STRANGE, INDEED

OK, so I just gotta put this in writing somewhere.  I'm not drawing any conclusions--just saying that it's some wild, wild stuff is all.

On August 2, my father and I were traveling to Northford, Connecticut to see Big Fat Combo perform at the Potato and Corn Festival.  Northford is about 40 minutes from Cheshire but I had never been there before so I was using my Magellan Roadmate GPS device to guide me there.  The address we were going to was on Forest Road.  So just as we got onto Forest road, Magellan directed me to "keep right at the fork."  I noticed immediately that keeping right would take us off of Forest Road and onto Middletown Avenue.  I went right anyway, remarking to my father that perhaps this way was a shortcut which would link us back to Forest.  After a very short distance--maybe a quarter mile--we passed a church on the corner of Middletown and Foote Hill Road.  Magellan directed me to turn left onto Foote Hill which is a winding, narrow little road THROUGH THE NORTHFORD CEMETERY!  

Foote Hill dropped us right back onto Forest Road with neither time nor distance savings.  We were both like, "What was that all about?"  Just another glitch in the Magellan system, I opined.  So we got to the festival and were treated to yet another exemplary show by Big Fat Combo.  

So now a week's gone by and my father tells me that one of our fine parish priests of days past died a few days ago, on August 5, rest his soul.

Father Joseph Parel, a beloved priest who served us at St. Bridget Church way back in, say, the early 80's, passed away while on his way to his homeland of India.  So I went to the website of the Hartford Archdiocese to read up on his passing and come to find out he was, at the time of his death, assigned to St. Monica Church on Middletown Avenue in Northford.

That's the church we drove past in the 1/4 mile misdirection of the Magellan--right at the Foote Hill Road cemetery.  So again, no conclusion.  I just find this series of events strange, wild, and crazy.  If I call it a coincidence then I think that'd be a conclusion so I'll just leave as is, using the words I've used.