A Grandparents Love

Ok...I'm not saying I believe this experience to be an actual contact with the paranormal, but it was rather strange and there were several strange occurrences that were not explainable. It might help if I take you to the beginning...

In June of 1995, freshly graduated from high school, I made a phone call down to Florida to thank my grandmother for the watch she had sent up for my graduation present. Unfortunately, she wasn't home, so I decided to leave a message. Later that night at dinner my mom told me that she was staying with some friends since her arthritis had gotten so bad that she couldn't take care of herself anymore. The next day I contacted her at her friends, Dee & Pats. They brought me up to date, since I hadn't talked to my grandmother in a couple of months, about what was going on. Apparently my grandmother was now bedridden. She had been diagnosed 15 years ago with severe rheumatoid arthritis. Over the past few months she had been in and out of the hospital and was now to the point where most of her joints were fused together and she couldn't even roll over in bed by herself. When I spoke with Dee & Pat they told me that my mom had contacted them and providing there was a way to get her up here, my mom would be more than happy to take her in and help her out. Even though she was my father's mother and my parents had been divorced for 10 years, my mother and grandmother still had a strong bond, that was much unlike what she had with my new stepmother. My grandmother confided that she would be much more comfortable in our home than in her sons.

After much talk and consideration, it was decided that I would go to Florida to help prepare my grandmother for a long flight up here. We decided on a Wednesday night, bought the tickets on Thursday, and I left for Florida on Friday. I will never forget her face when she first saw me! Oh boy did it light up! Anyway, Dee & Pat arrived at the airport to pick me up and took me back to their place. We took my grandma back to her house and carried her inside. Pat placed her in her bedroom on her bed as Dee and I grabbed my things from the car and came back in. That is when it all started happening. The house my grandmother lived in was the house that my grandpa, who was quite a jokester, and she had bought when he retired from Ford back in 1980 and decided to migrate from Michigan to Florida. They had the house built in a new retirement community for them and were rather excited about living there. Unfortunately, in 1983, my grandfather passed away from a heart attack while sitting in their Florida room in his favorite lazy boy chair. As I walked past the bedroom that held all of my grandfather's items that my grandmother couldn't stand to depart with, a small 3-way touch lamp in the room started flickering from off to high faster than I have ever seen any light blink before. It threw me off a bit, but I really didn't think too much of it. I called for Dee and told her what happened. My grandmother hearing this told me not to worry about it she said it happened quite frequently. All the more reason to shrug it off, for all I knew it could have been a short in the wiring somewhere.

For the next couple of nights, while waiting for her hospital bed to arrive and be assembled in the Florida room, I camped out on my grandmother's bedroom floor. The plan was for me to sleep in the room that held my grandfather's items, but after the lamp episode and the distinct feeling that someone was watching me, I wasn't going back in that room, not to sleep anyway!

Eventually my grandmother's hospital bed arrived and was assembled in the Florida room and I moved my bed from the floor in her bedroom to the couch next to her bed. The couch that I slept on was directly across from the lazy boy that my grandfather passed away in. It was quite eerie. I always felt as though someone was watching over me, not really in a harmful way, just kind of helping me cope with the stress of caring for an elderly woman who could no longer do anything for herself. There were other things that happened there too. The VCR, in the middle of a tape that we would be viewing would stop completely, rewind and turn itself off. I now have this VCR and have not experienced that problem in the past 3 years. It only happened in that house in those 6 weeks I was there, no matter what outlet it was plugged into or what room it was in. Most of the happenings were easy to cope with but very hard to explain. Lights would come on by themselves, mostly in my grandfather's room. I know my grandmother didn't do it, she couldn't get out of her bed, much less walk to the back of the house to turn on a light. When I would get up in the morning, after making sure the lights were all shut off, I would always find the touch lamp beside the bed in my grandfather's room on. And each night, I would turn that light off. Curtains that were closed were opened or vice versa.

Eventually we made the plane ride back up to Michigan in early August, but unfortunately, my grandmother slipped into a coma that night. To me, that was the end. I already knew she was gone. But she was held on life support for another week while they drew up the legal papers from Florida proving that being on life support was not what she wanted. On August 9, 1995 the machines were shut off. I still feel guilty, as I couldn't stand to be there to watch. Instead I went out for a nice long walk and when I returned I turned on my radio in my bedroom. The song that was playing really shocked me! It was You Are Not Alone by Michael Jackson. I had never heard this song before and it was in the chorus where he started singing You are not alone, I am here with you, though we're far apart, you're always in my heart. I believe it was my grandmother sending me a small message to say that everything will be ok and not to worry.