This story takes place in April 2003, when I was only 12 years old. I was in grade 7, just getting used to city transit an hour to and from school, a cell phone (albeit one that only got 5$ a month on it to call home if I was going to be late for whatever reason), and 'real' homework (quotation marks, because I have done two years of college now, and THAT is true homework, my friends).
Let me start by saying that my grandma Doris and I were very close; my sister and I were her favorite grandchildren. We were spoiled rotten, and my mom hated it, but my grandmother didn't care.
In April, my grandmother, my mom's mom, passed away due to her third heart attack. I was at school. She had, unfortunately, been babysitting my young cousin at the time, and she just suddenly fell over, and would not get up. No one knew she was dead until my aunt called to check up on my cousin, and he told her, "Grandma fell asleep on the floor and won't get up." My aunt, knowing what happened, immediately called 911, then my mom. My mom had my stepmom pick me up from the bus stop when I finished school, and I didn't know why.
Around dinner time, my mom came to get me at my dad's house, and told my sister and me that our grandma had passed away.
The medical examiner told us that she had died the instant it struck, giving no warning, no signs. She had been dead before she hit the ground. We were, of course, all expecting that a heart attack would have been the way she'd pass on, but we didn't think it would be so soon, especially since her doctors, not two weeks before, had said that she was doing fantastic. Goes to show you that a heart attack can happen at any time.
Dividing up the things in my grandma's will among all of us (my aunt, my uncle, my mom, and me, as I was included in the will - I got my grandma's opal ring, and a few other pieces of jewelry of hers that I had loved so very much), as well as the things not included, was a somber and heartbreaking task. I had gone to the back of my grandma's trailer (she lived in a trailer park), to her bedroom, to locate the ring that was now mine.
I found it, turned around, and saw my grandpa by the closet, a few feet from me. He died a few years before my grandmother. I stood there, open mouthed, and he disappeared, just as my mom came into the room, looking for me. I did not tell my mom about my grandpa.
Fast-forward a week, to after we had gone through the will and estate. My mom was making my sister and me dinner. We were all quiet, and all obviously sad. I was sitting at the kitchen table, doing homework, my back to my mom. Out of no where, the phone rang, and my mom and I just looked at each other. We were not expecting phone calls. Everyone had called with condolences the first couple days after my grandma had passed.
I got up to answer the ringing phone, and looked at the Caller ID. It was one of those old ones, one of the earlier ones made, with the separate squares for each number. They were all colored black, and the ID for the name was just "1". I handed my mom the phone, and she answered it, and all there was... Was nothing. Not a sound after my mom said, "Hello?" All of a sudden, the phone fizzled out, and abruptly died, leaving us needing a new phone for our house. The kicker? My grandma, who had just passed, had given us the phone. It was only two years old or so.
My mom stared blankly at the phone in her hand, then looked at me and smiled. "Well, I think that was your grandma, calling to say she made it to Heaven." We still have this phone in a box somewhere, and it still refuses to work, as if the internal workings melted - but they didn't. We've taken the phone apart, and by logical reasoning, it SHOULD still work. I think my grandma was trying to put forth so much energy into saying something to my mom, through our phone, that she ended up accidentally destroying it instead.
For about the next couple weeks, we would see our two cats staring off into space, chatting at the air... Typical cat-sees-ghost behavior. We thought they were just talking to my grandmother. They never seemed scared, just chatty. They would bat at the walls when there was nothing there, no lights, no bugs, like they were playing with an invisible one of those feather batons you can buy.
My mom, to this very day, swears that my grandma called us to say hello, with a phone call from beyond the grave.
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Penny ❤