A sign from Mark

I wanted to share a story of something that happened to me a couple of weeks ago. It’s a little long, so bear with me.

I was really low one day, and told Mark he needed to give me a sign that he was okay and happy. Now, I can be a little dense when it comes to seeing signs, and I reminded him of this. At first I said, “send me an eagle - there’s no way I could miss that!” Then I thought to myself, maybe that’s a little excessive. Okay, “send me a swallow!” (Swallows remind me of Mark. Sometimes when he was mowing the grass at our house, they would come swooping down and around him because of all of the bugs he would kick up with the mower). But then I thought, how am I going to notice one swallow? Again, changed my mind. “Send me a butterfly – but not one of those stupid little yellow ones, they’re all over the place – it has to be something special!” Of course I’m expecting something to come flying at me right away, but didn’t see anything. I figured after all of this discussion that Mark had probably stopped listening since I couldn’t make up my mind. He HATED that.

Anyway, the following week I was out on the deck with Vaughn. I happened to look up and notice some birds circling and dipping towards the house. It was really weird because, you guessed it, THEY WERE SWALLOWS. There had to have been 15-20 of them up there. I looked around at the neighbors, but it was just our house. They flew around up there for about 5 minutes and then left. Hmmm – thanks for the warm fuzzy Mark. Later that night, I was looking out the window and saw a yellow swallowtail butterfly flying amongst the hostas. Again – thanks baby. A couple of days later I was driving down Yankee Doodle Road and saw an eagle flying about 20 feet up. Of course I burst into tears, but what an awesome sight!

Now, those of you who know Mark, realize that to him, doing anything small is a waste of time. You do things BIG or you don’t do them at all. So instead of sending me one sign, he sent them all. He was just like that. He’d do anything in his power to make you happy, and he’s still doing it, Mark style. You just gotta love him!

Erin Jensen