Birthday Death History

We have a weird history of death on birthdays in my family. I'd like some opinions. Is it coincidence?

Today is my birthday, march 18. My 18 yr old brother died on my wedding day/birthday 10 years ago.

The best man in my wedding died on my birthday.

My grandmother died on mom's birthday.

Grandfather died on Brothers Birthday.

1st cousin died on my aunt's birthday.

Great Aunt died on great grandfathers birthday.

Great grandfather died on my other auunts birthday.


The only person on the list who passed away who was not on my maternal side was the best man in my wedding. He was with my brother, they died together. everyone else is in my maternal line.

I've always wondered abou this because it's so frequent we just duck and cover on birthdays. Do you believe it's coincidence? Bad luck? Sychronicty? Curse? I'll post my thoughts in a bit.

coincidence man

theres nothing else to it

That would be a lot of coincidence.... My grandmother was a full blooded crow indian and used o make reference to a curse.. But only one person on my maternal side wihin 3 generations died on a day which was not a close family members birthday...1 out of 15 total deaths. Maternal side of the family back to grandmother consised of grandparents, 3 daughters, those 3 daughters gave birth to 2 sons/s sons/ one daughter respectively. Amongst them their are 7 children.

My grandma died on my 5th birthday and my other grandma died on my brothers birthday!

there are a couple more actually but further down the line so can't remember!

When you have a large family it's bound to happen that someone dies on someone else's birthday, it's just math. The odds are actually pretty high if you're talking about several family members with 7 children to each, they probably are scattered all over the calendar as far as birthdays go, so that would make the odds better someone will die on at least one of the relative's birthdays. JMO. I think you could probably find an equation somewhere for this.

Happy birthday BTW, mine's the eighth.

Statistically speaking, the odds are extremely low if all of the deaths occurred on the birthdays of the living.

Just think, on average there are 365 days in a year.

Subtract 6(the number of deaths on birthdays from his maternal side) from 365. We are left with the difference of 359.

This means that these occurrences had 359 other days to occur.

I'm no statitician but regardless of having a large or small family, the odds of having just one death from your family on a birthday of another family member are extremely low.

Ldyserenity was right about the odds being better with the birthdays being scattered all over the calender but, IMO, it is just a little too odd to have that many family deaths on remaining family member birthdays.

Just to stress it again, this is just MY opinion.

(edit) Double post

[edit on 21-3-2010 by SmoothRhythm]

In our small family for what it's worth we have a number of births mainly focused on the same date - 12th mostly or a day either side.

Statistically deaths in older people fall around winter time or soon after so if you happen to be a family who breeds in the spring (march ish ) you can expect offspring to have winter births and perhaps echo deaths in older members of the family.

I'm not poo pooing the OP at all , there is synchronicity often within families.
How often has a much loved grand-parent died for example only to be semi-eclipsed by a new born soon after ? Cycle of life , in grief can come new joy perhaps or diversion at the least.