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As my mother snapped a bunch of pictures, my gaze was fixed heavenward.

“Look through here,” she said, handing me her camera. Though it was still there, right before my eyes, I couldn’t believe what I was seeing.

Maybe we were hallucinating. Or maybe a few planes had flown by and stretched the clouds out to form a perfect H in the sky.

Or maybe—just maybe—the hand of a loving and compassionate God reached down into our grief that afternoon.

I didn’t know, and honestly, I didn’t have the energy to try to figure it all out. But what I was certain of is this: we saw a huge white H in the sky that day, and I’ll never forget it.

After the H-shaped cloud started to disappear, our momentary excitement ended and feelings of sorrow returned.

“Mom, what happened?” I asked. I needed to hear the story repeatedly the first few months after Hunter’s passing. I wasn’t there, but she was. I wasn’t in the back of the ambulance, holding Hunter’s hand. Agonizing as it was, I had tried to picture everything in my mind, hoping to make sense of it all. Thankfully, as hard as it was for my mother, she was always willing to recount what had happened during those horrible moments at her house.

She was lying next to him when he stopped breathing, she said. She watched the emergency technicians try to resuscitate my son. She was with him in the ambulance as they kept trying to revive Hunter. She was there as they wheeled him into the emergency room for the last time….

My mother and I had so much to talk about, so many memories to share, and yet the emptiness and sorrow we felt were unbearable.

Later that night, while I lay restlessly in Hunter’s bed trying to sleep, I remembered my book. Throwing aside the covers, I went to the closet in search of my backpack, where I found Heaven. I started reading where I had left off that afternoon:

Meanwhile, we on this dying Earth can relax and rejoice for our loved ones who are in the presence of Christ. As the apostle Paul tells us, though we naturally grieve at losing loved ones, we are not “to grieve like the rest of men, who have no hope” (1 Thessalonians 4:13). Our parting is not the end of our relationship, only an interruption. We have not “lost” them, because we know where they are. They are experiencing the joy of Christ’s presence in a place so wonderful that Christ called it Paradise. And one day, we’re told, in a magnificent reunion, they and we “will be with the Lord forever. Therefore encourage each other with these words” (1 Thessalonians 4:17-18).3

A sense of peace and purpose swept over me as I closed the book and laid it on my nightstand. I was overwhelmed with gratitude to God for the encouragement the words had given me. It was a little bit of unexpected grace. At that defining moment, I determined in my heart not “to grieve like the rest of men, who have no hope” (1 Thessalonians 4:13).

Two months later, on October 5, I was surprised by another small touch of grace. I was standing in the kitchen, peering through the sliding glass doors, when I heard a thump. There, lying motionless on our back deck, was a little bird. The poor thing must have flown into the window and injured itself because it was barely breathing. I wasn’t sure what to do, but I had to do something.

I scanned the kitchen for some tissues and slowly opened the door. The frail, fallen creature struggled vainly to move but couldn’t. Instead, it lay there in silent fear. Gently, I nudged the helpless little thing onto the tissues and into my hands. Then, walking slowly over to the patio couch, I sat down, not fully understanding why I was so moved.

The bird was beautiful. I guessed it was a male because its bright, multihued body was striking. Stroking his soft, ruffled feathers from the top of his head to the tip of his tail seemed to soothe him, and he relaxed a bit. It was the least I could do, because it looked as if he was dying. And as I sat there cradling him, I thought about an experience I’d had just two days before Hunter died—a very