I’ve associated cardinals with my paternal grandparents for as long as I can remember. The backyard of their small but charming home in Hazlet, New Jersey, was where I had my first encounters with wild animals: Squirrels would come right up to take peanuts from my hand, and it was the only place I often saw those bright red birds.
In 2020, as everyone collectively mourned the state of the world, my family and I had been reeling from a succession of losses: my grandfather in late 2018, our golden retriever in summer 2019, my grandmother just a few months after the world shut down.
That December, I dreaded preparing to sell the house where I’d spent every single Christmas of my life. As we sorted through 54 years’ worth of holiday decorations, tchotchkes and old family photo albums, I avoided looking into the den. That cozy back room was where my grandparents had sat in their recliners every day to watch Judge Judy and Wheel of Fortune, the TV blasting at a deafening decibel-level until someone finally convinced my stubborn grandpa to wear Bluetooth headphones since he’d refused to get hearing aids.
The quiet that day was eerie—unnatural in a house that had always been so loud throughout my childhood. Their presence hung heavy in the air with Nanny’s stale cigarette smoke.
When I carried a bag of trash through the kitchen, I saw my sister staring out into the backyard. I asked if she was OK and she just pointed wordlessly, tears filling her eyes. A plump gray squirrel was sitting on the arm of a patio chair, little paws clutched together, eyes darting back and forth. A couple others, along with a few birds, were scouring the grass where the upside-down trash can lid full of seed used to sit.
We weren’t the only ones feeling the loss, I realized with a pang.
Later that day, more boxes were marked “Goodwill,” more trash bags hauled to the curb. I crept quietly into my grandparents’ bedroom and sat down at Nanny’s vanity, switching on the lighted mirror I remembered playing with as a kid. I’d turn the little dial, changing the light from bright white to soft amber, as she set foam curlers in her hair.
Now, I pulled plastic fine-tooth combs and stray Q-tips from the dusty drawers, feeling briefly overwhelmed with the sheer amount of stuff people leave behind when they die. Bobby pins and cracked eyeshadow palettes, a handful of hair ties, flimsy paper nail files. All of it now garbage. Nanny would never set curlers in her hair again or draw on her eyebrows or spritz some of her musky perfume. As I thought this, my hand closed around the bottle in the bottom drawer. One whiff and she could’ve been sitting right next to me. I fought back tears, tucked the bottle into my back pocket and carried out yet another trash bag.
The squirrel was still waiting patiently for his midday snack—my sister drove to the store and came back with a bag of salted peanuts, sniffling as she stood over the kitchen sink, carefully washing the salt off each one so they’d be safe for the animals to eat.
The next morning, we sat around the kitchen table one last time. There was nothing special about that slab of wood. There was everything special about it. The previous year, when we couldn’t have known it would be our last Christmas there, Nanny had paused on her way back to her recliner.
“Everybody loves my kitchen,” she’d observed, smiling. She’s frozen there in time for me, gazing at us all laughing around the table that would now be left behind for new owners, for a new family’s memories.
I was the last one out of the house, and I paused with my hand on the knob. It felt like closing the door to my childhood. No more of Nanny's delicious home-cooked meals. No more games around the “kids’ table” with my sister and cousins, laughing until we couldn’t breathe. I took one last look before pulling the door firmly shut, letting my gaze travel from the empty den to the kitchen table, where we’d left behind the rest of the hand-washed nuts and a note that read simply, “Please feed the squirrels.”
Please DON'T feed the squirrels
Rather than feeding backyard wildlife, which can compromise their survival skills (evidenced by the squirrels who had clearly become dependent on my grandparents), our wildlife experts recommend creating a humane backyard with native plants, bushes and trees that provide natural sources of food like nuts, seeds and berries.
Comforting connections
While I’ve never been a particularly spiritual person, I’m a sucker for symbolism. Some believe cardinals are passed loved ones coming back to visit, and seeing one now brings me a small moment of peace—a reminder to remember. I spoke with some of our staffers about how animals prompt them to remember their loved ones.
Bees
Remind Haley Stewart, senior program manager of public policy in our Wildlife Protection department, of her friend, Leigh Young.
“We called her Leigh Bee,” says Stewart. “That was her nickname on all of her social media channels. I’d known her since I was 13 years old; she was one of my best friends in my girl group. It was your Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants kind of group; there were five of us and we were all best friends. We all loved each other.”
Young lived in Los Angeles and was struggling with addiction during the COVID-19 pandemic.
“She was a bartender, and we saw this epidemic in the restaurant industry of people not having a job, not having anything to do, not knowing where they were going to get their next paycheck, how they were going to afford rent,” says Stewart. “And I think that got to a lot of people, especially those with existing drug abuse issues.”
Young overdosed in April 2021 at 33 years old. “It just got a hold of her. It was really devastating,” Stewart says. “She was an amazing woman. She did burlesque, she did yoga, she was a Cicerone, which is like a beer sommelier. She was such a cool, wonderful person with the best spirit.”
The day after Stewart found out, she was sitting in her backyard when a bumblebee landed on the chair next to her. “I started talking to it, ‘Leigh, you’re here!’ Now I do whatever I can to protect my yard and protect our bees. I don’t think people truly recognize the benefits that bees provide; they’re so essential to our ecosystems.”
Stewart also honors her friend by embracing life to its fullest and never ceasing to explore. “Leigh was such an adventurous soul,” she says. “Whatever she wanted to do, that’s what she did. And she was funny. She was this random, weird person who I adored.”
Butterflies
Remind Smrithi Prabhu, senior philanthropy officer, of her father, Trivikram Chandreshekhar Prabhu.
Prabhu saw a monarch butterfly pass through her yard at the moment she heard her father had died in 2022.
“I’m really, really connected and deeply attached to both my parents,” she says. “This has always been my biggest fear—getting that call letting me know one of them was gone.”
Returning home to India helped ground Prabhu, as she found comfort in the Hindu rituals. “It made me fall in love with India again in so many ways.” They scattered her father’s ashes in the Ganges River, when another monarch appeared in front of her.
“It just was so unbelievably powerful because monarchs are a sign of transformation. And ever since then, he has shown up for me as a monarch. Every time I’ve felt like I’ve needed him, one shows up,” Prabhu says. “I’m spiritual anyway, but this has sort of just deepened that feeling that he’s with me and he’s letting me know everything’s going to be OK. So, the monarch will always be a symbol or a sign from Dad that he’s with us.”
Prabhu welcomes butterfly gifts, as everyone has come to know and understand what they symbolize for her.
“My dad was just an incredible human being,” she says. “He had this zest for life that was really infectious. He was really young at heart. He never got upset. He never got in a bad mood, no matter how hard things were. One thing I got from him was just to enjoy life and appreciate life. What’s been impactful is that everyone who remembers him has a story. Everyone remembers him with joy and with love and that’s what you want, you know? Any opportunity I have, I talk about Dad, and I celebrate him.”
Deer
Remind Nevie Brooks, senior specialist of sustainer marketing, of her paternal grandfather, R. Michael Brooks.
Mike Brooks was a gunnery sergeant in the Marines who served in Korea and Viet Nam, receiving three purple hearts. After retiring from the CIA (a detail he kept hidden until his death in October 2020—“We didn't know this until his funeral! He literally wrote his own obituary...and he just drops this bomb,” laughs Nevie), he settled in Fredericksburg, Virginia, where he quickly grew fond of his little backyard crew of a doe and her fawns.
“Just picture this grizzled—covered in tattoos and scars—intimidating man, even at 85, and he had names for all of his little woodland creatures,” Nevie says. “He was like if Snow White were a combat veteran with a sailor's mouth. He took a lot of delight in them and loved to watch their interactions with each other.”
When Brooks got wind of a neighbor who had threatened to shoot the deer, believing them to be a nuisance, rumor has it the entire neighborhood heard his reaction, a story Nevie says she’ll always remember.
“I know that my grandpa was a dangerous man when he needed to be, but he picked his fights accordingly. He taught me that’s what makes a good man,” says Brooks. “Picking on the guy who's a foot taller than you with a firearm because he's gonna shoot a deer. I'm so proud to be his granddaughter because of that. He taught me to wield whatever power you do have to lift up and protect those who don't.”
Bald eagles
Remind Rachel Collins, senior director of prospect development, of her husband, Robert “Bob” Lyon.
Collins felt like she needed a sign from her husband after he succumbed to metastatic cancer in December 2022. Bald eagles were “oddly sort of a throughline in our relationship,” she says.
One of their first photographs together was taken in front of what would eventually become their home, right after a bald eagle had been spotted flying overhead; the first time they visited Lyon’s parents in Michigan, an eagle flew in front of their car; during their last trip to Lake Huron, they camped adjacent to an eagle nest where the majestic birds would fly overhead every morning.
“Bob was always so delighted to see them. I don’t know that I had ever seen an eagle in person prior to meeting him,” says Collins. “I do ask him to send them to me now, and they come in very curious ways—not always as actual living bald eagles, sometimes I’ll see an eagle statue or a truck decal. Little things.”
While these little moments bring her comfort, Collins knows the grief will be with her forever. “You know, there was something I read not long after Bob died that said, ‘Grief is all the love we have left for someone with nowhere to go.’ We know that the people in our lives leave indelible marks on us.”
“One of my favorite things about him was that he just had a really deep, bottomless love and respect for all living things, especially the planet,” she adds. “And he helped me to deepen that. I definitely carry that with me.”
Frogs
Remind Amanda LoCoco, senior research analyst in our Companion Animals department, of her paternal grandmother, Constance “Connie” Gossom.
“We still do not know, to this day, how this started. She was an avid gardener, but she didn't necessarily love frogs,” says Amanda Lococo of her grandmother. Yet, “people started giving her little frog figurines and she just went with it. ...She probably had 300 figurines of frogs by the end. It got so overwhelming that she had to set up a three-tiered display.”
When LoCoco moved into her most recent house with her family, the previous owners left a tiny frog figurine under the mailbox in the garden. “I said to Nana, ‘I've bought this house and there's a frog there, it must have been meant to be!’”
Gossom succumbed to cancer in August 2021, just a few months before LoCoco’s twin daughters were born.
“They are coincidentally obsessed with frogs. We never pushed it on them, but they cannot get enough of them,” says LoCoco. “That little figurine that used to be under my mailbox outside now lives on my kitchen sink window and the girls freak out about it all the time. I’ve gotten them frog shirts, their teacher gave them a little frog Beanie Baby and one of my daughters carries it around with her to the park and she shows people, 'This is Froggy, my friend.’”
Tell us your story
Does an animal remind you of a lost loved one? Share your story by writing to us at allanimals@humanesociety.org.
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