Grandfather Dream

My grandpa passed away about 10 years ago.

His name was Charles or Chuck as most of us liked to call him. He was loving, hilarious, sarcastic and the best grandpa I could have asked for. He was the type of person you wish your friends and children would have known. He is still talked about till this day because of the love and smirk he brought to those around him.

He was a pilot in WWII and had seen a lot of stuff most of us will hopefully never know. He was one of the pilots who flew the General over Nagasaki to view the horrific devastation. I never got the chance to ask him how he truly felt about that and I wish I did. I think most times people just go on pretending things are fine with them but they are truly, deeply bothered by something.

My grandpa had a stroke about 10 years ago and subsequently went into hospice following that. There were so many “strange coincidences” that occurred during this time. One of those was a dream I had of my grandpa. I don’t normally dream very vividly, at least since I was a child, but this one was different. It was one of those handful of dreams that has stuck with me all of this time and I don’t know what to make of what happened still.

It was a couple of nights after he had passed. At the time I had this pink, silver plated heart shaped necklace I had been wearing for a while. I had a dream of him. My grandpa was there and he was familiar to me. He was standing in the moonlight in a graveyard and asked me to give him my heart necklace. The moon was really big and loud that night…so bright. I feel like there was a conversation in the dream of why and he said “it would protect him.”

When I woke up I thought it was weird but just a dream. After all my grandpa had just passed away. It was just really, really vivid. It was unsettling because of the scenery and the fact that it had just happened. I have never had a dream of a graveyard before and we didn’t even witness that happening for him.

The kicker for me was this.. a couple of days later my necklace suddenly broke and the heart fell to the ground. Like standing there one minute and then, clank, falls to the ground for no reason. I felt a rush of chills go over my body and my mind immediately went back to a couple of nights prior and “that dream.” I went to my grandpa’s resting place and put the heart in it’s spot. Two weeks later, it was gone.

Ten years later I still think about it frequently and wonder what it means for all of us and what’s next.