I'm not a believer, but....

...here's a thing. Today, it's three years since my brother died after a very swift illness. I don't tend to dwell on these things, indeed I only realised it when I looked at the calendar. I then spent a few quiet moments remembering Paul.

Anyway, when I went downstairs there was a letter waiting for me. One that I hadn't noticed on the doormat yesterday and which my wife had now put aside for me. I opened it to find a letter from my mother. She had enclosed an article that my father had written and submitted to Punch magazine. It's a humorous piece of about five pages of double spaced A4 paper. I started to read it with interest and two very random coincidences occurred.

Firstly, the story he had written contained the surname 'D'eath' - the very same surname as my neighbours, and secondly, he had used the word 'concatenated' - a word, which, up until two days ago, I had never seen or heard anyone use (indeed, call me ignorant for a writer, but I had to look up its meaning!).

Now, you may think that perhaps he knows the surname of my neighbours and the fact that the same word cropped up twice in 3 days having avoided me for a lifetime is just the way things sometimes happen, and I would agree, were it not for the fact that my dad died back in 1972 and that article was written possibly over 40 years ago.

As I say, I am not a believer - I haven't been since my father passed away far too soon all those years ago, but part of me likes to believe that today of all days, as I think of my dear departed brother, that maybe they conspired to send me a sign to comfort me and tell me that everything's alright.