My sister’s last days, once released from the COVID ward, was in an induced coma on a respirator. We all wondered if she could hear us talking at her bedside? And, I for one, continue to wonder if she can hear now that she’s dead?

On the welcome table of my sister’s thrift shop, now run solo by her best friend and business partner—Missy, stood a new center piece protected by a glass globe. It was a construction paper sculpture of an eagle, crafted around an empty toilet paper roll.

Missy explained that her granddaughter came home from school, overjoyed about her art project and said, “this is from GG Sherry.” (That’s what she called my sister!)

Missy continued to explain that when sitting at my sister’s bedside, between respirator beeps and nurse intrusions, she had asked my sister to give her a sign when she was peacefully settled on the other side.

And, as she described it, it was ‘agreed upon’ that the sign would be channeled through a large bird.

There it was. An eagle made of construction paper, channeled through a child, communicating my sister’s peaceful arrival in the land of the dead.

I was delighted by the story and my time with Missy, who gives me a kind of sister-hit whenever I stop by the store! When I left, I went about my day of responsibilities, driving mom to doctors and managing her needs and stuff at the Senior Facility where she lives. The paper eagle was out of mind.

Then something extraordinary happened!

After learning that, what had been my sister’s home, was now going to be rented out and would no longer house my mom’s extra-stuff. I started my drive back to NY in tears. My sister’s family was moving on. I felt totally alone in caring for my mom.

These are the moments I miss my sister the most.

Suddenly, a hawk with a wing-span the width of my windshield swooped down in front of me. Sharing the same wind current at 50-miles an hour, this huge bird and I breathed the same air!

Without hesitation I cried out, “Sherry?!”
And, as if she was sitting right beside me I heard, “you got this, just rise above the ache in your heart.”
Then, just as quickly as she arrived, she rose up into the sky out of sight.

There it was. A hawk traveling at 50-miles an hour, channeled by my heart’s cry, communicating my sister’s fierce support in the land of the living.

It’s so easy for the mind to discount the idea of channeled communications from the dead. But the body hasn’t the capacity to dismiss such pure connections. My experience with the hawk was as real as writing these words.

We are, after all, made of energy. In life contained; in death dispersed. In either case, love is the thread that weaves us together. A love that never dies. A love, I’m learning, that lives eternally.