I don’t believe in fate, but I’m thankful for circumstance and sacrifice

The Hoole Ice Memorial is a small tombstone in the UK. It reads: “In loving memory of George Goodfellow, aged 11 years and Henry Berry, aged 8 years, who were drowned by falling through the ice trying to save a fellow playmate at Hoole on January 17th 1905.”

It’s an amazing story, but it’s also a story that’s over a century old. It was a tragedy, but there have been plenty of tragedies like this since, and sadly, there are bound to be plenty more. At the risk of sounding insensitive, what’s the big deal?

Well, maybe it’s only a big deal to me, but the kid those boys died saving was Bertie Wright. He grew up to have a son named Dennis, who went on to survive the Second World War and have a daughter named Jill, who went on to have a daughter named Kate, who went on to become my wife. And she went on to have a daughter named Amelia, who also happens to be my daughter.

My life is good because of those two women. And those two women wouldn’t exist if not for George and Henry, two young boys who have been dead for more than a hundred years because they had the courage to save their friend’s life. As far as I’m concerned, I was born several decades too late to repay an insurmountable debt.

That said, do you want to know the weirdest part? I sent a draft of this post to my wife half an hour ago, asking her to review it and let me know if I’d gotten any of the details wrong. “Did you put that in your calendar,” she asked, “or do you just have an amazing memory?”

You’re probably not going to believe this, but I didn’t have any idea what she was talking about until I reviewed my own draft and realized that those boys died a hundred and eight years ago today. The idea for this post had spent the past few weeks in a “blog posts” folder on my laptop, and the only reason I checked that folder today was because I couldn’t think of anything I wanted to write about. Until my wife pointed it out, I’d had no idea what day those two boys had died, and I certainly didn’t know that today was its anniversary.

All right, fine, you guys. Maybe I believe in fate a little bit.

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