In the quiet corners of our lives, where there once was laughter but now only shadow, I found myself navigating a world that was at once both intimately familiar and unsettlingly foreign. It was in these shadowed corners that I found myself on a journey of grief, reflection, and, ultimately, discovery.
For the last three years of her remarkable life, my great grandmother, lived with me, my husband, and my son. I had always teasingly (though seriously) insisted that she would live with me, a promise made in the innocence of youth and the steadfast bond of family. When she finally agreed, it was a joyous victory.
As the days rolled into years, the subtle changes in her began to weave their story—a story I was unprepared to read. It's the paradox of daily life; the changes are imperceptible… until they're all you can see. Watching her essence slowly dim, a realization dawned upon me with the weight of inevitability: our time together was drawing to a close.
Her passing, though not unexpected, revealed the naiveté of my belief that foresight could armor me against the impact of loss. In the aftermath, I considered myself composed, a fortress of resilience amidst the storm of grief. Yet, as summer's warmth spread over the world, my internal landscape remained shrouded in fog. A family vacation to the ocean offered fleeting moments of clarity, captured in photographs that punctuated my otherwise hazy memories of that time.
The future became a concept too vast to contemplate, leaving me adrift in a sea of present moments, each one a struggle to navigate. It was only when I confronted the depth of my unraveling that I began to understand the unique finality of this loss.
Since childhood, I had been told many ghostly tales of my family, including the story of my grandfather's spectral visitation after his passing—a story that my great grandmother recounted with unshakeable conviction. She swore repeatedly over the years how after her husband’s funeral, he walked into the bedroom where she was crying, and placed a hand on her shoulder. She said she looked at him, and he said “everything is going to be all right.”
Despite my own skepticism, her belief had sown a seed of hope within me, a hope that her passing might offer a sign, a whisper from beyond to soothe the ache of her absence. As time passed, and no such sign materialized, I grappled with the realization that perhaps this was the finality I feared—not just the end of her earthly journey, but this silence an answer I had unconsciously sought.
I had it in my mind, that if ever I were to receive a confirmation of the afterlife, it would surely be born from one of the strongest connections I’ve ever had. So strong was my belief in my in her, I knew that if my grandmother couldn’t find a way to comfort me from beyond, then surely it’s because there’s nothing beyond.
Thus I slid into my existential dread era…