Purple Balloon on Anniversary

My wife and I planned a trip to New Zealand. We had never been there and wanted to experience another “Land down under” that promised enjoyable mountain hiking and other experiences. We booked tickets and proceeded to look at where we thought we could go with just under two weeks in the country. We agreed that it would be better to spend a few days in each place so we booked multiple dates in B&Bs, Hotels and Youth Hostels. COINCIDENTALLY my wife noticed that we would be in Wanaka NZ on the 8th and 9th of December. I didn’t see the coincidence yet and asked her “so what?” She then informed me it was on that date the year prior that a friend’s daughter, I’ll call her Jill, died hiking in that area, and we were spending two nights in Wanaka over that time! Okay, I’d call that a COINCIDENCE. I don’t know how to run the odds on that, but they seemed pretty high. As the date approached, my wife had weekly contact with one of the Jill’s sister-in-laws. My wife mentioned to her that we would be in Wanaka over this time and would be happy to take something to anyone for them in remembrance. We didn’t hear back from her until we were sitting at the airport for our departure. Then my wife got a text that said, “sorry for not getting back with you, but I had some purple balloons for you to take to NZ and release on the 8th in remembrance of Jill”. That didn’t seem like too big an “Ask” and we thought we could take care of that when we were in NZ. Fast forward three days and 30 hours of travel. We were readying to leave our first B&B in a suburb of Christchurch for the mountain country called the Southern Alps in NZ when my wife asked our host where we could find some helium filled balloons? Our hostess could not think of anywhere to find some and the grocer echoed the same sentiment when asked. However our hostess said, “wait a minute, I may have some”. She looked in a kitchen drawer in a tray of assorted birthday party items like candles etc. and pulled out a white and a purple balloon! I’d call that a COINCIDENCE, but probably not terribly rare as there are only so many colors of balloons? Off to the Southern Alps. The hills and mountains were very inviting. The morning of the 8th, we were planning on hiking the very popular Roy’s Hike just outside of town. We knew it would be less interesting, but didn’t have an agreeable alternative at this point. As we are readying to depart, one of the employees at the hostel asked where we were heading? We told him Roy’s and he gave us the impression that we might not be satisfied with such a walk. Finding out we had our own transportation, he suggested we drive to the next lake to the East and hike Breast Hill. He said it was gorgeous and a bit of a tramp. Off we went to Breast Hill with smiles on our faces because it seemed much more adventurous than Roy’s peak walk/hike. On our way to the parking area we passed yet another field of purple and multi-colored lupine. These fields are just so amazing in contrast to the green forests and fields. Explosions of brilliant colors dominated by purple. COINCIDENTLY purple was Jill's favorite color. So we find the trail. Not the easiest thing to do because the sign is off the road up in the foliage a bit. We begin the tramp, and it feels like it is straight up! Thankfully the trail is built with switchbacks. As we progress up the hill toward the ridge we begin to climb above the brush into more grassy slopes and enter the domain of the omnipresent herd of sheep. As we pause for a moment, we see we are gaining altitude rapidly and the lake and valley begin to unfold below us! Awesome! After about an hour, we finally reach the first ridge. It is kind of a razor-edge ridge that the trail follows however the wind is picking up and starting to gust fairly violently to he point of having to take off hats, or risk losing them over the precipice. We continue up and the grassy land grazed by the sheep. After much apparent grazing the land turns into mainly thistles and, what we sorely find out are, stinging nettles! All of a sudden, my wife stops and says “we need to release the balloon now”. Really? Right here right now? We’re not up to the upper ridge yet where we’ll be in tussocks and grass, but right here? Yep, and I could see on her face that this point is not up for discussion. So I pulled out my phone and ask what she’s going for, picture wise. I learn that she wanted a picture of the balloon floating in the air above the lake and she did not want to be in the picture herself. Okay, lets try this out. Fortunately we had two balloons and the white one was the guinea pig. I was standing up hill and up wind of my wife with the lake and a small ridge in the background. Remember that I mentioned that it got windy? She threw the first balloon up and instead of floating effortlessly up toward the clouds, it slammed right into the ground and bounced amongst the thistles and nettles. It didn’t pop however and we gave it another couple of attempts with the same conclusion! The thistles finally got the better of the white balloon, so she blew up the purple balloon and said “screw it, here we go”! At that very moment the windy gusts died down, she releases the purple balloon and it floats effortlessly up and up and up! Mind you, we did not find any helium to fill these balloons with. But this purple balloon just took off upon an up-draft and we watched it frolick in the sky above the ridge for minutes until it finally went out of sight!. After multiple pictures and silent prayers, we felt blessed that this COINCIDENCE, wind working with purple balloon, worked out! So our tramp continued. We hiked up hill for another couple hours before reaching the summit of Breast Hill. It was a terrific day and we felt lucky to have such a neat experience. Back at the hostel, I received a notification of a Face Book posting from Jill’s dad stating this was the day Jill went to be with The Lord. In his post was a picture of Jill with the family at home and picture of her in NZ. "A place she loved and enjoyed immensely". Final COINCIDENCE, the picture of Jill in NZ was on the ridge where we had just released the purple balloon! Upon further reflection, my wife said “she just had a feeling that she had to release the balloon now, right here, right now! Very interesting to say the least, what ever your faith might be.