UNEXPLAINED: The Strangest Thing That Ever Happened to me

As some of you know, my wife, Mary, was suddenly diagnosed with an advanced case of chordoma in May 2024. That’s a very rare, slow-growing cancer that affects the spine and lower skull. Only one in one million people are diagnosed with this each year, and Mary spent nearly two months in a big city hospital getting the tumour removed from a tricky location and having her top four vertebrae fused because the second one from the top had been nearly eaten away.

A Dream Trip

Mary has come through things well and has surprised doctors with her recovery, her vibrancy and her attitude through it all. With health more-or-less returned, we decided to do something Mary has always wanted to do – go on a beach vacation with all of our five kids and six grandkids. That’s all of us below.

One morning at the resort, Mary and I were eating breakfast, seated at a small table, without the rest of the family that day. I’d finished a glass of juice about fifteen minutes earlier when Mary asked me a question: “Will the car repairs be done by the time we head back?”

Roadside Break-Down

We’d had a breakdown on the way to the airport in Toronto, had the car towed to a garage (closed at the time), then got a ride to the airport for the rest of the journey. I suspected the issue was the starter motor, and that’s what it turned out to me. The auto garage had been keeping me posted on the repair by text, and a couple of days before the breakfast we were having I learned that the repair was taking longer and would cost more than estimated. They were having trouble getting the old starter motor unbolted.

“How’s the car coming along?” Mary asked me, as we were nearly finished eating. 

“There’s a delay. They’re having trouble getting the old starter motor off. I sure hope they don’t break something else in the struggle.”

The Incomplete Sentence

At least, that was the sentence I’d intended to say. I only got partway through. When I got to the word “break”, the strangest thing happened. No sooner did the “b” sound come out of my mouth that my empty drinking glass shattered all on its own with a loud pop. The entire glass had instantly turned into tiny chunks of glass. It exploded all on its own. Even the base, which was about 3/4” thick, was nothing but tiny crumbs of glass. What just happened? No one had touched the glass. It was a foot away from my hand. Just half an ice cube lay melting in the bottom.

I’ve heard of glass sometimes breaking because of internal pressures and stress, without any visible outside reason. Perhaps what happened was mere physics, but I’m not entirely sure. While that explanation is a possibility, the fact that the glass shattered just as I was saying the word “break”, certainly seems noteworthy. 

Our car turned out to be fixed on our arrival, and the seven hour drive home from Toronto went fine.

Was the self-shattering drinking glass just “one of those things”? Was it something more meaningful? Perhaps related to Mary’s health issue? Do things like this ever have a meaning? This remains one of a handful of surprising things that have happened to me over the years. I’ll tell you about others sometime.

Has anything like this ever happened to you? Any thoughts? Send them to [email protected].