On June 27 2004, a beautiful Sunday morning, our lives changed forever. That is when we received the most heartbreaking and devastating news any parent could ever receive, that one of our children had died. Our son Billy had been killed instantly while riding his ATV (all terrain vehicle) the previous night, hitting a tree.

For months, life consisted of just trying to survive each agonizing day. Numbed by grief and depression, I realized I had to find a way to connect with our son Billy in heaven. I didn't know if this was possible but I had been encouraged to try by some caring people with similar experiences. I prayed, read books and surfed the internet about the different ways that our loved ones can and do give us signs that they are still close by. I learned that one of those ways are through signs that show up in everyday photographs.

About ten months after Billy crossed over to heaven, I began to take pictures at random to see if Billy would give us a sign in the images that he is near to us. To my great joy, we did receive signs from Billy through our photographs -- and many of them.

My favorite signs from Billy are heart-shaped images of the moon, street lights and Christmas-tree lights. One of the most memorable is an October 21, 2005 photo that contains an image of the moon. When I first looked at this photo, I didn't notice that the moon wasn't round. Only later when I was going over some of my photographs to get a better look did I discover that the moon was distinctly heart shaped. I zoomed in the shot and, sure enough, it was a perfect and beautiful heart shape. Amazing.

I then began going over all of the photos that we had taken over the past few months to see if there were any other heart-shaped images. To my greatest joy, there were many of them. The heart-shaped images are our favorite signs from Billy, because the heart represents love and these images say to us that Billy is sending us his love from heaven.

My wife and I have been collecting these and other types of signs from Billy since 2005 and thank God for these assurances that Billy while is no longer of this world, he is very near to us.

Guy D.

Biddeford, ME