Family Spirits

My grandfather was a wonderful man, a tile setter by trade. He taught me how to set tile and paint. He also taught me how to drive and other life lessons as well. He had a heart attack and needed a pace maker when my daughter was a toddler. When my oldest son was just over 10 months old he had another heart attack which put him in the hospital for the rest of his life. My brother and younger sister were visiting at the same time as I was. Both of them had to leave the room for a few minutes. He became very restless and as I was going to hit the call button for a nurse he grabbed my hand as if it was a life line. He made me promise I would take care of my grandmother which I readily agreed to do. He died a few days later.

The day of the funeral I went to my grandparents house my grandmother walked up to me and sobbed and asked me what she was going to do. I told her everything would be okay because grandpa made me promise I would take care of her. I would call her at least once a week and visit at least once a month. Whenever she needed something fixed my husband did it. A few weeks after he died I started to have dreams of him having conversations with me but he would just walk away. These dreams would always happen right before I had to wake up for the day.

One morning I had the same dream but it ended differently. This time instead of just walking away he walked up to me and gave me a hug. I woke up and I was crying, my husband asked why I was crying. I told him about grandpas hug and he just held me and we both cried for a few minutes. Then my husband asked if I had perfume on. I told him no but he insisted he smelled something familiar on me. He went into the bedroom to get dressed and came out quickly and said he could smell the same thing in our room only a little stronger. I asked him if the room and I smelled like Old Spice, my grandfathers cologne, he got pale and said yes, I told him that grandpa must have really been in the room.

I got pregnant a few months after his death so sometimes I was scattered. If I didn't call grandma by Thursday I would notice that things I put down weren't where I put them. I would say okay grandpa I got your message I'll call grandma thank you. The same thing would happen if I didn't visit by the third week of the month.

When my husband was putting in a tile top counter he came into a problem and couldn't make the tile fit properly on the corner and was going to put it in diagonally which would have made the counter top look horrible. So my husband told me to come up with a solution. I said grandpa talk to me and after a minute or two I came up with the solution of filing down some tile down that wouldn't be noticeable and it worked.

One night close to the Belmont Stakes I had a dream and he told me to bet on the number 4 horse. I did so and won several hundred dollars, I would have won more but my husband insisted I play win place and show on the same horse.

My father in-law died just under two years later. So now I had a mother in-law to take care of also on top of 3 kids 6 and under. My father in-law loved me but he was a joker and we would banter back and forth while he was alive.

Activity from my grandpa had quieted down but my father in-law started to let me know he was around. Keys would be off their hook and we would find them on the counter. Or I would put something down on the counter and two minutes later it was gone. I would say okay dad put it back and I would find the items close to where they were placed. My keys would be on the wrong hook because he had to play a joke on me.