I often question what’s on the other side. What’s next? There has to be more than this current present-day life we are living. We have to be reunited with our loved ones, right? Because it’s not fair to have your time cut short with someone you love, and then not be able to be with them after death.
I was never baptized, confirmed, or brought up in the church. It’s few and far between the number of church visits I have made. For so long I have dealt with being at some sort of church service sitting alongside those who sing along to songs they know by heart, as well as those who can recite readings from heart. They know what page to turn to and what comes after that. And I sit clueless.
At my Aunt Meg’s wedding in 2015, my cousin Chris was the officiant and he would recite prayer and end it with “Lord, hear our prayer”. I had never heard that phrase until that wedding, and then I would make it a point to always end my not-so-often-occurring prayers with it. When my grandmother was diagnosed with pulmonary fibrosis, a severe lung disease similar to cystic fibrosis, essentially a death sentence, at least for someone her age and with her pre-existing conditions, I thought that ending my prayers to God to heal her would come true if I said “Lord, hear *my* prayer” at the end of every single one.
I had a prayer jar which was a teal blue Mason Jar that Aunt Meg and I painted together one day at her house. She explained to me that this is something she had in her drug and alcohol counseling office for her clients to use during their counseling sessions. To them, it was the “worry jar” or the “prayer jar”. Whichever they preferred.
We did this together when I was in sixth-grade. Once again, I was a young girl very unfamiliar with the concept of praying and church, but I did find excitement in that craft and having it as a place to drop my worries. For middle school Cassy whose problems felt bigger than her, it was an outlet.
I slipped every worry I had into that jar for a lot of those middle school years. One time, I was worried about my little sister Chloe, who often got motion sick when we did longer trips in the car, throwing up her first time on an airplane. I was (and still am) terrified of vomiting, so I wrote about that worry of mine on a piece of paper and slipped it into my prayer jar.
When I found out my grandma was sick, I prayed a lot as I mentioned earlier, but I often wrote my worries on a piece of paper and slipped it into the jar.
Grandma Jean passed away when I was in eighth grade in September of 2016. I thought for years that God must not have listened to my prayers, otherwise she would still be alive, and her sickness gone.
Years later, I am still a conflicted twenty-one-year-old woman when it comes to religion. To have faith, or to not have faith. I took a trip to the Mountain and felt even more tense and confused. I hear common words like “confirmation” brought up, and I am a bit self-conscious to admit I don’t even really know what that means. I don’t know if there is a God who’s real. If I am worried, I “talk” to my late grandmother, not to God. I find more comfort in that.
One thing is for sure in my mind: I believe the idea that our loved ones who have passed visit us in our dreams when we are fast asleep at night.
I have heard stories from friends and family that have made the hair stand up on my neck and arms about someone that they love coming to visit them in a dream. I think that my mind would resort to a dark place if I came to the conclusion that this is it and there are never signs from the other side, or that we don’t get those visitation dreams.
There is no science to back up any of my claims. There’s hardly any concrete evidence besides those who tell the tale about the dreams they have had or the signs they see. Regardless, it’s one of the most comforting feelings in the world.
I will close this out by telling you the one time I have had a dream about Grandma.
It was right after we cleaned out her closet at her house. I remember I had grabbed a long sleeve cotton shirt of hers that was green and white. It was striped. It was a shirt that she had in rotation often. I also grabbed a white zip-up hoodie and some other items.
In my dream, she was healthy; she had no oxygen under her nose, she was at her healthy pre-illness weight, and her Irish skin was rosy and vibrant as I always remembered. She was wearing the green and white striped shirt I had kept from her closet.
There were no words spoken in my dream, but she was hugging my younger sister and younger cousin at the two high-chair tables in the dining room of our old house. I was standing behind them a few feet crying and hugging my other cousin as we watched.
It’s been years since I have had a dream about my Grandma. However, I find comfort in knowing that one day, when I need it most, she will visit me in my dreams, and it will be the most comforting feeling in the world.
Grandma, I will see you in my dreams. I would love to say hi.