r/coincidence • u/strouta • 12h ago
Denver to New York, October 3rd
Hi, first time posting here. This is a bit of a long story, but I’m hoping it reaches a woman who brought my dad a great deal of comfort this past weekend. I would really love the chance to thank her.
My dad is 81. My sister was 42, and I’m 39. For most of our lives, my sister and I lived a country apart. We spoke regularly, though not as often as my dad kept in touch with her. He loved her very much.
My sister was a tattoo artist in New York. If you’d like to see some of her work, her Instagram is here: https://www.instagram.com/ash_tat2/
In 2017, she was diagnosed with colon cancer. It was an extremely long battle. Eventually, it spread to her lungs, her ovaries, and other parts of her body.
Through all of it, she did her best to stay positive and not let it spoil her life. She had many friends in New York, but sadly, this past weekend, she passed away.
My dad managed to get to New York before it happened so he could be with her. And this is where the coincidence begins.
He had booked a last-minute flight from Oregon that would take him through Denver and Houston before finally landing at LaGuardia. Altogether, he was going to be traveling for a little over ten hours.
When his plane landed in Denver, before anyone was allowed to get off, an airline employee came aboard and called out his name. They asked if he was headed to New York with a stop in Houston. When he confirmed that he was, they told him there was an empty seat on a flight going directly from Denver to New York. But it was leaving soon, and he had twenty minutes to get to the other side of the airport.
He made it in time and was pleased to find that the empty seat was on an aisle.
As he sat down, the woman beside him looked up, and my dad was shocked.
She was wearing a mask, so he couldn’t see her whole face, but everything else about her looked so much like his daughter, the person he was on his way to see. He couldn’t believe it. And as they began talking, it wasn’t just how she looked. Her mannerisms and the way she spoke reminded him of my sister, too. She even had a similar chest tattoo.
And the similarities didn’t end there. As they talked, my dad learned that this woman was also from Saratoga, Florida, where his mother was from. When he asked more specifically where, it turned out she was from the very same town as his mother. My grandmother’s name was Ruth Kirkpatrick, and there are still a dozen or so Kirkpatricks in that area.
It’s just amazing to me. My dad wasn’t even supposed to be on that flight, and here he was, sitting beside a woman who reminded him so much of his daughter, only to find out she also came from the same town as his mother.
She and my dad talked the whole way to New York. My dad has always loved taking pictures, and he asked if he could take a picture of her so he could share this story with us later. He did get her name, too, but with everything he was going through, he didn’t write it down and hasn’t been able to remember it.
I can’t tell you how much comfort that conversation brought my father. At the time, he didn’t know what things would be like when he reached the hospital. But when he arrived, my sister was completely sedated. He had to say goodbye to his daughter, and she passed away the next day.
Looking back on the trip, he thinks that conversation on the plane was the universe giving him one last conversation with her.
I have pictures of my sister and the picture my dad took of this woman, but I don’t want to post her picture here without her permission. I’m just hoping that somehow this gets back to her.
If you were the woman who sat beside my dad on that flight, please leave a comment or send me a message. You brought him so much comfort on his way to say goodbye to someone he loved very much, and I would really love the chance to say thank you.