A True "I Don't Believe In Ghosts" -Ghost Story-

I should probably start at the beginning if this story is going to have any chance of making sense. Please forgive me if I do not tell it in the most well put together manner, this will be, for the most part, my first time telling the story. It will definitely be my first time writing it out, and that is almost even more challenging to me mentally than just telling the story to close friends!

Now, I want to stress, I am not some nut, running around with my screws loose , spinning ghost stories. Because this is so hard for even me to believe I have kept it to myself all these years. Although it has always fascinated me. I think about that day often and I always volunteer the tail end of this story when someone else tells a story that sounds equally as insane. That way I don't have to be the only one that is presumed to be...Well..Crazy.

So as to just give you a little bit of information so that this story has background to it and you can understand fully my relationships with those involved and so you get the full experience of the story I'll start at the beginning.

My mother loved my sister and I more than anything in this world. Unfortunately, drugs took over, and she couldn't care for us the way we deserved to be cared for. So, my Grandmother, the almighty savior that she was to her girls, took over, and made sure that my sister and I had everything that we needed and more. She made sure that we were okay, mind, body, and soul. If there was ever a Grandmother that loved her girls, it was mine.

My Grandpa, however, was always my hero. I remember wanting to marry a man just like him some day. The unconditional love he had for my grandma was like nothing else I'd ever seen or would see to this day. He was raised on a farm, so no stranger to hard work, he went to work everyday while my grandma stayed home and made sure us girls were well cared for. My Grandma spent almost all of her spare time helping my sister push forward in her gymnastics career. (Time well spent! She ended up going to college on a full ride scholarship and now works for Google making six figures!) Anyways, with her and my sister busy basically all the time with gymnastic that left me and Grandpa alone in our big house, that is how we liked it. 😁🙌

We read book after book after book. And when we had enough of that we ate pizza, watched movies, and if the weather was nice did some gardening, and a little more reading outside. The times I spent with my Grandpa are some of the fondest memories that I have. He was and is to date the most incredible man I have ever met. This may come as a surprise given how highly I have spoken of him thus far, but Herbie was not my biological grandfather. I have never met my biological grandpa and really never had a desire too and have never felt as though I missed out on anything. He passed away long ago but he was never very nice to my grandma and she is the sweetest woman in the entire world so based off the stories I've heard good ridden and I'm glad that I got the grandfather I got rather than someone like him anyways!

Herbie was significantly younger than my Grandmother, so it came as a huge surprise to all of us when he was diagnosed with prostate cancer. I was extremely young at the time of his first diagnosis so I do not remember much but he ended up getting it the cancer frozen and was, to our pleasure, in remission for many years. It wasn't until my Freshmen year of High school that it struck again, this time with a vengeance.

Much older this time around I was able to grasp more fully what was going on and it was not looking good. About three months after the return of his cancer I heard the word "Hospice" for the first time. Hospice is a service that is offered to people that are terminally ill so that they can pass on peacefully in there home with round the clock care,(should they so request it ) however, when it is that persons time to pass no life sustaining action is taken to try to save them and a DNR has been signed to seal the deal on that. My grandfather was given six months to live. I did not believe it at first, the cancer had gone away the first time, there was no way it wouldn't this time as well. That's what I kept telling myself anyways.

Unfortunately over the next six months I watched my Grandfather whither away in a hospital bed in our living room. He didn't have the energy to read books, he couldn't walk out to the garden anymore, and my heart was breaking with each passing day. The strong man I had always admired, got skinnier, weaker, paler and looked like death itself more and more as the days passed. It was the saddest thing I had ever had to witness, at that point it was. I had no idea what was in store for me in the near future.

The day he passed:

I'll never forget the night it happened. The decline had happened quickly, but this night something was different and he could feel it as well. My Grandfathers breathing became labored. I'll never forget him grabbing my Grandmother's arm and saying,

"CANT YOU SEE I'M DYING? WHY AREN'T YOU HELPING ME? I THOUGHT YOU LOVED ME! YOUR GOING TO JUST LET ME DIE? DELORES PLEASE HELP ME!"

He was pleading for her help and she just broke into tears. Part of him being on hospice included signing DNR (Do Not Resuscitate) paperwork. So even if she did call an ambulance they would do virtually nothing for him, and he would die in the ambulance. Which went against everything the rational him had wanted. He had signed up for hospice so that he could die peacefully in our home with the people he cared about most.

I often wonder how he knew he was going to die. Because he was right, shortly after his pleas for help his words became undiscernible and he took his final breaths.

The next day is when things got weird:

Although his passing was traumatizing, sad and dramatic, it was by all accounts, albeit, normal. I would assume. Although I have not bared witness to many deaths I would assume it would go something like that. However, the next day my grandmother checked her cell phone and to her surprise she had a missed calls from none other than, the love of her life, my grandpa. The call was made about fifteen minutes after his passing, during which time we had all been tied up grieving and consoling my grandma.

She went ballistic on all of us, rightfully so. She demanded to know who had commandeered his cell phone. All of us truthfully denied having it. She quickly ran over to the drawer that his phone had been stored in since he had gotten sick. It was dead. Which made sense, as it had been tucked away in his drawer for quite some time by this point. We charged it up, turned it on and checked the call log.

There was no outgoing call to my grandmothers phone present in the history on his phone.

We were stumped.

My Grandmother grilled us, We grilled each other. There was only four of us there at the time of his passing and every single one of us denied ever touching the phone.

While this whole ordeal was creepy and heartbreaking for my poor Grandma, we finally decided that the phone call was my Grandpa, letting us know he made it safely to the other side, reassuring us he was not scared anymore and he was at peace. Given that his passing had been hectic and he panicked making us all panic, it was so like him to give us a ring and just let us know he had it made it to Heaven and he was okay. We all agreed that her phone had never rang (although we were busy at the time) I don't believe his intention was ever to talk to any of us. But merely for us to see the missed call and take it as we wished.

I know this all sounds crazy, but I promise it happened exactly as described. Truthfully, from a religious standpoint, I don't even really believe in ghosts and so forth, I believe in reincarnation. But I know this story happened exactly as I have written. With that being said, I don't know what to believe. But for those of you that may have just lost a loved one recently, make sure you look for those signs. Anything, even the smallest thing might be a sign from your beloved letting you know they made it and they are okay.