearing these personal stories involving my son, but I certainly felt a comforting feeling of knowing that Keegan was still in our midst. Several months afterward, my wife was going to visit the cemetery where Keegan is buried and wanted to stop by the grocery store across the street to buy flowers. She was feeling quite upset at the time and felt that visiting might help. While walking into the store, she was stopped by a woman and her four-year-old young daughter holding a single flower. Neither woman nor child was someone my wife had ever encountered in the past. Th e little child stopped and greeted my wife and proceeded to tell her that the outfit she was wearing was pretty. What happened next, however, was completely unexpected, as the young girl offered the flower in her hand to my wife as she wanted her to have it. Initially, the mother protested as she did not want her daughter to impose. But then my wife described that she was going to the store specifically for that purpose. My wife accepted the flower with a thank you and mother and child went on their way. While the event in their view might not have seemed significant, my wife was deeply moved by the incident, and as with the other incidents described above she felt that this was not just a random coincidence, but that she was “guided to ensure this happened.” All these experiences were with individuals heading on divergent paths, meeting in timely and meaningful ways.

A STORY OF HOPE AND PERSONAL GROWTH
Lastly, I want to share a positive story regarding hope and a desire for personal growth. Very shortly after my son’s death, I founded Keegan’s Spirit Foundation, a non-profit organization designed to help others with CHD in a variety of ways, namely a college scholarship and making special donations to the Cardiac ICU unit where my son spent 5 of his 12 months on earth as a patient. Our first scholarship, awarded in Summer 2011, was given to a surprisingly vibrant young woman named Hannah, who, as we came to fi nd out was born with the same rare disease that Keegan was born with, Heterotaxy Syndrome. Th is syndrome, affecting the body’s organs, reversing them in most cases and causing potentially significant heart issues, affects approximately four in every 1,000,000 births. To have met someone dealing with the same rare disease was a very emotional moment for our family. At the time Hannah applied for our scholarship, we also learned that she had visited the foundation’s website and printed a picture of Keegan, posted it to her refrigerator and said hello to him every morning. She described this as a motivation for her to strive to do her personal best every day, saying that there was no way she could feel sorry for herself with her condition, while Keegan lost his battle with heart disease. Th is event, as with the other events described in the article, appears to be much more than “mere coincidence” and reflects a spiritual, meaningful encounter. Keegan touched so many lives while on earth and we started the foundation and scholarship to allow his strong spirit to continue to touch people’s lives in ways he never could have dreamed. We remain in contact with Hannah and her scholarship is up for renewal this year.

LEARNING OPPORTUNITIES
Spiritually synchronistic events like these described seem to bring us in contact with other people whom we were destined to meet. They seem to defy explanation in some cases and most certainly could not be considered “by chance.” However, this is only part of the overall picture. How we respond to these events will determine whether we will learn from them or simply brush them aside as insignificant or trivial. We have tried as a family unit to learn from these events and not take them for granted. It is possible that when some people are brought into our lives and leave the world much too soon in our eyes, that they are not random events and were put in our lives for a greater purpose. Nonetheless, whether these encounters are fleeting moments, like dust in the wind, or are the beginnings of lifelong relationships, I view them as special rest stops along life’s highway that, if we are blessed enough, we are able to understand and travel together.

BRUCE SOUTHERS, M.B.A., B.A. (Psychology), is a former drug/alcohol counselor now working as a Project Manager in the legal industry, and has been a board member with the Association of Humanistic Psychology since 2017.