Member-only story
Everything’s a Sign If You Want It to Be
We can search for meaning but that doesn’t make it real.
A red balloon. A song on the radio. A billboard. A feather. A heart shaped stone. Following a friend’s recent death, almost everyone I know felt her presence marked by these small, commonplace items. They had relevance. These tokens spoke to them. They were signs she was still here regardless of how heavy we felt her departure from us.
I saw nothing.
I looked everywhere and then I looked harder. I felt like there was something wrong with me. It was almost upsetting. Why didn’t I see anything? Was I somehow not worthy?
Two weeks after she passed, I connected with a man. In him I thought I finally saw what everyone else had. A sign from her. In the back of my mind, it made me feel special. Now, I had something of her to cling to: him. I did what anyone searching for meaning would do.
I attached myself to the idea that this man was brought into my life by her. He wasn’t. There was no sign, just a desire to believe in something greater than me. Just a grief stricken moment of desperation.
