Clichés, angel numbers, blue butterflies

It’s been 77 days since my father left Earthside. I could say “died,” but I’d rather not. Souls, after all, are believed to be immortal, and it’s only the physical body that leaves this plane.

Still, the thought of that isn’t enough to console me, and I’m not being overly dramatic when I say that perhaps nothing ever will. The death of a parent, I’ve come to realize, is profoundly excruciating and unsettling. You feel like a headless chicken – defeated yet frantic and staggering with nowhere to go, running on nerves and muscle memory.

One does not learn to move on, only to move along with grief.

Grief is universal, they say, though each person’s experience is uniquely their own.

As for me, I have turned to clichés, angel numbers, coins and a kind of Joan Didion-like magical thinking to make sense of my new reality.

This started when I buried myself in books, researching one of life’s oldest and most enduring questions: what really happens when we die?

After my father died, I read every night, hoping to understand the kind of loss I was facing. I devoured published works on death, accounts from those with near-death experiences, listened to podcast interviews with mediums and even befriended an embalmer because he dealt with the dead every day.

I was deep into it, reading far into the night, past the witching hour, trying to understand death.

And here’s what I gathered:

Those who’ve had near-death experiences said they found themselves in a dimension filled with immense love and bliss, nothing they’ve ever felt before. Most of all, they said, they saw their dead loved ones again. Ah, it must be heaven, a dreamlike state they never wanted to leave.

And through that, I found comfort in the most overused cliché about death that our dearly departed is in a better place, free from the pain and loneliness of life on earth. It’s a cliché alright but it doesn’t mean it’s not true.

Angel numbers

I also studied signs from the dearly departed and learned that angel numbers are among the ways they communicate.

Suddenly, after my father died, I started seeing repeating number sequences, mostly 111, 444 and 777.

“If you’ve recently lost someone, seeing 444 is a powerful and sacred sign. This number often arrives after death as a message of comfort: your loved one is safe, at peace and surrounded by divine protection,” according to vita-zaida.com, a blog on energy and symbolism.

I became fixated with numbers and concluded that my father’s time and date of death, and his age when he died, all translate to 7. Thus, I came to associate 777 with him.

One time, missing him terribly as I drove to the office, I told him I wanted to feel his presence and asked him to send me something with 777.

I looked at license plates and billboards. Nothing. There were 77s and a car with 772 but no 777s.

I reached the office and just when I had given up, a colleague who had just returned from the US gave me a chocolate.

There it was: a small chocolate bar wrapped in dark blue glossy foil, designed like a Las Vegas slot machine. Front and center, the reels showed a triumphant “777” jackpot.

Wow. Just wow. To me, that was my dad saying hello.

Coincidence? Maybe. But I’ll take it as a nudge from my father, his little way of saying he’s still very much around.

That experience reminded me of another cliché: that our loved ones are never gone. They are always in our hearts. Oh, so true.

Coins are also said to be a common sign, according to Open to Hope, a non-profit run by grief experts. It is a way to catch our attention because people normally don’t ignore money.

Since then, I sometimes find coins in corners I haven’t touched – in the car, office, etc. I’ll take that too as a wink from my father.

Animal kingdom

Another common sign is an animal – a butterfly, ladybug, bird or dragonfly. The animal behaves unusually, such as landing on us or pecking at a window, according to Open to Hope.

The day after my father died, a beautiful dark blue butterfly appeared to me and to each of my siblings, dancing around us and landing on our shoulders – and many blue butterflies have appeared since.

Recently, at the EJAP Journalism Awards, I accepted an award on behalf of The STAR’s Business Section, which I currently lead. On stage, I dedicated it to my father.

After my acceptance speech, former Finance undersecretary Milwida Guevara, head of the esteemed board of judges, told me, “Your father is always with you.” She was speaking from experience. A butterfly always appears wherever she goes – a sign her own father is with her too.

Her words, spoken with such certainty, brought me so much comfort.

At this point, you may think I’m crazy for looking at angel numbers, coins and the animal kingdom as proof that my father and I are still connected.

Magical thinking, perhaps. But how can one argue against love?

Love, as my father made me realize, does not really die. It is strong and enduring, and in the stillest hours, it lingers – stubborn in its devotion and louder than grief.

That may sound like a cliché, but it is also the truest thing I know now.

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Email: [email protected]. Follow her on X @eyesgonzales. Column archives at EyesWideOpen on FB.