Growing up we lived in the country on a portion of a very large farm where my parents rented just the outbuildings and home from a lady who had grown up there as a child. Around the age of five, after my parents had rented that home for around ten years, we moved into town and divided up the family land so we could live next to my paternal grandmother as she aged. My grandfather had died back in 1991 and so she’d been living alone with us visiting almost daily for around a year and a half before we moved. We’d often bring her meals, eat with her, or just come to visit.
Once we moved in town, the fence had gates in it so we could come and go into grandma’s yard as we pleased which gave us around two acres of land total to play on since the yards were large. There were plenty of out buildings to explore, trees to climb, and I usually found some way to get myself into trouble. I tried to have her show me how to crochet once and my childish temper, small amount of patience as a child mixed with a similar short fuse due to old age did not mix well. In the end, we both gave up trying and it was probably the one time I was ever extremely difficult with my grandmother to my knowledge.
I’d usually try to grab the mail for both of our mailboxes so grandma didn’t have to cross the street since she was much slower than I was at the time, I mean, she wasn’t a spring chicken in those days. However, that didn’t stop her from joining us on car rides to other towns which often included a stop at something locally-owned, a picnic, and a few family stories along the way. The stories could be quite lengthy since our rides were sometimes an hour or more each way.
As the years went on, my grandmother’s health declined and so she had to go to a nursing home. We still visited, but after a couple of years, she passed away. I remember the almost week of staying in the hospital most nights in the waiting rooms on the uncomfortable chairs trying to sleep. She was in a coma, so my sister and I roamed the halls, watched television, visited the chapel because we thought it was cool with the mini stapled bibles you could take a copy of, and grabbed frozen yogurt from the cafeteria. We also did the occasional check-in with mom and dad who sometimes were in her room, or we found them in the waiting area, or peeped I to grandma’s room to see if she had woken up. The rest of the time one of our parents would take us home to try to get some sleep there, send us to school, or so my father could go to work.
Around a week into all of this, maybe a bit more, my grandmother wakes up in the evening. We all go to see her and she tells us that she feels great with no pain and to go home to get some rest, she’ll be just fine. My parents insist on staying, and she insisted that we go, so after a little back-and-forth they give in and we go home. Once home we pass out for the night after a quick supper due to the our emotionally drained state in a confused tangle of very light relief and also worry.
The next morning we awaken to find a message on the answering machine telling us to call the hospital. Once we made the call, the nurse that answered at the nurses station told us that grandma had passed away early that morning while we were all still sound asleep. This was a mere eight days before my twelfth birthday. My father later remarked that he knew that grandma somehow knew that she was “going to go” and that she didn’t want us there for it. My sister still has a teddy bear that we’d bought for grandma while she was in the hospital to this day.
The next day we went back to school, I was still having a very hard time coping and was just in a kind of dazed state. Everyone was very understanding, but it had definitely affected me. That night, or a couple of nights later I went to bed and had a dream that I firmly believe is much more than a dream, it was a message.
In this dream, I went next door to my grandmother’s house and rang the back doorbell, which never had a doorbell in real life. The house in real life had four doors, and only two of them had doorbells, the front door that faced the street, and the side door that faced the driveway. However, for some reason in this dream a door that had never had a doorbell, had one. Upon ringing this doorbell in a dream where I was aware that grandma had died and the house was empty, I’m standing there with my little sister beside me, and all of a sudden, the door opens. Upon the door opening, my grandmother appears, just as she would have any other time that I would have seen her while she was at home, and out pops my slight Autistic-tendency to point out a fact. I quickly exclaim “You’re supposed to be dead!” To which she responds, “No, I’m okay.” As she says this, she smiles a bit, and I just stand there for a few seconds trying to process everything. As I do, I notice a feeling of calm come over me and the next thing I remember, my mother is shaking me awake to get me up for school.
I told my mother about the experience and her response alluded to her thinking that grandma came to tell me she was alright to try to console me. Well, it must have worked because after that point I was fine. At least until the funeral.
Preparing for the funeral included finalizing some paperwork, and choosing the casket, and a few other things since it was all paid ahead of time. While our parents finalized plans, my sister and I explored the funeral home. There was a large staircase that went to the basement that was never blocked off, but that the funeral attendant always ushered children away from. We ventured on down since it was unguarded and found a room full of full-sized caskets on display, with a few smaller ones that were just the ends of a casket as demos of finishes. As we are carefully looking at each of them, we are talking about their characteristics. As we get toward the back of this curtain-lined room, we hear a sound that can only be described as a mechanical suck then push sound. We pull back the curtain and find a dimly-lit room with a sink and cabinets against one wall, a medical looking contraption, and a metal table with a body lying on it mostly covered with a sheet. It was our grandmother. We had stumbled upon the mortuary and they were in the process of embalming our grandmother. We only leered I to the room for a what is probably a minute without entering, but I will never forget it. It didn’t frighten me, but it definitely left some kind of mental mark.
As the funeral approached, I knew that mom and dad didn’t have the money to buy me a new suit, and something told me to wear white anyway. I told my parents I wanted to wear white and at first they were against it, but I insisted. Upon arriving at the funeral home for the first night of visitation, the older generation kept remarking about how terrible it was that I was wearing white. Many of them confronted my parents and quite a few seemed completely disgusted by it. A person finally asked me why I was wearing white and I responded with a simple “because grandma’s an angel”, which when others overheard this seemed to stop the concerns entirely. At the visitations I was just fine, but at the funeral I completely lost it and cried the entire time.
At the end of the funeral service inside, we were all ushered out into the cold and into the towncars that awaited the immediate family. We were whisked away to my family’s traditional place of eternal rest for the majority of mediate family for the last century. Once at the grave site, it was cold, wet, and there was still a good few inches of slush on the ground from snow and sleet. We all sat under the green tent with a big velvet blanket, faux fur muffs for the women’s hands, and every so often between wind gusts you could just barely smell the carnations in the casket spread. The preacher said his sermon, we each grabbed a flower, and we all said goodbye as we put a handful of dirt into the cold hole in the ground beside where my grandfather had lain for the prior seven years waiting for her to join him.
To this day, I firmly believe that my grandmother is one of the ancestors that guide and protect me. I’ve had many things in life that should have killed me but I somehow came out of the ordeal completely unscathed. So that is why I think that my haunted lineage lets me know that death doesn’t mean goodbye.