(Un) coincidental
- Jason James Barry
- Aug 12, 2025
- 2 min read
What if there’s no such a thing as coincidence, like in a M. Night Shyamalan “Signs” kind of way? What if my book sales dropped off to zero for my memoir about emerging from the shadow of my father (after my Facebook account was shut down since July for… and I’m just guessing here… trying to promote my book). And I get one more erroneous book sale, out of the blue and after a solid month of social-media-isolation — on the anniversary of the death of my father.
August 7. Nearly 30 years-ago to the day, and the date is still seared in my brain. Eight. Seven. Ninety-eight. Nearly 30 years-ago, and who else would keep track of that date? Mom, my brother? They both have a book.
Next. What if Dad died of a heart attack when he was 53 — and for the past two-years, following my stroke, two heart procedures, and a litany of meds I’ve had to work off of, my own heart issues finally resolved. Fully. In the months after I too turned 53. A failed heart and a mended one, at age 53. I don’t know of any causal connection. But what if there are no coincidences?
Next. What if the job my father took in police work kept me from really getting to know him. And what if I left my law enforcement job — a career my father tried talking me out of — so I could raise my daughters to know me as much as I wanted to know my own father. What if he was so insular and quiet and so hard to know, and what if I found writing as my way to tell everything I’d ever want to say to someone, anyone, everyone. What if that wasn’t a coincidence, at all?
What if someone just bought my book then, to check off one other thing on a long to-do list, a book they intended for weeks or months to buy, and it happened to be this one particular day, on August 7. And what if I just happened to check on my book sales, this month in flatline, and the date of the single book sale, by chance, led to all these coincidences, enough for me to daydream that my father still had ways to watch over me.
Jason James Barry is an award-winning essayist, journalist, and author. This summer he republished his police-life memoir, “The Midnight Coffee Club: A Memoir of Grit, Glimmers, and the Pull of Police Life” as revised second-edition, available on Amazon.
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