When grief brings ‘signs,’ and questions about what comes next

Two Long Island writers reflect on loss, the afterlife and what religious leaders and others believe happens after we die.

Drew Scott: In loss, we sometimes look for signs.

After losing my granddaughter to fentanyl poisoning, my late wife kept finding coins and feathers, though she didn’t believe they were signs.

I heard a story once about how, in the quiet hours when grief settled like dust on every surface, people began to notice the small miracles that defied explanation.

A widow found a penny lying heads-up on the kitchen floor the morning after her husband’s funeral, though she had swept the night before. She picked it up, turning the coin in her fingers, and felt an inexplicable calm.

That same week, a father mourning his young daughter watched a single white feather spiral down from a clear blue sky and land gently on her empty swing. He sat there for a long time, convinced the feather had been sent on purpose.

Across town, a young woman stood at her grandmother’s grave, tears blurring the engraved name, when a monarch butterfly appeared from nowhere and settled on the headstone. It stayed long enough for her to catch her breath, its wings opening and closing as if breathing with her.

Later, she learned that her grandmother had always said butterflies carried messages between worlds. Maya left the cemetery lighter than she had arrived, certain the visit had not been a coincidence.

And in those rare moments, the living who grieve find they can keep walking forward, carrying their loved ones with them rather than leaving them behind.

Carole Trottere: The loss of a loved one comes with a lot of collateral damage. Let’s call them the “emotional side effects” of losing someone.

One is the thought of your own death: This will be me someday. Maybe soon.

Welcome to the human race.

When we envision and talk about “where our loved one is now,” we are also projecting a vision for our own afterlife.

After my son died eight years ago, I began a writing project I called “What Happens After We Die?” It was a look at some popular theories that may or may not ease your anxiety or answer your questions.

The working title was “Death: WTF?”

I interviewed a medium, a rabbi, a Catholic priest, a Muslim, a physicist, a Russian Orthodox priest and a Buddhist. I asked them all the same question: According to your faith or belief system, what happens after death?

Here are some of the answers, edited for length:

Even more confused now? Me, too.

Put all of these beliefs into a blender and you can see into my head.

But I do know that my son’s spirit somehow continues to guide me and push me in the right direction. So there must be something out there …

About the authors

Carole Trottere is an advocate for addressing the fentanyl and opioid crisis. Her son, Alex, died in 2018 of fentanyl poisoning. She has been published in Newsday, Psychology Today and other regional publications. She is currently the media director for The Jazz Loft in Stony Brook. Trottere lives in Old Field.

Drew Scott is a 50-year broadcast journalist who lost his twin granddaughter, Hallie Rae Ulrich, whom he and his late wife raised, to a heroin- and fentanyl-laced overdose in 2017. Scott helped found and operate opioid task forces in several Long Island towns. He currently works as communications director for the Town of Brookhaven.

Top: Photo by Sandy Millar on Unsplash