signs
My mom died three years ago today, September 18th, 2022. She was 49. That still feels insane to say. We used to tease her for how often she would find ways to say, “My TWO dead brothers,” because she did indeed have two dead brothers. But now, I find the impulse to bring up her absence so relatable, undeniable really. If you never stop talking about someone, it’s almost like they’re always in the room with you. If you never stop telling stories about them, you’re never at risk of forgetting your shared history. In the three years since, I have looked at every photo of her I can find, watched every video, read every letter repeatedly. I’ve thumbed through the pages of her book over and over, scrolled through our text messages. Joe and I once even listened to a very old recording of her performing the ‘Because He Liked To Look at It’ monologue in The Vagina Monologues, in which she, with limited theater experience, admirably and vulnerably describes the life-altering experience of being with a man who is boring and bland but absolutely loves vaginas. I remember that we were chopping vegetables and absolutely sobbing at the experience of hearing her talk again. I don’t know what I’m looking for when I go on these treasure hunts. Mostly, it feels like a way to scrounge up some more of her presence in the world.
Most recently, I found her crib card. She was born in hospital room 333. An angel number. She would tell me to Google it to find it’s meaning, so I do. According to How Stuff Works, “The Angel number 333 signifies a call to creativity. The number sequence represents growth, balance and harmony in relationships, encouragement in careers and financial abundance. Seeing 333 is a positive sign to embrace creative projects and trust in guidance from higher realms.” We can obviously mine this for meaning until we’re in tin foil hats, but I prefer to take it at face value. Things are looking up, feel free to write about it, OR, I know you’re kind of in the weeds, I’ve got you, it’s gonna be okay. She used to always sing the song, Three is a Magic Number, and do her funny little dance that accompanied groovy songs. She had three kids, was born on January 31st, 1973 in hospital room 333, so yeah, maybe 3s can be a sign, too. This is how my brain works now.
On a walk, I notice a pretty little feather. Then, my mom-in-law texts me that she was walking and thinking of her mom and my mom, and saw two little feathers floating side by side. Then, she sees one on TV. Then, I randomly notice a bracelet my mom got me years ago. ‘I love you to the moon & back’ — our favorite way of saying I love you — is engraved on it and bracketed by her name to me, Meem, and a feather. So now feathers are also in the mix. She has given me lots of amazing signs. This is my favorite:
For my 29th birthday, 12 days after my mom’s 50th and 147 after her death, I can’t bear to do any of our usual things, so I ask Joe to take me on a trip. We fly to Savannah on a whim and stay in an Airbnb that belongs to two artists. The walls are beautiful and made of oak. Willows hang on all sides, and cats roam through the yard throughout the day, it evokes the feeling of a magical treehouse. It’s dark inside, but homey. We both feel the presence of something else there, but it doesn’t scare us or disturb us. The shower is attached to an ancient claw foot bath tub; it’s beautiful and takes a while to get hot. I spend hours in it. Luxuriating and crying and wondering what it means to be a woman without her mom. We don’t rent a car, so we walk or Uber everywhere. It rains in a way that is hurricane-esque, and as the locals tell us frequently, “So out of character for these parts.” On our first day there, we walk to a gas station to buy beer and then promptly get scolded by the cashier who tells us that we shouldn’t have open containers out here; “Only downtown,” she says, pointing us towards a back alley where we can finish. Joe laughs and I am mortified because we got in trouble.
On our walk back, we count the cats and dogs, and let the humidity douse us in sweat. One morning, a woman drives us to a small cafe for breakfast. Her car is covered in stickers of Disney and Marvel characters and her hair is a vibrant red. Her daughter just got a job and she is telling us all about it. She is 16 and working as the cashier at a local diner. After this drive, the woman is going to pick her up and buy her some more comfortable work shoes so that her feet don’t hurt so bad at the end of the day. “I’m so proud of her,” she smiles, “I just wish she would stop growing up so fast.” I’m embarrassed that my eyes fill up with tears, but I can’t help it, they flow without my permission, without regard for what might embarrass me. When we get out of the car, Joe sees my wet eyes and looks knowingly. I brush it off, “I don’t know, something about her talking about her daughter just got me.” He nods and says, “Did you see that her name was Mary?” I hadn’t. Later that day, a man drives us to a fancy Italian dinner to celebrate my birthday. On the way, “Remember When” by Alan Jackson plays and I find myself sobbing again.
The morning of my 29th birthday, I enter the claw foot tub for a longer cry. I sob uncontrollably at the prospect of spending a birthday without my mom’s voice. I speak to her through the water, begging her to send me a special birthday sign. On dry land, my eyes are puffy and I do my best to calm them with makeup. As I sit on the floor of our bedroom in front of a floor length mirror, I repeatedly feel called to the night stand next to Joe’s side of the bed. It’s different than an urge, it almost feels like a feeling that was planted inside of me by someone else, a nudge from another being that feels close to intuition. I know it is from my mom even if I don’t know how. I slide the drawer open and find a box of purple tarot cards. “Messages from Your Angels,” it reads, the image on the front is one of a beautiful blonde woman with blue eyes and a crown. She looks profoundly like my mom. I pull countless cards, all with images of beautiful, artistic angels. My favorite is one of a woman dressed like Stevie Nicks sitting atop a unicorn. She has lavender angel wings and is flanked by two lynx cats while a kitten sits beside her.
Go For it!, the card reads, “Your prayers and positive expectations have been heard and answered. We’ve been working with you on this situation since its genesis, and we continue to watch over you and everyone involved. Stay on your present path, as it will take you very far indeed.”
I sit on the bed in amazement. Reading and rereading. Taking photos and texting everyone, calling Joe into the room to observe for himself what fortune we have waylaid into. I feel a blunt and irrevocable knowledge of the divine, of a bond that can transcend realms that I don’t understand. I’m forced to reckon with the knowledge that our love for each other not only endures but evolves inside of this new and more challenging envelope. As simple as it sounds, when I want to talk to my mom, I must first speak, and then set off to find her, sometimes inside of myself and other times, in the world surrounding me.
Outside, two cats, one black and one orange, swirl around my feet on the porch. It feels like the birthday I’ve been searching for, a day where everything surprises me and its easier to recognize the sparkles in the pain. We go to a vintage shop and find a giant blue Aquarius t-shirt that shows a cartoon water bearer dousing herself. There is a vintage bookstore and a tattoo shop and then a bar that is so resplendently filled with TVs that we know it’s the place we must watch the Super Bowl, even if its a few hours early. So we stay. We drink a million Michelob Ultras and at one point, I decide that I want to eat chicken wings despite not having had them in nearly 15 years. So I eat six garlic Parmesan chicken wings and one barbecue one and I make Joe swear to an eternal secrecy. We get home and fall asleep in each other’s arms, basking in the joy of this perfect day.
And then at 3:00 am, I wake up to reanimate the chicken wings. But at least that one February 12th was as perfect as a day could be.
Here are some other solid signs from Mary:
After we dropped my sister off at college, I was driving home on a twisty Ohio backroad when a buck walked in front of the car. I slowed down to let him cross and just then a little yellow butterfly fluttered right in front of the car. I laughed and said, “Hi Mama, are you proud of Lil?” Just then, I looked up to see a hawk sitting atop the telephone wire, looking at me. Hawks had always been her sign from her dad, and when she died, they became my favorite (and most frequently encountered) sign from her.
Joe and I were driving and I was lamenting my phobia of trying to publish a book. I said, “I feel like I shouldn’t sell myself short and give up before I even try.” Just then, a fox ran directly in front of our car on West Liberty and — safely — across four lanes of traffic. Message received, I would not sell myself short.
On the morning of my best friend’s wedding, I asked her future husband, whose mom has also passed, if he had any signs or symbols that represented his mom to him. “Frogs,” he told me. I thought to myself, no way in hell am I going to see a goddamned frog today, but then, that afternoon, in the restroom of their wedding venue, I noticed that the walls were tiled with different glass animals, including frogs and hawks. Our moms were conspiring.
When she passed, my family all got matching sunset tattoos in honor of her love of them. She never lets a special occasion pass without sharing a miraculous sky show.
I don’t share my signs with everyone. Sometimes, people look at me with a mixture of pity and sadness, nodding in hopes that I cease talking about this weird shit as soon as possible. But whenever I want to deny them myself, I can’t find any evidence to suggest why I should. My mom loved signs. She saw them everywhere and often, I thought they were a bit of a stretch. Now, when I get on the highway on my way home from work, the first exit I pass is 73, which always makes me think of her. I see the number 17 everywhere, which, as she knew, is my favorite number. I met Joe on September 17, 2017. Two days before, my mom took me to see Stevie Nicks in concert for the first time. Perhaps she cast a spell that night because, for better or worse, the most intense moments of my life all center around this week. We got married. Mary passed. I started a new job. I got a promotion. This year during the big week, I’ll complete 9 months of yoga teacher training.
I feel the magic of it all, especially the magic of my mom, even when I can’t hug her or sit on her lap or hear her laugh in surround sound. In a mother-daughter journal she kept for me, she wrote, “I’ve told you lots of times about your ‘power.’ You achieve whatever you set out to do. And what you want — if it’s right for you — always comes to you.” She was always whispering this crazy little phrase, reminding me that I had magic on my best and worst days. I think any magic I have is merely the result of being loved so unconditionally by my parents that I learned to love, trust, and believe in myself. There is a reason that love is often the deus ex machina to save an otherwise hopeless storyline; it’s true, it works. It’s what saves me every day.