UNDER THE MICROSCOPE: On Easter 2022, Life Detective took you on a spiritual journey, telling the story of meeting my Guardian Angel. Now, the prequel telling the story of the last days my Guardian Angel’s earthly life, a tale which makes her elevation to angel status seem “by design” and raises a question of Biblical proportions.
In the Bible’s Old Testament, the Book of Job says: “A person’s days are determined; you have decreed the number of his months and have set limits he cannot exceed.” Bringing Old Testament guidance into the modern era, the 1965 hit song “Turn, Turn, Turn” by the Byrds quotes Ecclesiastes in declaring there is “A time to be born, a time to die.” The New Testament tells Christians that “they know not the hour nor the day”, but that is a reference to the coming of the Son of Man rather than our own earthly death. So maybe the last word on the topic comes from Psalms, which tells us “All the days ordained for me were written in your book”. However, another psalm (coincidentally “Psalms” is interpreted as “instrumental music”) confirms we are clueless as to the when our last day will be: “And what is the number of my days: that I may know what is wanting to me.” It seems at every turn, or as the Byrds would also say “in every season”, we are left with more uncertainty and wondering . . .
Were My Guardian Angel’s Days Predetermined?
In my Easter article, Life Detective disclosed the Guardian Angel visitations in dreams shortly after her death in a car accident on March 31, 2005. Here’s a quick summary if you don’t want to read the entire article, found here. 27-year-old Brooke Katz worked as an Administrator to our team at an Atlanta law firm. She was happily married with a 3-year-old daughter. In the weeks leading up to her death, we had spoken about the circumstance regarding a woman in a coma, Terri Schiavo, whose husband wanted to have her feeding tube removed, and we wondered about life after earthly death. Brooke had just told me that she was pregnant and would be leaving work later that year. On March 31, a crazy turn of events on wet Atlanta roads led to an accident and her passing. Three nights later, she appeared to me for the first time in my dreams with some guidance on God and the afterlife.
Now, to understand why it felt like her death was “by design of a higher power”, let’s investigate the rest of the events preceding the fatal accident.
Like a Thief in the Night
Brooke Katz’s life was already prepping for a major transition: she was having another child and planning to leave a job and career she seemed to enjoy. About two weeks prior to her accident, her SUV was stolen from a parking ramp near our Atlanta office. Her insurance company provided her with a rental vehicle as a replacement, a Dodge Caravan. We had a good laugh as I joked with her that it was a fitting transition to her new, full-time gig as a “soccer mom”. Little did we know that the change in vehicle may have had a hand in the severity of injuries incurred in her accident.
You see, Brooke drove no regular-sized SUV, but instead the behemoth Nissan Armada. The 2005 version of this vehicle weighed over 5000 pounds! In contrast, a 2005 Dodge Caravan weighed over 1000 pounds less, with a shorter, more angled hood. It was later discovered that the Dodge Caravan was having issues with airbag deployment and later the model was the subject of a recall. While Life Detective could not confirm whether a faulty airbag contributed to the outcome in this case, we do know that on March 31, 2005, a wet and rainy Atlanta morning, Brooke’s vehicle was hit, and her airbag did not deploy . . . and she was killed instantly.
Generic car accident
The Coincidences Add Up to Belief
A leading Cal Berkeley cognitive scientist was quoted as saying, “If enough suspicious coincidences of a certain nature pile up, someone’s uncertainty can cross over into belief.” While people attempt to find explanations for their experiences, the scientific perspective is more likely to view coincidences as merely a game of odds.
Well, the odds of all the coincidences which culminated in the death of Brooke Katz seems pretty slim. Here are the coincidences specific to the day of the accident, March 31, 2005, as described in the Atlanta Journal Constitution:
- Before 9 a.m., Brooke Katz set out for work in her rented Dodge Caravan from Newnan, a village south of Atlanta.
- At about 9:15 a.m., in South Atlanta, Allen Norwood (the suspect), hit the rental car of a college student, Tracy Williams, and drove off.
- For Williams, this was his second rental car wreck in three months, so he was so concerned about how he was going to pay for the damages that he followed Norwood.
- Like around 9:20-9:30 a.m., Norwood loses control of his vehicle and strikes Brooke’s rented Caravan.
- Norwood exits his vehicle and attempts to drive away in another man’s SUV and crashes it into a brick wall. Norwood starts running and is apprehended by another motorist who holds Norwood down until the police arrive.
Williams, the pursuing college student, was distraught after the accident. He would not have pursued Norwood had he known the result nor if he wasn’t facing the expenses of a second rental car wreck in a few months.
So, let’s add up the coincidences. Purely coincidental are the philosophical conversations I had with Brooke about life after death as are life changes regarding her pregnancy and leaving her job. It still seems coincidental that she and Terri Schiavo, the reason for our discussions of the afterlife, died at the same hour of the same day. What about Brooke’s SUV being stolen? In any given year the odds are about 1 in 500 that your car will be stolen. Brooke’s behemoth SUV was replaced with a much lighter vehicle with airbag issues. It was a rainy morning in Atlanta? Weather records say that about 30% of days in March have any precipitation in Atlanta, so the odds of a wet rush hour are under 30% – let’s say about 10%. Then we have the circus-like events of the accident: the suspect was being pursued by another driver who, in turn, is pursuing the suspect because he is on his 2nd rental car crash in a few months.
Approach to Atlanta, GA via I-85
Belief Wins When No Rational Explanation Exists
All of these coincidences might cause many humans to cross the line from statistically improbable occurrences into belief in some sort of external, perhaps even divine, force. For me, Brooke’s visiting me in dreams subsequent to her passing and setting me on the right “spiritual path” certainly made it feel “out of the earthly realm” and as if her passing created a medium for a Guardian Angel to guide me. But I am not the most important person impacted. Her husband and daughter bore the greatest impact and uncertainty in trying to answer “why do bad things happen to good people?” Using an analysis of the statistical probabilities to prove that coincidences like those of March 31, 2005 can occur (known in the real world as “shit happens”) provides an insufficient answer. This becomes abundantly clear when one reads this description from a 2007 newspaper article: “In her princess-style bedroom, [her 6-year-old daughter] points to framed snapshots of a clowning Brooke Katz and passively tells visitors, “Mommy died.”
As for Life Detective, I am quite the doubting Thomas when it comes to believing that simple coincidences are dictated by a higher power. But as for the stacked coincidences leading to the passing of Brooke Katz, the clock may have read 9:30 a.m. on March 31, 2005, but the Bible-quoting Byrds may have more accurately called it “a time to every purpose, under heaven.”
