Why do I believe that after death a person does not disappear without a trace? After a story that happened not to my acquaintances, not to some strangers, but to me personally.
I had always loved my grandmother (my dad's mom). She was the world's coolest, coolest, coolest grandma ever. She never sat without work, she worked part-time in retirement, not from the good life, of course, in the 90s it was not easy for many people, but she often said that you can't live without work, you have to move.
When I went to study in another city, she and I corresponded by real paper letters.
There were no cell phones then, pagers were just appearing, and I called my grandmother about once every two weeks on the public phone installed in the lobby of our dormitory. But for the last couple of days I couldn't get through to her. My parents told me that Grandma was sick, in the hospital, and would be discharged soon. I was upset about my grandmother's illness, but I calmed down a bit as I learned that she was generally okay.
I was an ordinary student, living in a room with good girls. We lived a modest life, saving on everything then, cooking for ourselves. We had a half-legal single tile in our room. That night the girls were doing their homework, while I cooked soup on the stove and was about to fry onions in a small frying pan my grandmother had given me when I left for school. And while I was holding it in my hand, the other was just about to reach for the onions, when someone hit the frying pan hard and sharply from below and knocked it out of my hand. The girls were startled by the noise and looked at me. And I lifted my head and cried. "Girls, my grandmother died," I said. The girls rushed to calm me down, twirling their fingers at my temple, saying I had accidentally dropped the frying pan myself and was imagining things. The only thing I said was that she had come to say goodbye, and that she had given me a sign through the thing she had given me. That night I tried to call both my grandmother and my parents. But no one answered the phone. The next day I got through, and my mother assured me that everything was fine, that my grandmother was still in the hospital, but that she would soon be discharged. I was still not calm at heart, I passed my winter session with flying colors, and after a while I went home for the vacations. When I got off the train, the first thing my parents told me was that my grandmother had died in the hospital. I still regret that decision of theirs not to tell me so as not to disrupt the session, but I can't judge them.
And my grandmother died on the exact day and at the exact hour that the frying pan seemed to jump out of my hand on its own.
And I firmly believe that we are not going anywhere, and that our world is so complex and multifaceted that there is still an endless sea of discoveries to be made, and if we don't know about something now, it doesn't mean that it doesn't exist.
You must be logged in to post a comment.