I believe in signs.

For instance, whenever I see someone make a Florida U-turn I know that it’s a sign from my grandpa, who died in 2003, he taught me what a Florida U-turn was. Another sign was when I was at the grocery store on the anniversary of the day that he died and I was paying for my groceries with my debit card when a penny shot out of the change machine right in front of me. It took me a whole day to figure it out, but the coincidence that a penny dropped out of nowhere on the death anniversary of a grandpa who collected his pennies for me (and my brother) was, to me, definitely a sign.

And then there is the sign from my other grandpa, Leonard. He died in 2002, and since then I get mail addressed to him … at my house. Yes. Mail. And he didn’t even live with me. It all started about a month after he died, and its been arriving a few times a year ever since. I’m not getting personal letters or anything, in fact some might call it junk mail. However I call it a sign.

So then onto yesterday.

It was my husband’s grandma’s funeral. Twelve years ago, when we were first married, she took us to a chicken dinner at her church. She made a huge deal out of it, and it really meant a lot to her, this chicken dinner. I’ll never forget it, it was mostly because of the music. I’m pretty sure there was a strolling accordion player playing a polka. A POLKA — and for some reason I thought that was just hilarious. Anyhow, there we are, at the funeral, which was at the church of the chicken dinner.

At first I sat in a pew on the far left, then I moved to the middle second row, and finally I decided to save the third row for my husband, his brothers, and his nephews, who were all pallbearers. I was sitting on the far lefthand side of the pew, and you’d think that the men could have come in from the right, but they didn’t. As a result, my husband and his family made me scoot all the way down to the other side of the pew.

I noticed right away that there was a bulletin in the book rack in front of us. It was from Sunday, September 21st, and I thought it was odd that it was there because it was Monday, September 22nd, and usually someone goes through the pews and removes anything that doesn’t belong there — like old bulletins. You only get a bulletin on your way out of church, not before. Anyhow, at one point, most likely to take my mind off of the funeral, I decided to flip through the bulletin. It was hard to miss the blue sheet of paper folded inside of it, and my husband noticed what it said before I did: Chicken Dinner & Raffle, Polka Mass, October 5th.

And there you have it. A sign. But for who? Him? Me? Us? My husband wasn’t too convinced at first, until he searched through all of the pews after the service to confirm what I already knew: we had the only bulletin left in the pews. The pew that wasn’t our first choice, second choice, but third choice. And if the guys would have filed into the pew the way I imagined they would, my husband’s nephew would have sat there, and it would have meant absolutely nothing to him. Instead, we are left with a sign.

(Cross-posted to Thoughts Outside My Head)