There Are Signs Everywhere

Letters to Cade- Tuesday, May 26 2020

Tonight we were sitting in the kitchen having dinner. Me, daddy, Rylan, and the empty seat where you always sat. I was sitting in the chair facing the windows to the backyard, and all of a sudden in the middle of dinner, I noticed a red figure on the green grass. It was a cardinal. Usually I see cardinals often, but it’s always quickly as they fly by across the yard or in to a tree. Tonight was different. The cute, beautiful red cardinal just sat there on the green grass in the middle of the yard and hopped around. It hopped one direction then would pause and turn around and hop back the other direction and it just sat there hopping back and forth. It made me think of you. Daddy and Ry turned to see when I told them. Ry had to get up because the basketball hoop was blocking his view of it. I said how I had never seen one just hanging out like that for so long. It had been several minutes at this point. Ry saw it and said, “Do you think it’s Cade mom?” I said that I did. That you must have known we were having a family dinner and you came by to say hi and join us for a little bit. Then a minute later, off you flew. Funny…now that I’m thinking about it, I saw a blur of red fly quickly across the whole yard out these same windows earlier today during lunch. Ry had put on the baby shark song that you always loved. You must have heard it too. You were with us today. I felt you. I love you bug, and man do I miss you like crazy. ❤️

There really are signs everywhere. They are all around us. We just have to have the awareness to see them. To believe. To know that there is other life that surrounds us every day. Things that are beyond our understanding or even our wildest imagination. There is life after death. People talk about it all the time. Whether you believe in heaven above, or if the picture in your mind is painted differently. Some believe that heaven is actually here on earth. That our two worlds co-exist, but are completely different, and that those in Heaven walk right beside us every day in their different world that is free of pain and suffering and more beautiful than any of us in this earth version could ever imagine. I truthfully don’t know what I believe. I don’t know if it will be a world up in the clouds that we look down to earth from, or if life continues similar to how we know it, just in a more grander glorious surrounding. All I know is that I believe and I know that one day I will see Cade again.

While I don’t go to church much, I believe in God and I have prayed for as long as I can remember. Mostly at night, but there are times when I’ll pray in the middle of the day, and when Cade got sick I often found myself talking to God on my drives to or from the hospital. I have been surrounded by signs that have come in all shapes and sizes over these last couple of years. And while I will never understand why Cade had to die. Why that had to be part of God’s plans for me and my family. I don’t believe that it happened because God is malicious or doesn’t care about us or that our life was too good and he felt he needed to teach us a lesson; that he needed another angel for his garden, or any of the other cliche things I often hear people say. I believe a lot of the bad things that happen today are because of our world and what it has become. I also believe that sometimes really bad things just happen to good people and there isn’t a magical reason or explanation. What I also know with all my heart is that God is good and if you put your faith in him and trust him, he will always be there to carry you through. One of my last days with Cade, I remember lying next to him and praying as I always did. I usually prayed continuously for a healing miracle. But this day I remember my prayers were different. It was like my soul knew that Cade wasn’t going to survive, and I remember saying to God that if he wasn’t going to give us a miracle, if he wasn’t going to heal Cade, then he better damn well give me the strength to survive this. To help us all get through this unfathomable loss and help us to keep putting one foot in front of the other. And he is.

God answers my prayers. He sends me signs. On days I am really struggling and I find myself crying through my prayers and asking for him to help me and give me strength, I find my prayers answered over the days that follow. I will suddenly get text messages or emails from people telling me they’re thinking of us or continuing to pray for us or sharing stories and things with me just when I needed it. Sometimes it’s someone sending me a picture of them or their children wearing Cade’s mask and telling me how they talk about Cade when people ask them about the picture on their mask. Another time it was a message from my neighbor telling me how her niece has Cade’s picture as her screen saver. It once was a stranger on my doorstep giving me a beautiful hanging flower pot that she said made her think of Cade and she had made a huge star to hang from it with the Superman symbol and Cade’s name in the center of it. It’s still hanging in my yard. Things like this fill my heart. These things are Gods way of giving me strength- through the people that surround me.

Cade’s birthday was August 7. He would have been 5. We also had planned his Celebration of Life that weekend to honor him. The couple weeks leading up to this were hard and I knew it would be a tearful and challenging time. I spent an entire day going through all of our pictures to decide which ones to have printed for the celebration. It was an emotionally exhausting day to say the least. Over these couple of weeks I noticed many signs. One morning I was driving to work, and sometimes these drives can be tearful. Not because I’m going to work, but because it’s just that time alone in the car with my thoughts racing and often the tears just come. Well I was listening to a song I had never heard before. It was pretty and it was about having hope. The chorus sang about hope and just as the chorus began again, a big red cardinal flew out of the trees low across the road right in front of my car, so fast it was almost a blur of red across the road. I just smiled. Then the following week was his birthday week. The day before his birthday I had worked. On my drive in to work I looked over at a church that I always pass on this corner and I noticed on their sign it read “God can do wonders with a broken heart…you just have to give him all of the pieces.” I laughed a little out loud to myself and thought, how fitting is that!? When I got home from work that day, I had a parents bereavement group in the evening that I was doing. After that I had decided to finish a few things up for the Celebration of Life since I was on the computer. I grabbed my phone to check something and of course Facebook always pops up your memories from the years past. Well it popped up his birthday pictures from two years ago when he turned 3. We were home between hospital rounds and he was the thinnest he had been before getting the feeding tube. The pictures were of this bday, of him and Ry on the gator, Cade helping to shave Rylan and Chris’ heads since he had just lost all of his hair. As I looked through these I fully anticipated the tears to start flowing and to collapse on to my bed sobbing and be done. But they didn’t come. I was waiting for them, but instead I had felt almost a sense of calm come over me. I remember feeling a bit puzzled and I looked to my nightstand where a picture of me and Cade sits. I smiled and said “was that you bug? Were you just giving me a hug just now, letting me know you’re ok?” I shrugged it off and walked back in to the office and sat back down at the computer to finish making a sign on Word. I went to the top of the screen to change the font when all of a sudden the computer went crazy. The mouse curser flew all around on the screen and windows shut down and popped open and an error box popped up that said it couldn’t play the video at this time. I had no idea what video it was referring to or what happened or how to even play videos on this function of the computer. But what I noticed behind the tiny error box was a huge picture that had opened up and it was a picture of Cade. Not only was it Cade, but it was a picture of just him that had been zoomed and cropped from a family picture of us on his birthday last year when he turned 4. He sat there with his beautiful bald head wearing a lime green tshirt that said “It’s My Birthday” on it. I sat there in shock. Chris walked in to the office and I showed him because I couldn’t quite believe it myself and he probably would’ve thought I made it up had I closed it all out and just told him about it. I couldn’t believe two different instances of birthday pictures from two different years just appeared in these ways, and it just so happened that his 5th birthday was the next day. I knew this was Cade. He didn’t want me to be sad, he wanted me to be ok knowing that he is ok. Then just before bed, Chris opened a package that had come in the mail. It was another way God was letting us know we are loved and thought of through his messengers- our friends. It was a candle that a friend sent to us and it was labeled “Happy Heavenly Birthday Cade” with the number 5.

We spent his birthday honoring him by going to all of his favorite places to eat. We started at Starbucks with my sister and niece and nephew. We had egg sandwiches and hot chocolate and coffee. My sister brought a cake and we sang happy birthday to him. Then Chris, Rylan, and I did some stuff that afternoon and went to Yogeez, his favorite frozen yogurt place, for a little sweet treat. The afternoon was tough, I felt the sadness start to settle in a little bit. Maybe part of it was the anticipation of his Celebration of Life the next day. Ry went and played with some friends for a while and I finished some things around the house. Then we ended the day together, us three. I had got a small cake that we put candles in and we sang happy birthday to him one last time and told him how much we love and miss him. The next day was his Celebration of Life. We were not able to have traditional wake/funeral services for him when he passed away due to COVID, so this was our way to honor his life and memory. I had no idea what a Celebration of Life was. I searched the internet for ideas and thought of all of Cades favorite things that would have made him happy. With the help of my incredible friends and family and the amazing organization Heroes Like Haley, the day was everything I had envisioned it to be. It was perfect. The day was full of laughter, sunshine, and people coming together to show us their love. We were so honored to see all of the people that came and to be surprised by some amazing friends who came from other states to be there for us. With us. The day was a blur quite honestly. It was hard to have the opportunity to talk to and visit with everyone, but we hope that everyone who was there knows that it meant the world to us having you there even if we weren’t able to talk with you. Looking back, I was regretful that I wasn’t there more for Rylan. I felt like every time I looked for him he was running around playing with his friends that were there. But at one point my friend saw him sitting on the picnic table across from the TV that was playing Cade’s slideshow of pictures and she said he just sat there watching it for about 20 minutes looking a little lost. This broke my momma heart a little bit. I can’t imagine the feelings that he felt on this day. Pastor Joel from our hospice company was kind enough to come and speak at the event for us. He had beautiful things to say about Cade and the community of support that God has absolutely blessed us with. He closed with a prayer and we all released balloons in to the sky for him to close the day. In a way, to say goodbye.

But just before the balloon release, at the end as Joel was talking about Cade, a huge gust of wind rolled through. I just closed my eyes and took it in. I knew it was Cade. He was there with us. It was another sign. Because, as I said, signs are everywhere. If you are reading this and it is stirring things up for you personally, or you’re having a hard time in life for whatever reasons. Maybe you have not talked to God in some time, or maybe even ever in your life- I encourage you to turn to him with your struggles and your sadness. Because even at the bottom of the well, one can always look up and see the sky. Right? Give it a try. Lay everything on the table. What do you have to lose? If you have no troubles at the moment, you can still turn to him with thanksgiving for all you have been blessed with. I can promise you one thing- he’s a good listener. And I hope you will have the same results as I do. That you will feel God with you. That he will send you signs too, in one form or another. Just remember- you have to open your awareness so that you don’t miss them when they are sent. ❤️