Entanglement: Spooky Action at a Distance

Teresa Frisch, RN, RMT, IARP 8.23.08

On March 3rd, 2008, I was looking for some of my early attempts at writing. I had made up a book of poetry for my ex-husband before we divorced, and while I was looking for it I came across a very special shirt. I designed that shirt in 2002. It was white and trimmed in school colors and had our last name across the shoulders. Our youngest son was a high school senior that year, and it was a very special year, indeed. We wore those shirts to every cross country meet, eventually going to State. The last time was when he came in 7th place and made the podium.

With a momentary flash of happiness, I lingered, my hand touching the shirt, remembering those happy days. A friend and his wife had a business and had made several of these shirts for me. Standing there, I could see his face and hear his distinct tone of voice, but I couldn’t remember his name. I closed the drawer on the shirt and the memories and resumed looking for the album. Eventually I found it, copied the poems and came home.

The next day was work as usual in my ER. It was still early morning and our usual controlled chaos hadn’t hit. It was simply the nature of the beast. As I came around the corner, my view the length of the department was unobstructed. The only person in the hall coming straight at me, smiling, was Jeff: firefighter / paramedic… and the guy who made the special shirt that I had nostalgically lingered over the day before. A guy I hadn’t seen in years.

My smile was the size of Texas as I watched him come toward me and we met in a huge bear hug. I, however, had already shifted into that all-too-familiar surreal state. While chatting about work and our families and maintaining a conversation, I was simultaneously analyzing something mentally before I lost the details. Instead of wondering about entanglement or retro causality, I was wondering about subjective reality and multiple universes. And there was that common thread again: emotion seemed to be tied to, or had maybe even kicked off the event.

Jeff worked in another county and didn’t routinely bring patients to my ER. Plus, he was working a second job in yet another county that day. The singular odds of seeing him at all were huge. The odds of Jeff transporting a patient to my ER the day after my “happy-shirt-he made- for-me” event were astronomical!

This was beyond weird but something tells me that we’ve progressed way beyond déjà’ vu. Lyn Buchanan says “document, document, document.” I agree. It might mean something to someone someday. Like a quantum physicist, maybe.

Revised tlf 3.27.09