Listening for His Voice – Grief, Signs, and Trusting Love

This post is a reflection that follows The Day My Grief Answered Back—a continuation of what it means to listen, trust, and recognize connection after loss.

I keep thinking about that morning.

The morning I was so overwhelmed, so broken, that everything inside me felt like it was collapsing under its own weight. And in the middle of that moment—when I didn’t feel strong enough to keep holding myself together—I heard something. Or maybe someone.

It felt like a response to the thoughts already running through my head. Not imagined in the way daydreams are imagined. Not something I forced or created. It came uninvited, unexpected, and unmistakably real.

I’m convinced it was Alex.

I believe he found a way to get through to me when I needed him the most. Not because I asked, but because I couldn’t. And whatever that moment was—whatever name you want to give it—it felt like connection. Like reassurance. Like love finding a way—refusing to be quiet.

Since then, I think about that morning often.

I find myself hoping it will happen again. Hoping I’ll get another chance to “talk” to him the way I did then. And in truth, I do talk to him every day. I talk to him in my thoughts, in quiet moments, in the spaces between everything else. I tell him what I’m feeling. I tell him what I miss. I tell him I love him.

And I still see the signs he sends—just in different ways.

Like the cardinals that show up out of nowhere.
Always at the strangest, most perfectly timed moments.
Often when I’m thinking about him, or when my heart feels especially heavy.

I’ll catch sight of one perched nearby, bright and impossible to ignore, and for a moment everything else fades. It feels less like coincidence and more like a gentle nudge. A reminder. A quiet, I’m still here.

Those moments don’t come with words, but they come with comfort.

Still, I’ve noticed something else.

I’m listening.

Not casually—actively. Intentionally.
The way you listen when you think someone is calling your name from another room in the house. The way you pause, hold your breath, and wait to see if the sound comes again.

I listen for a response.

I don’t hear anything.

And that absence brings its own questions. Am I trying too hard? Am I forcing something that can’t be summoned on demand? Am I chasing a moment that was never meant to be repeated?

Maybe that connection happened because I didn’t expect it.
Maybe it came because I was empty enough to receive it.
Maybe it arrived exactly when it needed to—and only then.

Maybe now, instead of listening for his voice, I need to trust his presence.

Trust that he’ll reach me in the ways he knows how.
Trust that signs don’t always sound like words.
Trust that silence doesn’t mean absence.

I don’t have answers. Only thoughts that keep returning, quietly, patiently—just like grief itself.

So I’ll keep talking to him.
I’ll keep noticing the signs.
And I’ll keep listening—not with expectation, but with trust.

Believing that love knows when to speak.