A Sign From Heaven

     Following the deaths of my brother, mother, and father-in-law, I waited patiently for some kind of sign from them that they were okay.  I longed for something that would comfort me in my time of grief and also, reassure me in this life that they were okay in the afterlife. Alas, as hard as I looked, no signs were forthcoming.
     Not long after my brother's death though, I did read about the belief that cardinals are symbolic of our loved ones in heaven.  They are God's way of letting us know that our loved ones are at peace. Oddly enough, on the second anniversary of my brother's passing, I noticed a bright red cardinal resting upon the limb of a tree in my backyard, when I opened my sliding door to let my pups outside.  My heart jumped a bit, but I didn't give it too much credence until later in the day, when, while sitting on my front porch steps, it alighted upon the branch of a small tree directly in front of me.
    "Bill?" I asked. Not surprisingly, the bird did not answer, but nor did it fly away either.  I was starting to wonder.
     For the next few days, whenever I went outside, the bird would seemingly miraculously reappear.  I almost felt like it was following me. Then, one night around 9 pm in the evening, I could hear a cardinal's distinctive call outside my mother's upstairs bedroom window.  My mother, who was living with us then, was in another room.  She was suffering from Macular Degeneration but when I called her over to the window the bird was on a branch so close by that she was able to make it out when she turned her head.
     "Mom," I said, "I think that is Bill!  That cardinal keeps following me around everywhere I go and now, here he is late in the day singing outside your window!  I think he wants you to know that he is okay!"
     I was becoming a believer by that point, so when my other brother and his wife came over to visit my mom, I suggested we go out into the backyard and sit on the deck to see if  Bill would show up.  Sure enough, he did. My brother Martin and his wife were not convinced, nor was my sister Janet when she stopped by and Bill failed to appear.  Still, they humored me and Janet even sent me a Christmas card with a cardinal on it.
     Life went on, and, after my mother's passing, Gina, Jamie and I had occasion to visit my mom and dad's grave.  My mother had always wanted to be put to rest by my father, but, when he died so many years earlier, we were given a family plot that had other members on either side of him.  Through my brother's efforts though, we were able to honor her wishes after she was cremated.  The cemetery allowed for someone's ashes to be buried in the grave of a loved one and a new headstone to rest upon the old one. Martin sent a photo of the new headstone but it wasn't until sometime later, that we saw it in person for the very first time.  Jamie wanted to commemorate our moment together and suggested that the three of us stand alongside the stone with our feet touching the edges.  Looking down as she took the photo I noticed what I thought was a white flower of some kind, engraved above the names and dates.
     "I wonder what that is?" I asked the girls. "I don't remember it in the photo Uncle Martin sent."  I then leaned down and rubbed my hand on it.
     "Mom, I think that is a bird dropping." one of the twins replied in answer to my question.  Sure enough, she was correct.
     When I returned home I emailed Martin and Janet because I knew they would find this incident amusing.  I thoroughly enjoyed my brother's succinct reply. "Must be from a cardinal" was all he wrote.
     Blessings - Amycita