It's Just a Number.....Whiteflash is with Us Forever....

We often hear students from big universities say..."I am just a number"...
That has happened to many of us in life...we are just a number in somebody's big system....we feel like we are just a number...lost in the sea of masses...no identity...sometimes, it is even a safe place to hide!

When I met Ricky (I disguise the true identity of my friends and the details to protect us all...), I had no idea what was to come...

It was Beijing, 1997.  Our initial meeting was a luncheon where one of our students brought us together, just thinking that we had some things in common...was he ever right....Umberto....thanks for that forever!  Your intuition was so correct.


The luncheon was fine, but hurried.  I suggested to Ricky that we meet on my next visit to Beijing, which I knew would be in about one month.  On that next visit, I called him.  He was shaken, on his way to the airport to fly back to Japan...you see, his son had just been murdered....how could I express my sympathy, I had hardly just met Ricky....

One month later, on my third visit into Beijing, I finally had the chance to have that dinner with my new friend.  He told me the very sad story of how his son had become a victim of a crime...he was lost to Ricky at the age of 25....

Ricky during dinner was still shaken...but was beginning to deal with the grief.  I knew my job with this friend was to listen and give comfort where I could....if I could...

......I had no idea what was about to happen at that next moment....
Ricky told me he had not accepted that his son had really died because he kept getting signals from him...strange but worldly messages...things too real to be untrue....

I could see his seriousness and determination.  All I could do was to ask him about that.....

He shared that they had a favorite movie they had just seen the weekend before the son died.....in that movie, which was their favorite, the number 48 was a significant number....Ricky went on to tell me that that number was also his number,  his own lucky number, most of his life, and was also his son's number.  Ricky said that since his son died, that number kept coming up in different places and in different ways....

Numbers are strange things.  I suppose many people have a lucky number they use all their life, by choice, if they can...it brings them luck.  I suppose,  that number for some has huge importance, it brings them wealth, good luck, power....they guard it....it can even be their secret number.

Now, in the strange crosscurrents of life, we are thrown together with people we call friends in the most amazing of circumstances  well beyond our call, beyond our immagination...these are potentially the sacred moments....

I sat there looking at Ricky in the comfortable restaurant chair after he had just told me about the number 48 as the message he gets from his son, that brings comfort these days... how could anyone on the planet know this scheme and orchestrate it?  It was unique to them....it was their family number, their family system...Ricky shared with me that night in Beijing.  The night was cold...the moon had been drawn over by clouds...it was a quiet cold night in late fall in Beijing.

Except for one now small detail, one statistically improbable fact...a shining light in the darkness....I cleared my throat and said to Ricky..."Rick, sit down,,,I don't know what this means, but that number 48 is also my number, all my life....its where I lived,  it was my age at the time, it is the number I played all my life as my lucky number...48!
Ricky, fell off his chair...and I had to help him to hs feet, crying...there was silence for a long time......

.........do you know what that kind of experience had on us as friends, the friendship?  It sealed it.  It gave us a new language...we spent hours discusing our lifetime of how 48 was a factor in what seemed were the most important  happenings in our lives...

Years later, this has not stopped....the number 48 still shakes me when I see it as a sign...and Ricky is the same...when my Mother was dying I was in and out of Beijing several times that year,,,Rick would always take me to the airport, the airport coffee shop to be with me as a friend...long flights home...we would sit down, order coffee, maybe when it was rough, a scotch,...and always the gate number Beijing to SFO was Gate 48....48, the number just kept appearing....

Years later, there are periods when that happens in streaks...if there is some reason,we cannot discern it....
...but there is graceful comfort in accepting it......

Ricky and I are still close friends.  I have come to see him as not an ordinary friend, but someone I had destiny to meet in this huge populated world......we had a purpose to meet, share,and connect on some magical, serendipitous stuff that will last in our memory the rest of our lives.

A number....48 was it...just a number, thats all!  It made all the difference that what happened was mystical and special....and it was.....  It gave us the gist of believin' in some stuff bigger than us....powerful...like who is in charge, who is boss.....certainly not us...

Ricky has led a rough and miraculous life since then....surviving cancer, retiring to another country, starting over....new life....yet once in a while 48 knocks on his door, and mine...we are reminded...at those moments...we are humbled...Whiteflash knows that number and what it means....we are still and always left wondering....Whiteflash knows the power of believing in being connected to the recently departed., the importance of bringing others to that same place to be with the ones who need help...it is all part of a plan....like it is a natural phenomenon........

Number 48 was not a whim, temporary number for me...it was long hoaned in my life...it had deep personal history...like 25 years of my using it....Ricky had the same....

Whiteflash was always there in the background, like a friend, just appeared to give us an extraordinary gift.  Whiteflash sort of said to us, "hey, guys, I want you each to meet a most special friend, and here is how I am going to prove it to you both....I am going to show you that you both have this not accidental bond, but something very worldly, like a number....but it will reveal you are not alone.....it will show you that in your very worst moments, I am with you...."

.....It was just in time that we met, for Ricky, and for me too.... it was the right time.  We are still deeper friends all these years later.  The number has not changed for either of us...we laugh now...we laugh knowing we came close to one of the secrets of the universe....we still have that gift....number 48....it will last forever....