By Monica Novak –

When our daughter Miranda was stillborn, the word “hope” took on new meaning for me.  Used often to describe the feeling that what you want in the future will happen, for example healing and moving beyond grief, hope for me meant knowing that my daughter had not just disappeared into oblivion.  Hope meant knowing that she was still with me, now, and that I didn’t have to wait until so-called death to be with her again.  I began asking for her to give me a sign that she was indeed with me.  It didn’t take long for the answer to come.

It began in July of 1995.  It had only been a month since we’d lost Miranda.  Al and I were lying on a blanket in the grass, on a beautiful summer night, with a light breeze and a gorgeous sunset, listening to the band and watching our daughter Alex dance.  I was thinking I should be nursing an infant at my breast.  And changing her diaper.  And dancing with her in my arms.  I was pulled from my longing by a white feathery, silky ball hovering around me-my naturalist friend, Jessica, would later identify it as a seedling from a Cottonwood tree-looking like the stuff angel wings must be made of.  A flying fluff, I called it.

I reached up and watched it dance around my hand.  It swirled up and down and around me, never straying too far, ignoring the breeze that begged to carry it away.  My heart beat fast with excitement and wonder.  It should have been long gone.  What’s happening? I asked the universe.  Is that you Miranda, telling me you’re here? Or was I losing my mind?

I looked away to watch Alex, expecting the flying fluff to be gone when my eyes returned, but it was still there, dancing playfully.  Needing to know her spirit was with me, I had been praying for a sign from Miranda that she was alright.  An unlikely means of communication, was this the answer I had been waiting for?  After several minutes it finally drifted up and away, caught in the gentle breeze.

Fourteen years later, I still notice every flying fluff that comes near me or gently floats by.  It’s become a special connection I have with my daughter, and although the circumstances are usually nothing to remark about, there have been some times when the appearance or “behavior” of these “signs” have defied the laws of nature.  One summer day I had been sitting at the kitchen table and found myself thinking about that flying fluff at the concert eight years earlier while a rain shower pounded outside.  A few minutes later, when the rain stopped, I walked down the driveway to let the kids in the van for the morning carpool and was stopped in my tracks by the sight of a flying fluff floating over my shoulder.  It can’t be, I said to myself. Everything was soaked from the rain.  The air, still and heavy with humidity, hadn’t been able to dry a thing, much less blow it off a tree into the air.  Physically, this shouldn’t have been happening, yet it was unfolding before my eyes.  Then I realized I had just been sitting at the table thinking about the flying fluff from eight years ago, and a warm excitement, like the moment of a first kiss, poured through my heart as I realized the significance of the moment.  I couldn’t deny the feeling of Miranda’s presence with me.

Several years later, as I was sitting out on our covered deck thinking about the impending publishing of my book, which had everything to do with Miranda, I noticed a flying fluff moving through the backyard.  I smiled, as I always do, when suddenly the rain cloud looming overhead gave way to a drizzle.  Wouldn’t it be interesting if another fluff came flying through the rain? I thought to myself.  I had barely gotten that thought out before another fluff did indeed come floating through the yard following the first one.  I wondered how it was that this weightless puff of near nothingness could dodge the rain drops which surely would knock it to the ground.  As that seedling floated past me, the rain became heavier, turning a drizzle into a shower.  Now, I said to myself, another fluff would just be a miracle.  I watched in amazement as another fluff came floating by, completely ignoring the heavy rain that pelted the ground and everything in its path.  I laughed out loud, partially in disbelief, but also knowing that once again, I couldn’t deny the overwhelming feeling that Miranda was here, orchestrating this reminder just for me.

Many of my friends have stories of their own.  Kristi, who lost her triplet babies, told us one night about coming home to find three baby bunnies running and playing in her backyard.  When her husband came home that day, they were there to greet him, as well.  My friend Dawn, who also lost her triplets, had many stories of birds on her deck, always in groups of three.  When Christa’s infant son Michael died, her connection to him became dragonflies.  Five years later, when another infant son, Brandon, died, they returned from the memorial service to find a dragonfly in the kitchen on the curtain rod above the door.  My other friends have stories of special songs on the radio at significant moments, unexplainable smells and sounds, and their own unusual encounters with objects or animals.

Even my mother got signs from my grandmother “Nana” who lived well into her 90s.  After Nana made her transition, my mother brought home Nana’s chime clock, and although it was broken and hadn’t chimed in years, it was one of my Nana’s (and my mom’s) favorite things from my grandparents’ house.  Imagine my mother’s surprise (and feelings of love and hope) when the clock began randomly chiming!

My friend Cathi Lammert, Executive Director of Share Pregnancy and Infant Loss, compiled a book of stories just like the ones above.  It’s called Angelic Presence.  The subtitle is Short Stories of Solace and Hope After the Loss of a Baby.  There’s that word again.  Hope.  It’s available to all of us.  But sometimes we need to ask.  And then pay attention.  The signs are sometimes obvious and undeniable, but more often they’re so subtle that they cause us to doubt their validity when we use our minds to overanalyze them.  So how will you know?  Keep asking, keep paying attention, and focus on your heart, not your head.  Your feelings are the key.  Whether you feel your signs and messages are coming from your baby, a loved one, an angel, or a higher power (you might call God, or Source, or Creator), it’s not really important to distinguish, for those words all mean the same thing: Love.  And where there’s love, there’s hope.  What signs of hope have you been given?

Monica Novak is the author of The Good Grief Club, a memoir about her friendships with six other women that carried them through the ups and downs of grief and motherhood following the loss of their babies in miscarriage, stillbirth, and infant death.  She also serves as editor of Open to Hope’s Pregnancy and Infant Loss page.  For more information about her book, and for pregnancy loss and infant death resources, please visit her website at www.thegoodgriefclub.com or e-mail her at monica@thegoodgriefclub.com.