My Grandma Juvinall

My Grandma Juvinall was your typical storybook grandma. Cookie jar, quilts, ice cream, etc...

She died in 1987, from injuries sustained in a car wreck. I cried for about six weeks straight. One night I went to the pantry for a snack and found a jar of raspberry jam she had made over the summer, I opened it, but it was spoiled - the seal had popped open. The jar was thrown out, it was the last jar. So I went to bed and cried myself to sleep again. Around midnight I felt a tug on my foot. I thought it was one of my little sisters, they were 9 and 6 years old then, I was 18. The tugging persisted and I kicked what I thought was one of them. I do not wake up a happy camper- EVER! The tugging stopped, but then someone started tickling my side. Oh I did not like that! I turned over expecting to see one of my mischievous little sisters, and instead saw my Grandma.

She looked at me a few moments, then backed away, and floated into the ceiling, then disappeared. I wasn't so sad after that.

A few months later it was Christmas. My dad was playing Santa, handing out presents. As I was opening mine, I noticed one that said "to Teresa," "from Grandma Juvinall" This was especially remarkable, given the fact that she had died five months earlier. That and my grandparents never gave presents, they had over 100 grand kids, we always got a card, and birthday money. The present was a beautifully hand made rug, that she had made for me, and wrapped, and given to my other Grandma to give to me at Christmas, incase she forgot about it. She had even addressed it herself, IN JULY.

A few years later after I had married and had a couple kids I saw her again. We were living in an apartment building that had ghostly animals, but that's another story.

One night I was in bed sleeping when I woke up to hear pots and pans being rattled around in my kitchen. No one lived in the apartment above us, and directly below was a laundry room. Since no one was in my kitchen as my husband I were together - I thought someone had broken into my house. I finally sat up, and when I did I saw her. She had dark curly hair, and was standing in my bedroom door, almost completely blocking it. It was her, when she was young. I'm convinced there was a ghost or a spirit or whatever you want to call it in my kitchen that night intent on doing harm. My husband thought I was nuts, but I know better.

We soon left that apartment to move into this house. One night, our first week here I was putting our baby daughter to bed when I heard her voice. She said "Good NIght" I know this is not the most interesting story you've heard, but man I gotta tell ya, I can sometimes feel her presence. I have been in some really bad situations, the kind where something terrible should happen but doesn't and I always emerge no worse for the wear. Like the time I wrecked my car and and drove through a wrought iron fence, and crashed into a house, and walked away, or the time the brakes on my car failed, and somehow my car stopped, just stopped a few inches from a telephone pole. Luck? I think it's her.