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look at this bird, it’s going nuts.’ And you know, that birch tree—my husband planted it when it was a sapling.”
Jeanette went back inside, but Cathy stayed out front and kept an eye on the crazy cardinal. The bird refused to leave—or to quiet down. It jumped from the tree to the mailbox, where it continued to complain. Then it jumped on Cathy’s car and squawked some more.
“It was just looking at me and making a lot of noise,” Cathy says.
“Finally I went inside to do some chores. I got the garbage and took it around back. And when I was in the backyard, the cardinal flew around the house and sat on the roof of the garage. Just looking at me and squawking.
“That’s when I said, ‘Okay, that’s Frank. Who else could it be?’ ” Later that day, when Cathy was at work, she happened to glance at a calendar. When she saw the date, she gasped.
“It was May thirteenth—the anniversary of Frank’s death,” she says. “This was twenty-nine years to the day. And out of nowhere this cardinal shows up and squawks at me for twenty minutes.”
What’s more, the cardinal flew off at nine ten A.M., “which was the exact time of Frank’s passing,” Cathy says. “That’s when I knew for sure that it was Frank.”
—
Two years before he crossed, Frank took Cathy to visit a piece of property on Eagle Lake in Pennsylvania. “He already knew he was sick,” Cathy says, “but he really wanted to buy the land. He said, ‘I want to take my son fishing on this lake.’ Did Frank like to fish? No.
But he loved spending time with his son.”
The Kudlacks bought the property, but before they were able to spend time there, Frank took a turn for the worse, and soon after he crossed. In the months and years that followed, Cathy would take the children there every weekend. “Frank wanted us all to be there together, as a family, and when I was there I really felt his presence,”
she says. “And when our kids grew up and had their kids, they
brought them up to the lake, too. I think we all felt close to Frank there.”
Their next-door neighbor on the lake, a wonderful man named Cliff, became a kind of surrogate father to Cathy’s son, Frank Jr. “He taught him everything my husband would have taught him—how to fix things, how to paint, all the things you need to know when you own a home,” Cathy says. “I think that was ultimately the purpose of our family being there. Even though Frank never knew Cliff, he wanted us there so Cliff could eventually be this wonderful mentor to our son.”
After almost thirty years, when the kids stopped coming as often, Cathy started to think about selling the property. “But it was so hard.
I was so torn,” she says. “Frank wanted us to have this place—he wanted us to be a family there. And we were. I needed to know that Frank was okay with it.”
It was right around this time that Cathy’s daughter Jeanette reached out to me. She told me the story of the property on Eagle Lake, and how her mother had just made the painful decision to sell it, but was still uncertain if it was the right thing to do.
I connected with Cathy’s husband, Frank, right away. He was very clear in his position.
“Your dad says to absolutely sell it,” I texted back. “More than anything he wants things to be easier for your mom. So tell her to stop worrying. Also, your dad is joking and saying you can’t get rid of him that easily anyway.”
And besides, he wanted her to know, it was never the land tying him to the family. “It is the love that binds him to all of you,” I conveyed to them. “Trust in that.”
The next day, Cathy sent me a thank-you note in response.
“I’m looking forward to the next phase now,” she wrote. “It feels so good to have the validation that our loved ones still support us. I believe that with all of my heart, but it’s still wonderful to hear it from you.”
I was moved by Cathy’s heartfelt letter.
“I know you don’t need me to know that your husband is around,”
I wrote her, “because you already feel him and he sends you signs and messages all the time. He wants you to be happy and to be open to all that is being brought to you in your next chapter in life—but he is saying that he will send you the sign of an eagle so that you know you have his blessing on the sale of the property.”
What I didn’t realize was that Frank had already sent the sign of the eagle.
—
I later learned from Cathy that the day before she’d reached a decision about selling the property, she decided to clean out one of the closets in her home. There were boxes and boxes of papers in it that hadn’t been touched in years. Cathy reached deep into the closet and pulled out the first of many folders packed with documents.
“On the cover of this folder was a picture of a beautiful eagle,” she says. “I had no idea this folder even existed.”
Then it hit her: The property Frank bought for his family was on Eagle Lake.
“I thought it must be a sign,” Cathy says. “That folder was hidden there for years and years, totally forgotten, and I pulled it out just when I needed Frank to send me a sign about the property. When I saw it, I felt it was him telling me, ‘Okay, it’s time to let it go.’ ”
On the day of the sale, Cathy was driving to the dentist with Jeanette. “All of a sudden Jeanette said, ‘Mom, look at this!’ ” Cathy recalls. “There was an eagle flying right by our car window, almost close enough to reach out and touch.”
After that, Cathy began seeing eagles everywhere.
“They’d fly over my head or be sitting on a branch where I could see them,” she says. “And every time I saw one, it confirmed for me that, yes, Eagle Lake was our special place, and yes, we all felt close to Frank there. But the truth is, we don’t need that place. Because Frank is everywhere.”
—
Today Cathy talks to Frank all the time. “I’ll say, ‘How you doing today?’ Or, ‘Frank, I need your help with this.’ And Frank always comes through, with either a sign or a thought or a word that pops in my head.”
Although Cathy and her family no longer have Eagle Lake, they still get together. Last summer, Cathy joined her children on Montauk Point for the weekend. “Several of us took a walk by the lighthouse, and I remember it being very peaceful with the seagulls flying around us and the fresh smell of the ocean air. I also remember trying to stabilize myself on the rocks so I didn’t fall into the ocean.”
All of a sudden, Cathy’s daughter noticed that one of the rocks near them had a name written on it. It was the only rock among thousands that had anything written on it at all.
The name written on it was Frank.
“At that moment, I thought about all the people who were walking along the shore with me—Frank’s daughter; two of his grandkids, Kingston and Caleb; his sister Nancy; and his future daughter-in- law, Kim. And I knew that seeing that rock with his name on it was Frank’s way of letting us know that he was with us there, too. There is not a single doubt in my mind about it.”
No matter the method, Cathy is always ready to receive whatever message Frank is sending.
“Every single time, it brings a big smile to my face,” she says.
“Frank has a really easy time communicating with me. He always did. And he’s still the same kidder he was, still looking out for us like he always did. It’s very comforting knowing that Frank is still here.
He visits me all the time, and that’s just a really wonderful thing.”