Stories Of The Afterlife Contacting Us
So, here’s the thing, this isn’t everyone’s cup of tea. There are so many different interpretations of the afterlife: hell, heaven, and everything in between.
In my family, I grew up around death… as weird as it sounds. From an early age I was introduced to the concept of passing away and “we’ll meet again” (a very famous song by Vera Lynn). Around the age of five, my grandad passed away due to cancer. We knew he was declining, and we all expected it. It was heart-breaking, really. I remember seeing him go from walking, to being in a wheelchair, to being bed bound. While again, we expected it, it was still hard. A short time after, my grandmother’s doorbell started ringing randomly. I’m not just saying some random kids would come up and ring it. No, we checked. It would just ring on its own. We would watch our cousins walk down the driveway–we would be sitting in the living room–and before they got to the door… the doorbell would ring. It was always just a normal thing; if it rang, we would say “hello grandad” and continue on with the conversation. I know, it’s weird, right? But it was literally just normal for me, a six-year-old.
Then we took his ashes to Bar Beach, where he laid him to rest. That day, the day we truly said goodbye, he rang the bell one final time, and we never heard it again… until 2014. We moved into a new place just around the corner from my grandma. My grandad, he was a jokester, right. He loved to give us mint slices and stage whisper about us eating them. He would also let out the deadliest farts, with all the windows wound up, and it would be so bad that my cousins would throw up. All the while he would be laughing until his stomach hurt. He absolutely loved playing tricks. So, back to 2014. We had moved into this new house which had a doorbell… and it started ringing by itself. We got it changed, thinking, it can’t be… but it was. Suddenly, one night, the doorbell started barking. I’m serious. Dead serious. The doorbell straight up was barking. We couldn’t believe it, and all we could do was laugh. It happened a couple of more times, and then Grandad gave up–he must have had his fix of playing tricks.
At age eleven, my cousin’s dad passed away. He was a pretty cool dude, my cousin’s dad. So, when he passed away, obviously my cousin was devastated. It was hard, that afternoon, when we got the news. But he showed us what he wanted most: my cousin was supposed to get his dad’s watch. This is important. At the moment he passed, both my mum’s and my dad’s watches stopped. My dad’s, just for 5 minutes, but my mum’s? It stopped working completely. The day was a Thursday, I won’t give the exact date but let’s pretend it was the 13th. So, her watch stopped, it was the afternoon, say 4 o’clock. Now, keep all of that in mind. Ready?
Look at this…
The watch was at 4… my cousin’s name: Sam.
Luckily, my cousin got his dad’s watch, as intended.
At age seventeen, the year of my HSC, my pop passed away; and that, of course, again, was so hard. A week before, I had a dream that, in the morning, brought me to tears. He was sitting in the car, next to me, while my parents were in the front, my mum crying. He looked at me, as if asking me, why? I told him, in the dream, that “you’re gone. You’re not here. She’s crying because you’re gone.” That morning, my mum called the facility he was at and, that night, we went to see him. I remember so clearly looking into his eyes, and it was as if time stood still. He knew. He knew that I had that dream, and he knew he wasn’t going to be around for long. That week, he passed away in his sleep…
Now, I’m twenty. I have strong feelings when something might happen, dreams which have told events, or meant that I needed to check in with a person because something wasn’t sitting right in me. I have lived around death my entire life and, sometimes–my mum and I especially–get those signs from people not with us anymore. We don’t go seeking for it, we’re not mediums, or anything like that, but we keep our minds open. If there is something that really needs to be told, we will hear it.
Hey! My name is Ivy-Rose! I’m the student life columnist and contributor for the Opus mag! I love writing about life as a student, the societal expectations, and experiences that help us grow and shape us to who we are today – as individuals and a collective! When I’m not contributing to Opus, I’m helping out local charity organisations SHIBUI Services and What Were You Wearing as well as creating content!
