text: Every family has that one person, who after they’re gone, remains ethereal. Someone unanimously revered, who other members go to for advice, reassurance, love. Poppy demanded your respect with kind eyes and a calm tone. He helped the younger grandchildren mold cookie dough balls and taught me how to feed the puppies in the barn, just learning how to wobble through the hay. He lifted me up, securely placing me on his horse, reassuring me I was fine, safe, looked after. I loved dogs and horses because he did. I love the smell of hay because of the time spent at the farm alongside him. He sat at the head of the able, chose who was to open the 1st present at Christmas, corrected the kids behavior with a stern look and few words. He snored loudly, waking up my Nana and cousins. We woke laughing amongst ourselves at the sheer loudness of it but never daring to laugh too loudly and wake him up. I was there when he died. Heart problems took their final toll. I sat on the floor in the living room as they wheeled his body out of the door on a stretcher. My brother remembers our mother screaming at the top of her lungs. My memories have no sound, no details, I only remember how far away the stretcher seemed from my body on the floor. “Poppy send us a sign.” That was the mantra my mom chanted when she woke up in the morning, at grace before dinner, before bed as she prayed. She needed to know her father was still there somewhere. A feeling I understand as an adult now without her. “He’s in heaven, looking down on us” they told me. I never doubted he was in heaven, I prayed and asked him if I was going to see him again someday. “Poppy send me a sign” Mom begged. Asked. Whispered. Cried. And he did. A picture, laid out on the kitchen table, of Poppy, Nana, and I had been chosen for the wake. I picked it up, looked it over and walked away. Mom came rushing into the room in tears, asking if I had done something to the picture. Did I spill water on it? Place it on the heater? Tear it? Light a match near it? I thought I was in trouble. I had picked it up to look at it, that’s all. She handed it back to me, and over my Poppy’s head, was a small, yellow halo. Poppy sent us a sign, from heaven, because Mom asked him to. For 22 years that picture has been framed and hanging in my Nana’s house. It is the reason I knew there was an afterlife, heaven, something. We had a miracle, all of our own. “You know why Nana got a nose job don’t you?” My brother asked me off hand after discussing the various plastic surgeries our family has gone through. “Yeah, the family nose. You’re lucky that gene missed you.” “No...that’s not why. I can’t believe you dont know this.” My Nana and Poppy were married when she was 15 and he was too many years older. Poppy was a police officer, and offered my Nana, who had no family of her own, security. She refused to tell me about her wedding until I was an adult, for fear I would see it as a sign it was okay to marry young myself. Or in fear I would judge her. They remained married until the day he died, moved around the East coast, fixing up old houses and flipping them. Or so I thought. Nana cheated, somewhere along the way, and Poppy found out. He beat her so badly, she had to undergo surgery on her face to repair the damage he had done to her nose. He was a police captain, there were no repercussions. They moved to avoid scandal. The secret was kept for years. The saint who sent me a sign wasn’t a saint. Or was he? Saint Augustine, whose theology is one of the main pillars of the Christian Church, had 2 mistresses and abandoned one of his illegitimate sons. Saint Juniper Serra abused the Native people he introduced to Catholicism, forcing them to live in terrible conditions, beating anyone who tried to escape. That isn’t even the tip of the iceberg when it comes to problematic saints. Saints were greedy, abusive, adulterers- but inevitably “chosen” by God. Or a corrupt pope. Or a little of both. But here I am in the 21st century, trying to reconcile the man who tenderly lifted me up on the kitchen counter so I could sneak sweets with the cop who savagely beat his wife because she strayed. What of the miracle? Was it a fluke? Some weird natural event? Chemical change? Explainable through science if an answer was sought out? That sign told me my Poppy was there. And it told me, after my mom died, that she was there somewhere too. It gave me hope, faith, a sense that after we die, we aren’t nothing. We aren’t nowhere. Now I’m not so sure. Can Poppy remain a problematic saint, capable of great miracles despite grave sins? Or is he just a person who did terrible things amongst the good things. I have this picture- tangible, unexplainable, haunting. A sign from an angel, or the devil, or something in between. I go on seeking an answer. Or evidence. Or an explanation. Or selfishly for the 2nd time in a lifetime, a sign.