Micro-Blog Monday: The Importance of Signs

I'm sure some people probably wonder about my post-Evelyn's death obsession with feathers. Perhaps they even find it sad or feel sorry for me, that I'm so desperate to find a bit of my child here with me, earth-side. Maybe they see my posts about sunsets (or Evie's finger paintings as we call them), and find them sweet but also naive or at best, endearing. At worst, maybe they're growing tired of my attempts to find Evelyn in our world where she can no longer be held or truly seen. But the truth is, these signs, they're all we have. And I'm terrified that it's all an elaborate figment of my imagination, and that a feather really is just a feather.

When your child is alive, you know they're okay because you can see them. You can touch them, hold them. If they're not happy or scared, they tell you. If they're sad or feeling unwell, you know. There are signs, if not words or actions. There are reassurances. But for parents whose children have passed beyond their sight and reach, we are desperate to know that they're okay. That they're happy. We're desperate to know that their souls are SOMEWHERE, anywhere, if they're no longer physically here with us. Because the alternative -- that they are really, truly gone forever, in all forms -- is just too much to bear, too overwhelming to consider.

It's our job as parents to take care of our children. To keep them safe, to love them unconditionally, to guide them. When we are no longer able to do so in the traditional sense, these signs, however childish it may seem to be looking for them or to find hope or assign importance to them, they are so much more than just feathers or butterflies or sunsets or whatever else. To us, they are comforting symbols that our children still exist in our world, somehow. And that all that we're doing to keep their memories alive, to live in a way that makes them proud, the fact that we're choosing to keep putting one foot in front of the other, it helps us remember that it all matters. Because our children can see us, and this feather? It's my proof. And I don't care how it may seem to someone else; I know full well that it may not be true. But I need it to be. For me. So I'll keep looking and I'll keep searching. Scanning the ground at my feet and the sky high above my head. Always. Always.