A cardinal on the porch rail the week after the funeral. A song that comes on just as you were thinking of her. The smell of pipe tobacco in a hallway, a feather on the sidewalk, a number that keeps turning up.
Seeing something that reminds you of the person who died, or that feels like a signal from them, is a very common experience in grief.
How common it is
A 2023 Pew Research Center survey of U.S. adults found that 53% said they had been visited by a dead family member in a dream or in some other form. About a third said they had felt the presence of a dead relative in the past year.
When a group of researchers reviewed the studies on seeing, hearing, sensing or feeling the presence of someone who has died, they concluded that these experiences are “a common and normal occurrence in bereavement, comforting or reassuring to most, the majority of the time.” That research mostly studies experiences of presence rather than signs like songs and birds.
In my clinical experience, nearly all of my clients who share that they have experienced a sign consider it positive and reassuring.
If you have noticed one
There is nothing to fix, explain or keep to yourself. It is common and most people find it comforting.
Some people find these experiences disconcerting or ambivalent, and that is part of the picture too. Each of us carries grief in our own way and what we experience is ours. Neither you nor anyone else needs to judge it, whether it brings comfort, mixed feelings, or something harder.
If you haven’t
Nothing is wrong. Nearly half of Americans in the Pew survey had not been visited in any form. Not having a sign says nothing about how much you loved someone, how close you were, or how well you are carrying your grief.
Many grief counselors use J. William Worden’s four tasks of mourning, one of which is finding a way to remember the person who died while going on with the rest of life. You can reach for that in ways that do not depend on anything happening to you: cooking their recipe, saying their name, telling their stories, visiting a place they loved, writing them a letter.
Whether a sign has arrived or not, you are not doing grief wrong. You are living alongside a relationship that continues, in whatever ways are true for you.
If you would like a place to talk about this, or anything else you are carrying, I offer a free 15-minute consultation.
