I Was Devastated When The Love Of My Life Died. Then I Started Seeing Signs I Couldn't Explain.
The nurse stopped me before I left the intensive care unit and entered into the creeping hum of the hospital. My husband, Dave, had been wheeled off to the 14th floor, where he died a few hours later.
“You are going to want to take his wedding ring off... soon,” she said. I understood what she meant by “soon” — before he died and I could no longer get the ring off.
The last rays of sunlight filled Dave’s new room as I sat by his side. I squeezed some Aquaphor from a tube by his bed and, with his fingers in my hand, I tried to memorize the map of age spots before I gently tugged at the ring. It was a thick, smooth, dark silver wedding band, which he bought just a few weeks before our wedding. He stared straight ahead, his breathing labored through the oxygen mask covering his mouth. As I finally pulled the ring from his finger, he looked me in the eyes. I could feel him taking in the moment — the significance of what I had done — as I slipped it onto my right index finger.
A few days later, after the house cleared of visitors who had come to pay their respects and share their favorite stories about Dave, I heard a cricket chirping in the pantry. Later, it was in my bathroom, singing as I washed my face. This was before people began to ask me if I’d noticed any signs of Dave visiting me after his death.
I’d never heard a cricket in the house before — just a chorus of them outdoors on summer evenings. But I was dealing with so many unfamiliar experiences. I’d never had a front row seat to the devastation of cancer. I’d never seen a dead body before. I’d never lost someone so close to me. I’d never been a widow.
Dave and I had what I consider a traditional marriage. He worked, and I raised our boys. In the 17 years we were together, we never had a conversation about what we would do if one of us died. Dave assured me there was enough life insurance that I’d be able to pay off the house. I told him he’d have enough money to hire a full-time nanny to take care of the kids.
That’s as far as our planning went. I think I probably told him that I’d want him to keep going, live his life and make the most of his time without me. But the truth is, I didn’t want to think about him moving on. I couldn’t bear to think of him getting married again. I didn’t want to envision another woman putting her clothes in my closet, sliding next to him in our bed and raising our boys. I didn’t want him bringing her coffee every morning or pouring her a glass of wine at night.
Some time after Dave died, people began to nudge me to pick up the pieces and look for a new horizon. A widower said to me, “Cancer already took so much from you. You are only 51. Enjoy your life.” My uncle told me, “Life is better enjoyed with a companion.” These people were telling me things I already knew. I wanted to fill the giant hole in my life without Dave by my side. I wanted to feel desire and be desired again. I wanted to push through the grief and find joy again.
I set up dating profiles on Hinge and Bumble. Whenever I met up with someone, I slipped off my sapphire engagement ring and wedding band, but I never removed Dave’s ring. I played with it under the table — feeling the smooth finish, sliding it up and down my finger — as I practiced my flirting skills with each new suitor.
My mind always raced back to Dave. I compared the man I was with to him and asked myself, “Is this guy good enough?” as I silently ran through a checklist of the things I loved about Dave: Does he hate the Dodgers? Does he have the same sense of humor? Can he BBQ? Fix things? Does he surf? Ride a bike? Does he take time to watch the sunset and look for bats? Would he anchor me when I spiraled? Would he bring me coffee in bed? And last, but certainly not least — would Dave approve of him?
I dumped one guy because he didn’t like sports or Will Ferrell. I could still hear Dave practically choking from laughing while we watched “Elf” on Thanksgiving Eve. I heard his voice in my ear asking, “How can this guy not like ‘Blades of Glory’ or ‘Talledaga Nights’?” I imagined Dave measuring him up and trying to connect with my date over sports. “It’s the great icebreaker,” he always said. “Everyone has a team!”
On my way home from the date where I first kissed someone who wasn’t Dave, I cried in my car, and I apologized to the silent judge I imagined sitting in the empty seat beside me. “I deserve to be happy!” I screamed at Dave. I told him over and over that I wished it was him who had kissed me — that I didn’t want to be with anyone else. I just wanted our perfectly imperfect life back.
I began to wonder if the ring on my finger glued me to him.
Three months after Dave died, I had my first appointment with a medium. I didn’t know what I wanted to hear. Going to a psychic seemed like a game — a test to see what they knew about my life, my pain, my love — anything.
It took the psychic three minutes to find the ball of grief in my throat and name it.
“You lost your partner,” she said over Zoom.
It took a few more minutes for her to ask me if he was a biker; five more minutes, and he supposedly showed up and joined our conversation. She said he was at peace and no longer suffering. She also told me he liked to hang out at the kitchen table so he could be around our two sons.
Was it Dave? Was he the reason I felt like I wasn’t alone in our bedroom even when I was alone? That I kept finding my lost Airpods?
The psychic saw a rebirth for me, but Dave apparently didn’t say anything.
I finally took off my sapphire ring; I was not married anymore. But I still kept Dave’s ring on.
I found another medium through a post on a widows’ chat group. He had a three-month waitlist, so I figured he must be good, and though he charged $90, I reasoned that was cheaper than therapy.
Like the first psychic, this one picked up on the loss quickly. And like the reading before, Dave allegedly showed up, this time with my recently deceased mother in tow. As I lay on my bed, my eyes closed and my computer open on my lap, I nodded yes and no to the medium’s questions.
“There was something in his lungs?” Yes.
“You had to make a decision to prolong his life or not? Or prolong it for a short period?” Yes.
“He wants you to know you made the right decision. He wants you to know that he sees that you carried too much.”
I saw Dave’s skeletal face — his green eyes meeting mine — days before he died. I could hear his raspy voice, each word a push of air, saying, “I want to be here for you … to show you every day how much I love you.”
The medium claimed that Dave had noticed a mug he’d gotten on a bike ride now sitting on my nightstand, saying, “He likes that you are using it.”
He also said that Dave saw Denali, a new addition to the family who we named after Dave’s favorite mountain, curled by my feet.
“He likes the name,” the medium claimed. “He is with you … if you need something, just ask him.”
But Dave still hadn’t told me the one thing I wanted to hear: that it was OK for me to move on. But I never asked. Even with him gone — or possibly present as a spirit — it felt like I was cheating on him.
I continued to date sporadically. I swiped left on what I thought were good possibilities. I met some nice men, had long conversations with them and then never heard from them again. Sometimes I was the one who ghosted. I struggled to find my footing as a solo parent, swinging between rage, tears, exhaustion and, occasionally, pride. I hated when friends told me how strong I was, how good of a job I was doing, and that they couldn’t imagine what I was going through. I became withdrawn and isolated, shut off from the world I once belonged to and the community that supported me.
Still, I kept looking for signs.
One day on a walk with my dogs, a young hawk swooped in slow motion, low and close to us, before landing on a nearby tree. It was so close, I could see the intricate patterns on its deep brown head, white neck and striped wings. Unlike Dave, I didn’t know the difference between a turkey vulture, raven or hawk, much less how old one was. But this bird I instinctively knew.
I heard Dave whispering in my ear, “Stop. Look at the young hawk. You can tell by its colors.”
I paused to take a picture of the magnificent bird. Across the distance between us, our eyes met, and then the air around me changed. The dogs stood silent. The hot September sun disappeared for a moment behind a cloud, and I felt surrounded by cool air. My body tingled like there was a weight on my shoulder — like an arm was wrapped around me.
Finally, the bird flew off. I exhaled and resumed my walk.
Then, just a few steps later, I saw it: a large brown and white feather sitting on top of a pile of mottled leaves. I’d seen feathers before, but this was no ordinary feather. It was a foot long and perfectly intact.
At that moment, I remembered a post from the widows page on Facebook that read, “Feathers are gifts from the other side.”
I never believed in spirits, guardian angels or ghosts. But at that moment, I knew for certain Dave was with me. Like the cricket I had heard so many months before, he was there reminding me that life is full of beauty. He was reminding me to let go of my anger — to enjoy my life.
A week later, Dave’s ring came off in the shower, clattered to the floor and bounced off of the tile. I grabbed it just before it went into the drain and hugged it tightly to my chest before slipping it back on my finger.
A couple days after that, the ring fell off my hand when I was putting lotion on my legs and ricocheted across the bathroom. I found it buried in the bathmat. I collapsed onto the floor, shaking. In the year since Dave died, the ring had never come off. Now, it had happened twice in one week.
I didn’t want it to be a sign, but I couldn’t help but wonder if these incidents meant something — and why I still wore the ring after all this time. Was it to hold him close? To honor his memory? I didn’t know.
The next day, at an event among old friends, I absent-mindedly touched my index finger, feeling for the familiar pull of soft metal as I’d done so many times before. I felt only skin — the ring was gone. I should have heard it clatter on the hardwood floors. It should have been in my car, along the short concrete pathway outside my house or in my dress pocket. It should have turned up in the corner of my bathroom or in the washing machine. I searched everywhere I could think to look. I retraced my steps over and over and over again. I even rented a metal detector. But in the same way that I knew something special was happening when I saw that hawk, I also knew I would never find the ring again.
Was it Dave? Was this his way of telling me that I no longer needed to use his ring as a shield against the world or the future? Was this a message telling me that, while our love would never disappear, I didn’t need to hold on to him so tightly? And that it was time to move forward, and he wanted to help me let go?
I thought of the feather. The cricket. All of the feelings, sensations and unexplainable moments I had experienced since Dave’s death that might mean something — that might be proof of a connection to him beyond this world. Could it be real? Or were my heart, my mind and my grief playing tricks on me?
I didn’t know, but I finally understood that I didn’t need to know. It didn’t matter what was real because I already knew what was true: Dave would always be with me, but he wasn’t coming back to live this life with me. I had to do that on my own — and it was time I opened up my heart and truly started living again.
Rachel Blatt is a solo mom of two boys, a writer and grief educator living in the Bay Area. She is currently working on a memoir about what she and her husband left unsaid during the year he became sick and eventually died. Find her at @widowtales on Instagram.
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