Receiving a sign from the other side at any time is a beautiful experience, but there may be nothing more beautiful than receiving one so vivid and of such extraordinary significance as one man did when it was the furthest thing from his mind.
Jeff and Heather McManamy were never religious. They didn’t attend church. They didn’t necessarily believe in God. But they did believe in something.
“I never could discount the power of a person’s soul,” Jeff said. “That’s just too much energy to be gone in the blink of an eye.”
But Jeff never actively looked for signs or expected his wife to provide him any after she died. That didn’t stop her, though, from sending him one so convincing that he knew immediately that her soul was still with him.
A vivacious woman whose charm and wit endeared her even to strangers, Heather was thirty-three when she was diagnosed with stage IV metastatic breast cancer. The worst part of her grim prognosis was knowing she would miss seeing her four-year-old daughter, Brianna, grow up. She became an internet sensation when she shared on social media that she had bought greeting cards for every future special occasion of Brianna’s life — from first days of school to her retirement — for Jeff to give to Brianna after Heather was gone. Entreating everyone who followed her journey to live each day as if it were their final one, Heather walked the walk by turning in the manuscript for her memoir, Cards for Brianna, one day before her death. She passed away at the age of thirty-six. Her book was published four months later, and in multiple languages.
Soon after the book was released, Jeff decided it was time to start a new chapter in his and Brianna’s lives.
“I decided to sell our house,” he said. “I felt like all those recent years of cancer had trumped the good memories we’d had there. But I struggled a lot with the decision. It was the first house we’d bought together. It was the only home Bri had known. Did leaving there mean that we were leaving Heather? I knew it didn’t, but it was a connection we’d had that I was about to break. I fretted over it for a long time, even after I made my decision.”
Jeff made his new purchase in a new nearby subdivision. It was one of the last lots left, and the home was already under construction when he bought it. He met with the designer to approve everything the builder intended to do inside the home, including appliances, flooring, and colors.
“When I got there, they had the paint swatches out for the walls and the trim,” Jeff said. “It all pretty much looked white to me, but the trim was a slightly different shade of white.”
Of course, nothing in the paint world is referred to as a different shade of something else. Every color has a name.
“The color for the trim was spelled out right there in front of me,” Jeff said. “It was ‘Heather.’ The color was actually called heather. I said, ‘Oh my God.’ The designer asked if there was a problem. I was so stunned that I wasn’t sure I’d be able to explain, so I simply said, ‘No. Everything is perfect.’ ”
Jeff took a picture of the color with its label and called his mom the second his meeting was finished. “She and everyone else I told said that was Heather letting me know that I’d done the right thing and that I did a good job picking that house,” Jeff said. “I knew without a doubt it was a sign that she was okay with my decision.”
This sign led Jeff to recall the first few weeks after Heather’s death, when lightbulbs throughout the house had gone out. “I’m not talking like one or two bulbs. It was probably ten bulbs in three weeks,” he said. “We’d never had an issue before, and now, suddenly, it seemed like every single one was going out.”
He didn’t attribute it to Heather at the time. Now, after the incident with the designer, he did.
“I believe Heather tried to get my attention with the light-bulbs, but it didn’t work,” he said. “So, she took it up a notch with the trim color. When I put the two signs together, there really is no explanation other than that Heather was behind it all. It reaffirms for me that she is not gone. Even though she died, and even though we moved, her energy is still with us, and it always will be.”