Tossing a coin...

Tossing a coin

Life is a game of choices and chances. As kids we teach ourselves how to make those choices, although we don’t realise it. We play games, pick a card, choose a hand, toss a coin, heads or tails, its all chances, choices. As teenagers and adults, these games lose their childishness, but they stay with us and impact our feelings in the most inconspicuous ways. But sometimes these choices that we make for ourselves or others make for us change our lives in the most profound ways imaginable. That’s where my story begins…

She was always a drifter, never staying in one place too long, leaving just before a relationship went somewhere, or life threw her a curveball. It’s not as though her life lacked anything, she had her parents, brother and friends, yet she kept searching and for who or what, nobody knew. But there was something she always did when she left a place, something eerie and unusual-she attended a funeral. She said it was because whenever she left a town or city, she needed finality and what was more final than death?

The strange thing is that through all this drifting, she managed to put herself through law school and every town she went to, she would take a limited number of cases and she made sure she won every single case.

By the time jenny had reached number six, she developed a kind of reputation that took on the ambiance of a legend. The people whose lives she touched never forgot her. She had a presence which she was astutely aware of, part of the reason why she never settled in a place too long. But there was someone, one person who picked up the trail she kept leaving behind. She didn’t know it, infact she was completely oblivious to it.

He was about the same age as her and accidentally bumped into her at a sidewalk café in city number two. They exchanged merely a glance, no words, no touch, just glance. You could say it was love at first sight, for him anyway, but he sensed she didn’t feel the same way. Thinking they would probably never meet again, he was obviously walking past the local courthouse and that when he saw her go in, that’s when he followed her. Strangely enough, he was somewhat of a drifter to, however his drifting didn’t seem to have a purpose until the day in the café. He sat at the back of the courtroom, never in a million years imagining what he was seeing in front of him. She was not only beautiful, yet completely in touch with herself and her profession. It was this intrigue and curiosity that kept him going back to the courthouse day after day.

Then suddenly she was gone. He was frantic, not knowing where she was or what had happened. He remembered that she always went inside a local flower shop and scrambled to enquire when last the woman was here and the women behind the counter said she had been in the day before to purchase a bouquet of flowers, funeral flowers. He found her, there were only two funeral agencies in the town-how hard could it be? That’s when he started following her, watching her every move, staying far away so she knew he existed, but close enough to stay absolutely captivated.

He began to record the number of cases she tried in each town, and always taking note of the funeral she finally attended and flowers she bought. The traveling eventually landed up in his home town, a place he hadn’t visited for years. All the nostalgia about his home and finally gave him the courage to introduce himself.

They connected almost immediately. She finally found someone she could relate to although, he never disclosed anything about his own life, always avoiding her questions, always getting away with it.

Then the day came. The day she completed and won her last court case and attended her last funeral. He of course had known the day would come and came to expect it.

He was unaware of the fact that this time she had something else in mind. She was always aware of his presence during her stay there, even though they weren’t always together, she always felt as though they ere. The funeral was going to be a little different. She set it up. One casket with her photo and one without. This time she would let someone else decide how her life would be.
He walked into the funeral parlor, not expecting the site before him at all. She turned around and saw him standing there, completely puzzled. She walked over and explained that she knew he was hiding things from her, things she wanted to know. She said that she decided to give him the choice of what happened next. One of the two caskets contained her photo. He had to choose which one. The prize to spend the rest of their lives together, wherever their hearts desired. He couldn’t believe the casket on the right, for absolutely no specific reason he had to choose it. This had all been a game, so why not end it that way?

As happy endings go, he chose the correct casket and they were married a few weeks later. As time went by, she realised he was a man with some very odd ways, but never once asked about them she accepted his mysteries and he accepted hers. That was their story.

The bottom line of this narrative is that no matter where we go, who we are, what we want, things are never as they seem and if we embrace those mysteries, life can take on a whole new meaning.