Since my grandmother passed away, my reality has been reshaped, showing me those we lose are never lost. I used to believe that death was finite, and once someone was declared dead, that was it; nothing more after that.
Yet, I've experienced a moment telling me there is more life after death.
On a brief phone call with my aunt Binki she had asked if I had come into contact with my grandma after her funeral. It took me a couple of seconds to answer because it felt like she had read my mind. I was also hesitant to tell her because I know what I experienced is rare.
Here's what happened:
A few Sundays ago when I was sitting in a pew at church, I swore I smelled my grandmother pass by me while I was waiting for the sermon to start. Rather than being in shock and dismissing the moment as impossible, it brought me a sense of relief.
For the past couple of days, I had been stressing out about the possibility of my memories with my grandmother fading away as I get older. This fear comes from the memories of my grandfather fading away as the years have gone by.
So when I smelled my grandmother at church, I knew that she wasn't going anywhere and would always be with me.
It makes sense to me that my grandmother would be with me at that exact moment because she was the whole reason I was at the University United Methodist Church.
As she grew sicker, my grandma would constantly ask me to the point of nagging if I had been to church. I would tell her apart from when I went with her as a child, I had not been. Being who my grandmother was (a child of God), she would respond with a slight shake of her head in disapproval which always made me chuckle.
There was another instance when I was younger when I felt my grandpa tuck my hair behind my ear even though it had been years since his passing. Like my grandmother, he died of cancer and it's still one of the most devastating memories in my life.
Being a person who used to avoid church and religion until recently, I can see how easily it could be to dismiss these small moments in my life as nothing more than my imagination playing tricks on me.
Nevertheless, because of how much my grandparents and my aunt Bobby's deaths have effected me, I've learned not to overlook the small things and reconsider a lot of things as possible rather than not.