An update from Barb’s Surrogate Blogger:

When Barb booked her tickets, for her journey to Toronto for surgery, she requested seats near the front of the plane.  Somehow she and Roberta ended up with seats at the very back.  Why do things like that happen?  Too often we grumble when we don’t get our way.  But if we have the attitude that things happen for a reason, we open ourselves to the synchronicities of life.

As it happened, Barb and Roberta settled into their seats, and began to talk about Helen Bar-Lev.  They were trying to remember what kind of surgery Helen had.  If I understood correctly, as they were guessing various surgeries, a voice in front of them, belonging to a “very good looking man”, joined in with “Hiatus Hernia.”

The good looking man, it turns out, is a surgeon, a colleague of Barb’s Dr. Wunder.  He’d been home to Fredericton for Christmas and was flying yesterday with his mother and two wee girls. 

He assured Barb that Dr. Jay Wunder was the best in the country, that she was in excellent hands.  He also told her that fewer than one hundred Canadians are dealing with this type of cancer.  Yes, a rare cancer in our rare friend, Barb.  (Of course, we’ll only know for sure, after surgery on Thursday.)

That would have been enough reason to be in the back seat of the plane, in my opinion, but that was not all.  The woman with this surgeon, his mother, recognized the Gill name.  Her husband, a banker, had been the one who had put Gill Lumber into receivership so many years ago.

Barb has written about the receivership in Soul Gifts, in the end notes, where she speaks about Big P, Little p Politics.  The woman told Barb that her husband had felt very strongly about this, not wanting to put the company into receivership at all.  Out of his hands, apparently. Sometimes we never hear the other side of the story.  Usually when we do, forgiveness and healing occur.  I believe that one corner of Barb’s soul found healing in this serenditous meeting. 

Being in the back of the plane is only the beginning of this adventure for Barb and Roberta.  Life  is always an adventure, if we open our hearts, even in the back seat of a plane.

Alice