I have shared in past blog posts and through stories on my Facebook Page, inquisitive questions asked by my young daughter, Logan, especially regarding heaven and the afterlife. I think the loss of my grandmother in 2018, left an imprint on her mental capacity to discuss death and heaven.

My grandmother was a very integral part of our life. She died too young in my humble opinion. At only 76, I felt she had so many more years to live. However, she suffered some health setbacks in 2012, and from that point forward her health declined. Still not at the shocking pace to leave her suddenly in the hospital with staff telling us everything was failing, but at a pace that required my mother to step in and provide in-house care on a daily basis for many years.

Given that my mother was also my daughter’s listed “daycare” through the workweek, Logan spent more time with her great grandmother than most children typically do. For those days and years, I am grateful. Because of that, her death was sudden not only for us but for a little girl use to seeing her great grandmother day after day.

We never sugarcoated my grandmother’s passing with Logan. We sat her down and told her Meema got sick, died, and is now in Heaven with God.

She didn’t attend any funeral services. That we did indeed shelter her from, but she has visited her gravesite with both me and alone with my Mom.

I share all this because she talks openly about Heaven, and Jesus, and death, and the afterlife. So when she asks about angels, I tell her they live among us. Her Meema is an angel, her paternal great grandfather, ‘Big Pap,’ who Luke was named after, and she never met, is an angel, and her extended family members that are no longer here among us, they too are in Heaven with God.

She smiles and goes about her day.

I don’t question these things that I tell my child, but as an adult with a different set of reality and perspective on life, I look harder than she does. I find myself wanting a sign to validate the things I say. I wonder if when we say, “Our loved ones are near or looking down,” is this really the case. And, not because I do not believe, but because I so badly want to believe.

If you read back through some of my writing you will learn that a red cardinal appeared days before my grandmother died, tapping on my window. The morning of her funeral service, a red cardinal crashed into that same window when in a fit of tears cried out for a sign she was near. And those incidents, signs, or whatever you call them have continued nearly two years after her death.

We are in the thick of a heavy remodel at our home. Our kitchen, living room, and dining room, are tore apart and covered in a dusty mess. Our other rooms contain all the possessions of the rooms ripped apart.

Home alone with both kids, I had just laid Luke down for a nap and Logan was basking in the glory of screentime on the iPad, while I packed up kitchen cabinet belongings into cardboard boxes and loaded our dishwasher for another round of power cleaning.

There were dishes to do, more boxes to be carried to the shed, and laundry to start.

I had just loaded an empty baby diaper box with Tupperware and some glass dishes, including the large mixing/measuring bowl I snagged from my grandmother’s home after she died.

With a kitchen torn apart and tools across the counters, I sat the box on top of the stove.

I thought about running to the basement to work on some laundry, leaving the kids – one sleeping, one nearby in her bed playing a game, but something in the sink caught my eye, and I decided to start the dish load before venturing downstairs.

In those split seconds of mental debate, I smelled it.

It was a hot smell. Strong smoke. I distinctly knew something was burning.

When I turned, the box that I had placed on the stove, less than a minute prior, had caught fire, and thick gray smoke billowed from the top of the box, which I had makeshift sealed shut.

In a hurry, without thinking too much of the consequences, I grabbed the box, opened the backdoor and threw it outside.

Somehow when I placed the box on the cold stovetop, I must have bumped a nob and turned the back left burner on high. It caught the cardboard box on fire, melting the Tupperware inside, and searing some of the glass with an orangish stain.

My grandmother’s mixing/measuring bowl, untouched.

I was a bit distraught by the quickness of the events and even more sick to my stomach on what would have happened if, in that split second of subconscious decision making, I had chosen to go downstairs to work on laundry.

My whole kitchen would have ignited most likely in just a few minutes.

I called my Mom. Because that is what I do in such situations. I always call my Mom.

“Someone was looking out for me and the kids today,” I stated.

When I got off the phone, I heard a BANG on my backdoor window.

There it was – the red cardinal.

I hadn’t seen the bird in months, and within minutes from the ordeal, and after stating out loud that someone was watching over me, the bird had appeared.

I quickly grabbed my phone and captured this video.

You can even see the cardboard box, which had lost most of its bottom from catching on fire, sitting there on my deck.

“Where are the angels?” My daughter asks.

Well, they are here. I like to imagine…

they sat at the edge of the bed as I laid awake at 3 am in a freet of worry.
they stood watchful in the doorway when my baby’s fever entered uncharted territory.
they caught my wandering attention when the car in front of me suddenly stopped.
they walked the hallway of the hospital as my bed was wheeled to the operating room for my c-section.

And, maybe they shine like the sun, a light hitting the glass in the sink, drawing my attention to stay, so I don’t walk away from what would have been a dangerous disaster if that box had sat more than 30 seconds longer on my hot stove.

Was it a coincidence the cardinal appeared so soon? Maybe. Although, I believe in God, Heaven, and my angels, what I search for is the sign, and I choose to believe it was just the sign I needed to know they are indeed near.