I'm Back & 3 Signs

It’s been a month since my last post; we’ve shed many tears around here and many hugs. People came out of the woodwork to extend their caring for our family and it all still seems surreal. The comments I have read through the month here, the personal emails, even a phone call or two from a blogging friend have shored me up when I felt the world was more than dim.

But what remains behind, when the dust settles and everyone returns to their daily lives, is the small private moments of faith, and yes, good karma. Signs that the world is bigger than we are, that there is someone watching out for us, have bolstered me through the small moments when the grief can be so over whelming.

I have three signs of good karma to share with you.

My brother was in transition between two apartments and was staying with my parents as one rent cycle closed (Sept. 1) and another began (October 1). After his passing I told my Mom I’d go through his paperwork to see if he had a life insurance policy. Funny the things you talk to your siblings about: the latest vacation, what you’re reading, a good restaurant. But I had no idea if he had life insurance. It just never came up. I came to realize that the entire month of September paperwork was missing and I asked my parents if he had filled out a forwarding address card at the post office. They were fairly sure. Still, I could not find anything up to date in his papers. Putting the papers aside, we went to the funeral parlor to begin planning. Sitting with the funeral director, he told us my brother’s name seemed so familiar to him. My Dad and brother have the same name so Dad explained he was the Historian of the local American Legion and when a veteran in town dies he brings the flag to the funeral parlor for the service—maybe that was it? He shook his head. At that moment, the assistant director walked into the room and said, “Oh, I know why your son’s name seems so familiar. I just moved into his apartment, and by the way, I have his mail, would you like it?” My parents and I just looked at each other, slightly frozen. In a moment, the assistant director went to his trunk and retrieved my brother’s mail for us. The letters all were postmarked “No forwarding address”. It would have taken months to straighten out his estate without this divine intervention!



One evening my brother’s friend and I were trying to figure out health insurance info for the hospital. Again, why would I ever discuss my brother’s health insurance with him? His friend came up with the idea that maybe James had information regarding this on his laptop. Upon opening the laptop, his friend remarked, “Oh, it’s locked. There’s a clue to the password”.

“What’s the clue?” I asked.

“Ernie doesn’t like green eggs”.

When my brother and I were little kids, we used to love to play library. We had a pretty vast kiddie collection and we’d spend hours making the little pockets for inside the covers that would hold the due date cards. We made my parents and ourselves little library cards and would “take out the books”. My kids absolutely die when they hear this story because they cannot believe we did this. “Who plays library?” they’d laugh. Or, as my son would say, “Mom, please do not tell anyone you did this!” My daughter: “That is just so geeky!”

But as soon as James’ friend told me the clue, I knew the answer.

“It’s samiam.”

We were most proud of the Dr. Seuss collection that we had, that I have in our family library to this day, and my little one still reads them.

“Ya think?”, she said, and when she tried it, the computer screen was alight.

We found his health insurance info.



Lastly, my dear elderly neighbor told me the Irish belief of the white feather. She said when a person passes, you’ll see a white feather and you’ll know they are all right. She had been in Ireland with her cousin when she passed away and she saw many white feathers before her return home here to the states.

People tell you funny things when you lose someone. We were on my front lawn when she told me this story, I had just wanted to thank her for coming to the wake and my mind was on the laundry I needed to pull out of the dryer and the dinner I needed to start.

That weekend I took my parents in New York City to visit my son at college. They have been so heartbroken and I thought a trip to see their grandson would take their minds off things for the day. Fall in Manhattan can be so gorgeous and this day was no exception: crisp air, vendors selling warm pretzels on the streets, so much hustle and bustle. We decided to catch a hamburger uptown. After picking up my son, we hailed a taxi. The traffic was more brutal than usual and as we neared 42nd Street, I suggested we hop out of the cab and walk along this famous avenue lined with restaurants. My parents were in great spirits. We had, by chance, landed right near my Dad’s construction union office. My Dad has done construction work on hundreds of city buildings so he was explaining various jobs he did as we sauntered along. One building he was pointing to had a triangular copper roof. We all looked up. He explained to my son that on the day he was born he was on that rooftop and, with a router, furrowed his grandson’s name into one of the roof’s beams. “No one will ever know it is there but you”.

And then, there it was, floating right in front of me: a white feather, about 8 inches long.

I had been holding my Mom’s arm, I gripped her tighter. “What’s the matter?” she asked. I couldn’t speak; I just gave her a big kiss on the shoulder and said, “Nothing”. I couldn’t break the spirit of the day. I kept walking, Dad kept talking. My pulse raced. In the concrete jungle of Manhattan, there are few trees.

We ducked into a small café and ate lunch all the while listening to my son’s college exploits. I was thankful for his effervescence, because in my mind I was already dismissing the white feather as happenstance. I watched my parent’s beaming faces as they heard all of his tales: a new girlfriend from Paris, his art work, his friends. He left us shortly after and we continued walking to Times Square doing a little shopping, drinking coffee at the New Yorker Hotel. We went back to the college to retrieve the car and I suggested to my Dad on the way out of the city I’d open the sunroof in the car and he could point out more buildings to us before we went into the tunnel heading for home. “Great idea!”, he said. I turned onto Third Avenue and opened the roof so he could finish telling us about a building when the tiniest, fluffiest little white feather floated into the car.

All day I had felt that my brother would have loved this day. He, too, went to art college in Manhattan and he would have loved being with us. So when the second white feather floated by, I started to cry, startling both my Mom and Dad. I explained to them my elderly neighbor’s belief and I, the doubting Thomas, had dismissed it. We all had a healthy cry together, one not of sorrow this time but of thinking that maybe James just wanted us to know he’s in a good place.

So many of you wrote wonderful comments that I treasure and have read and reread. I am very thankful and have found solace in your caring. And I believe in good karma, I believe in seeing that silver lining, even if it comes in the mail, or from green eggs, or from a white feather gliding peacefully by.