Cue “Twilight Zone” theme

A little more genealogical research led me to a really fucking weird coincidence…

The root of my grandparents’ last name, Rohatyn, is also the name of a city in Ukraine.

From Wikipedia: “However, the town crest has a horn of a deer which gives the first part of the Slavish name of Rohatyn or Rogatyn - “Rog” (“Horn”). The second part “Tyn” can be connected with a word which means “Stacket”. Together these two words give us “Horn Stacket”.

Also there is a legend connected with the image of the deer horn of the town crest. It is said that a wife of the Duke Jaroslav Osmomysl, being lost in a forest, met a deer. She survived by following the deer out of the forest. A fort was built with name “Rogach” (“Deer”) on the place where the duchess supposedly stepped out of the forest.”

My father worked for the Hartford Insurance Group. The logo of the Hartford is a stag.

My dad used to joke that he worked for the company with the Moose. This was a joke that would last my entire life, culminating in the engraving of a stag on the box his ashes are held in.

There’s no way in hell that either he, nor my mother, would have ever known about this coincidence.

But I do… and it makes me feel good.

Everything my father said about my mother (the woman he knew, not the one I knew) right before he died makes even more sense now.