The coincidences

As life slowly settled into a rhythm, I began to reflect on everything that had happened — and the “coincidences” became harder to ignore.

Finally, time to think

That brief moment in the parking lot turned out to be the beginning of a long and difficult recovery journey. Our roller‑coaster ride continued in full force. For months, we were little more than passengers, reacting to whatever came next.

The four months we spent in the apartment we rented were especially hard. Late at night, when Sienna was asleep and Naomi finally rested for a while, Paulina and I would sit together and try to process what had happened. Would Naomi ever recover? Thinking about the past — when she was a healthy, active little girl — was painful, but thinking about the future was even worse. So we lived in the present. From hour to hour. From day to day.

Most of our time was consumed by caring for Naomi, and we felt guilty that we couldn't give Sienna the attention she deserved. Every three hours we fed Naomi; in between, we carefully prepared and administered her medication. We asked ourselves many questions, but had no time to answer them.

It took about a year for Naomi to stabilise and for some sense of structure to return to our lives. Once we had settled into a proper home, I finally had space to think. I wondered why something this terrible had happened to Naomi. Was there a reason? Did life have meaning at all? And what, now, was the meaning of Naomi’s life? That horrendous cardiac arrest had taken almost everything from her! Would she ever get any of it back?

A quiet calm

What troubled me was that, despite everything, I continued to sense a quiet calm deep inside. That may sound comforting, but it wasn’t. It made me uneasy, because I couldn’t understand why such calm was present while Naomi was suffering.

At times, I even caught myself thinking that we, as Naomi’s parents, were somehow privileged to be going through this — a thought that only added to my discomfort.

Was I just sensing what I wanted to sense? Was that even possible? Was I ignoring the doctors’ warnings — that Naomi would see little or no improvement — and trying to avoid reality? Was I in denial? Was this strange sense of calm false hope, or was it somehow justified?

I tried to rationalise it, hoping the feeling would fade, but it persisted. Eventually, I decided to let it be. Now that our world had been turned upside down, perhaps it was time to reconsider how I approached life. I found myself becoming less certain that everything could be understood through reason alone. Maybe some things simply lay beyond it.

Gradually, the thought began to take hold that this experience might be asking something of us — an opportunity to reflect on our lives, perhaps even to change something. I sensed that Paulina and I might need to look at ourselves if Naomi was to recover. But I had no idea what that meant in practice.

Should we have been more grateful for what we had? Had we been taking things for granted? Did we have the wrong priorities? Had I spent too much time working and too little time with my wife and daughters? Had we lost sight of what was truly important, focusing instead on what, in the end, was just noise? Were we heading in the wrong direction — as parents, as husband and wife, as individuals?

It's all right

In this storm of doubt, the one thing that felt strangely certain was the “It’s all right” message. Although I had no evidence that it was a message at all, it stood out from everything else that was happening. I found myself returning to it again and again. Whenever we worried about the future and were left without answers, my thoughts would eventually circle back to it: “It’s all right. Naomi will be all right.”

It was only when I began to accept that this “message” might indeed be a message, that a cascade of thoughts followed almost instantly.

First of all, there had to be a sender. And not just any sender, but one with knowledge of the future. Someone who knew when Naomi would suffer that cardiac arrest. Someone who knew I would first remember the song and then forget it — and who, anticipating that, had prepared a reminder in advance by inspiring Naomi to choose a book with a big, bright sun on the cover. Perhaps the same sender had even played a role in me being gifted that MP3 player, which led me to record my voice and, in turn, discover that book.

The whole line of reasoning formed itself almost at once. And just as quickly, I pulled back. It felt too far-fetched. Surely my imagination was taking over — or I was simply trying to post-rationalise it. The most straightforward explanation, I told myself, was coincidence.

And yet, the more I sat with that conclusion, the less satisfying it felt. If everything had truly been coincidence, then what I had experienced would have been nothing more than a series of random, disconnected events. That didn’t quite match how it had felt.

Looking back on those first months after Naomi’s cardiac arrest, I began to notice how certain moments seemed to align — not necessarily in a way I could explain, but in a way that was hard for me to dismiss entirely, especially when seen not in isolation, but as part of a sequence.

When the calls stopped

One such coincidence concerned the sheer number of phone calls Paulina and I used to receive from real estate agents eager to sell our apartment in Shanghai. For anyone unfamiliar with life in a large Chinese city, this may be hard to imagine, but real estate agents there are relentlessly persistent when they believe a deal is within reach. They simply keep calling. Ten calls a day was common. They would call early in the morning, late at night, during weekends — any time at all. It was maddening.

We’d never given our contact details to any of these agents. Perhaps someone connected to the property developer had shared our phone numbers. Asking the agents to stop calling was an ongoing but futile exercise. Even after repeatedly telling them we weren’t interested in selling our home, the calls continued.

Then Naomi was hospitalised. From that moment on, the calls stopped. Completely. Our phones were switched on day and night, yet not a single agent called us again. It was as if, with a single swipe, someone had erased our numbers from every agent’s contact list, shielding us from further harassment during this already trying time.

The right doctor

Another coincidence occurred when we found it increasingly difficult to communicate with Naomi's doctors. Most of them didn’t speak English, and those who could had only a limited vocabulary. As a result, we had no real understanding of what was happening with Naomi. Even our Chinese friends, who spoke English very well, could not help, because most of what the doctors said was brief and full of medical jargon. We needed someone we felt comfortable with, someone who spoke both English and Chinese and could quickly grasp what the doctors were saying. We needed an English-speaking Chinese doctor.

On the other side of the world, one of our company's board members, having heard about our struggles, spoke with a Dutch cardiologist based in Amsterdam and arranged for me to talk with him. When I explained our situation, he suggested a friend of his, Lisha — a Dutch-Chinese paediatric doctor — who happened to be in Shanghai that month for a research project. He passed me her number, and I called her. She was so kind, and although she worked in a hospital on the other side of town, she immediately offered to come over. From then on, she visited us every day. Fluent in Chinese, she could hear the doctors’ briefings and then explain everything to me in Dutch. I could ask her any question, and she would liaise with the relevant doctors to get the answers. Finally, we understood what was happening with Naomi.

Just as the sun had come to brighten our days, this time it was Lisha who brought us out of the darkness and into the light.

Seeing her again

The next coincidence involved my company’s finance director, Susan, who was helping us with hospital paperwork and bills. She happened to be friends with one of the head nurses. One day, she ran into her in a nearby hallway, mentioned Naomi, and discovered that her friend worked in Naomi’s ICU. Susan told her about our situation and asked whether it might be possible for us to see Naomi. This compassionate nurse arranged for us to do just that.

Every night, long after the other parents had left the hospital, she would provide us with surgical gowns and masks, and briefly let us into Naomi’s room. These moments were the one thing we looked forward to each day. At the same time, they were also the most terrifying. To see Naomi lying motionless on her bed, unable to tell if she even knew we were there, left us scared and intensely sad.

Support when we needed it most

My two friends and business partners, Olaf and Maarten, with whom I owned and ran a company in China, were unwaveringly supportive and compassionate. They encouraged me to focus on my family and made it possible for me to work flexibly, when and where I could. It allowed me to retain my income and keep up with our rapidly escalating expenses. Especially after the insurance company voided Naomi’s policy, I was deeply grateful that we had the means to pay the hospital bills ourselves.

By coincidence, around the same time we fled to Singapore, Maarten and his family — after living in China for twenty-five years — relocated there as well. Having Maarten nearby meant I could talk with him easily whenever I needed to, and his presence was a great comfort. He was with us in the hospital when Naomi underwent surgery, and his support during that time meant a great deal to me.

Beyond that, Maarten arranged the incorporation of our Singapore company, which allowed us to employ ourselves and obtain employment passes and residency permits. This made it possible for our family to remain in Singapore long term, move out of the serviced apartment, rent a proper home, and enrol Sienna in a school. We desperately needed stability to rebuild our lives, and it was a huge relief to put the basics back into place.

An old friend

In the first few months after arriving in Singapore, we spent most of our time with Naomi in the hospital. We had breakfast, lunch, and dinner there, and even at night, one of us was always at Naomi’s bedside. We alternated nights: one night Paulina took Sienna to the hotel while I stayed with Naomi; the next night, Paulina stayed with Naomi while Sienna and I slept at the hotel. Sadly, the hospital had become our home.

To give Sienna some much needed distraction, we took turns taking her to the hospital playground. We felt so bad and sorry for her, but we couldn’t bring ourselves to leave Naomi, knowing that each day could be her last.

Then, one day, I received a phone call from Jiska, an old friend from Beijing whom I hadn’t seen in over ten years. She and her family were living in Singapore. Jiska was caring and empathetic, and she immediately offered to help in any way she could. She took Sienna out for lunch or dinner, to parks and playgrounds, and sometimes Sienna spent entire days at their house, playing in the garden with Jiska’s daughters. This gave me the opportunity to look for a place to live.

As it turned out, Jiska also had a strong interest in child brain development. Over the years, she had learned a great deal about the subject, and much of what she knew was directly relevant to Naomi’s situation. Wanting to help, she shared information and materials about alternative therapies the hospital never mentioned. Jiska gave us hope and strengthened our determination to do everything we could to help Naomi recover.

More than just coincidence

As I reflected on all these moments, I couldn’t shake the feeling that what we had experienced had, in some way, been facilitated. Things had unfolded at just the right time — people appearing when we needed them, events aligning in ways that seemed almost too fitting.

It felt as though somebody in the background might have been guiding it, gently bringing the right people into our path and supporting us when our world was falling apart.

With that in mind, I returned to my earlier doubts about the “It’s all right” message. I found myself less convinced that it could simply be dismissed as coincidence. Even without proof that it was a message, that explanation no longer felt sufficient to me — especially when I considered everything else we had experienced.

That raised a simple question: where might it have come from?

Could it be that God was behind all this? As unlikely as that seemed, it was my first thought. But even if that were the case, how would I ever know?

The more I thought about it, the more questions arose. At the same time, my attention was still fully taken up by caring for our girls and trying to rebuild some sense of normal life. There was little space to explore these questions further, and so, for the time being, they remained unanswered.

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Next: The exploring