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Your lost child is well onto their next journey, but they’re still here, there, and everywhere. All you have to do is look.

Your child is in the book you’re reading. Your child is on every other TV show you’re watching. Your child is in the bite of pizza you’re eating. Your child is in every song you listen to. Your child is in the marigolds sitting on your desk. Your child is staring back at you in the mirror.

Your child is always with you because you carry your child in your heart.

Sometimes these memories make you smile, sometimes they make you cry, sometimes they make you drunk with love, and sometimes they make you feel empty inside, but they keep you connected to your child, and that’s all that really matters.

Not a day goes by without something you do or watch or read or taste or smell reminding you of your child, and that’s in addition to all the signs they leave to show they’ve come to visit. Who knew that the powers that be keep them so busy on the other side?

The signs are different for all of us, but one thing they have in common is that they’re all signs of love.

A psychic medium told me to look for feathers and for my ex-wife Caryn to keep an eye out for sunflowers. For the first year after my son Rob died, Caryn saw sunflowers wherever she looked, but I didn’t see a single feather. I remember joking, “What the heck! The lazy bum can only do one or the other?”

He finally got around to hitting me up with feathers, and every time I see one now, I point to it and say, “Hi Rob!” or “Dude!” The feathers are really a perfect choice. It feels like he’s tickling me to make me laugh, which is just so Rob. I was happy to make his job easier last year, when I moved in with my girlfriend at the beach, where there’s plumage galore.

Our kids are also fond of visiting us in our dreams, and Rob is no exception, although he comes infrequently. At first, I thought that he was just occupied with his booming feather business, until my friend Sarah texted me about a dream she recently had in which Rob appeared.

Just like him to show up in somebody else’s dreams!

Whenever he deigns to drop in to one of mine, he appears only as Little Robbie, and I’m not sure why, other than that was when he was most adorable. I could barely remember any of these dreams, except for the following one that I had the wherewithal to write down:

I’m walking on Venice Beach right before sunset, and aside from a few rowdy homeless guys and the steady beat of the drum circle, it is beautiful and peaceful. I watch the waves gently breaking on the shore, and it feels hypnotic, so I close my eyes for a few seconds. When I open them, I see a small sailboat on the horizon.

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As it comes into view, it looks like the one from Where the Wild Things Are, but instead of Max in his wolf costume, it’s Robbie in his G.I. Joe pajamas. He sails a little closer to shore and we both start frantically waving to each other, and he’s yelling something, but I can’t hear what it is because the drums are getting faster and louder.

And then the bow of the sailboat slowly turns around and heads out to the open sea, and that’s when my heart tells me what he was saying. Robbie is still waving and I’m standing on the shore waving back, and he keeps sailing farther and farther away until he is just a speck. Then, all of a sudden, he’s gone.

© Psychology Today