My wife Angela and our two daughters are the opposite. They believe in that afterlife stuff. But I have to confess, after the events of the last year I'm starting to question my scepticism.

It's nearly a year since my tough-as-teak brother-in-law Jim Glancy of Balgownie lost his fight for life after a three-year battle with cancer. Jim was 52. It was around this time that the unexplainable coincidences started to happen.

The Irish band U2 was Jim's and my favourite group from the moment we saw their first video, for the song I Will Follow, on Donnie Sutherland's Sounds Unlimited in 1980.

A year later the band released another video. They performed on a barge moored in the Grand Canal Basin in Dublin, cranking out Gloria. Jim and I were hooked.

Every time U2 toured Australia, tickets were bought for the Sydney concerts.

U2's music was always on high rotation at our family parties.

Jim couldn't sing a note but he knew all the Irish rockers' lyrics and was the ear-splitting, out-of-tune life of the party at many a gathering and backyard barbecue.

As the decades ticked over and the U2 albums kept coming, the tours got bigger and bigger. U2 moved from indoor arenas to huge stadiums to accommodate the growing fan base that over the years included our own children.

Back in the day we were the ones in the heaving sweat-soaked mosh pits. When they were old enough, our daughters took over, standing for hours in queues to get closer to the stage as we sat back in the stadium seats soaking it all up.

We loved it.

On the Monday night before Jim died I walked into his room in the palliative care unit in Port Kembla hospital.

Wife, daughters, mother, sisters, brother and partners had maintained a vigil by his bedside for nearly a week. His wife Belinda, mother Isabelle and my wife Angela had stayed in the hospital throughout. Jim was never left alone.

I stood with Jim's eldest daughter Jordan in the dimly lit room. There was music playing from an IPod on the windowsill. The four aging lads from Dublin were playing their tunes for him.

Jim was heavily sedated and unable to communicate any more but he could still hear. They say that hearing is the last of the human senses to fail before death.

Jordan and I started talking about U2, commenting that the super group were well overdue for a new album.

I left the hospital that night thinking it would not be long before Jim left us.

Before returning to the hospital the next day I checked my emails. There was an email from U2's website saying a new album had been released, Songs of Innocence. Free if you had an iTunes account. Soon after I received a call from Angela, her dear brother Jim had passed away.

Through our collective grieving and on the day of his death U2 release a new album. I couldn't help thinking something weird had kicked off.

One of Jim's favourite U2 songs, Kite, was played at the conclusion of his funeral. Tears flowed as 500 family, friends and colleagues gathered to pay their respects. U2 was in high rotation as the extended family gathered together many times over the following months to reflect on Jim's life. We like to party and in his absence we sing (in tune) for him.

Early December I received an email saying that U2 are to tour. Woo hoo!

Being a long-term fan club member I'll be entitled to partake in a ticket presale before general public release. The catch is two tickets only. Then comes another catch, U2 are only playing in North America and Europe in 2015. Oh no ...

After the year we'd had with the death of Jim and the announcement of some pending changes on the work front, Angela and I agree: Let's go to New York!

We do only live once. We've never been to the USA. Done deal.

We arrive in New York, do the tourist thing and then our date to see U2 at Madison Square Garden arrives.

I'm nearly 54 and I've been a photographer for 36 years. I have no accreditation to photograph this mega group, but we have great seats and I know thousands of fans will be using their smart phones to take photos and videos of the performance. So I sneak in a point-and-shoot camera.

Before the show starts, Angela asks did I notice the name of the bar across the road from Madison Square Garden on West 31st Street. I confess I did not.

When we were outside walking around the complex, Angela had clocked a bar and didn't tell me at the time. The bar was called "Brother Jimmy's BBQ" and I'm glad Angela had that moment to her self at the time.

Me, I'm seriously pondering that Jim/U2 weird stuff that's surfaced again.

The concert that night is phenomenal. The Dublin quartet, now in their mid 50s, do what U2 do best: on an audience-friendly multiple stage they perform their songs coupled with mind-blowing video displays and lighting.

It's not long before my ears are ringing from the barrage of sound.

It is a spectacular show and we are like kiddies at a Wiggles concert jumping around. I'm taking photos of course.

We leave Madison Square Garden, singing and humming while we walk. Arriving back at our hotel we bump into another Aussie couple from Wollondilly, they too were at the concert and the husband is suffering the same hearing impairment. Our jaws drop when his wife informs us they're here to see seven of the eight shows scheduled in New York.

We are more than happy with the one momentous U2 concert experience in the Big Apple.

To conclude the weirdness and what I now believe had Jim's touch all over us going to New York, the next day as we wander the streets near Time Square I stop Angela in her tracks.

With ears still ringing I'm also lost for words as I point out a bar façade called "Jimmy's Corner".

It's painted blue and white, the colour of his beloved Tarrawanna Soccer Club, which he was a life member of. It also has a pair of boxing gloves painted on it - the pugilistic sport he trained in to maintain his fitness before he fell ill. Tell me that's not weird?

In the noisy metropolis of New York City, population nine million and god knows how many visiting tourists, at that moment we found it peacefully cathartic.

Thanks Jim for the celestial coincidences.