Then in 2018, my paternal grandpa, at the age of 76, unexpectedly passed away from a heart attack early one morning.
I was close to him, and I loved and admired him very much. My grandpa Bob had suffered from health issues for most of his life, too. Most notably, he had a brain aneurysm in his early 40's that took away his ability to walk and talk with ease. His voice was severely slurred and he required either two canes or a walker to walk, though eventually age put him in a wheelchair for good. He'd also suffered from blood cancer, severe, reoccurring pneumonia that put him in the ICU nearly every year for the last decade of his life, kidney disease, and a couple heart attacks before the fatal one that killed him. Honestly, knowing just how tough my grandpa was, I didn't expect to ever lose him. My heart was shattered when I did.
I got on a plane a couple days later, after telling my teacher I wouldn't be attending school for a week because of my grandpa's death. I stayed at my grandparents' farm alone the first night, with just my grandma. While lying awake on the couch with Pawn Stars quietly on the TV for background noise, I began to wonder if my grandpa was in heaven like my family was convinced he was, and if I'd see him again if that was the case.
He was a staunch Christian, after all, though he was far from conservative politically or theologically. I remembered listening to him tell my dad how horrible he thought president Trump was, and going on and on about how he wished his generation embraced progressivism more. Every morning, my grandpa Bob read the newspaper and watched the news, then listened to more liberal church sermons on his radio, along with old country western music. He was a gentle man. He loved everyone he met, and he loved to travel before he got too old to do so anymore. In life, he'd traveled all over the country, visiting beloved friends from all walks of life along the way. I remembered when I was seven years old, sitting on his lap while grandma pushed us in his wheelchair through the nature and science museum in Denver, Colorado. He seemed to love science just as much as I did, and made me laugh hysterically by making eye contact with my dad, pointing to the statue of Lucy the ancient human, and saying to my dad, "Hey, look! It's you!"
My eyes welled up with tears as I played back these memories in my mind's eye, lying on the couch alone in the dark, in my grandparents' admittedly eerie antique farmhouse. Finally, through my tears I quietly said, "God, or anyone, if you can hear me, can you give me a sign? Please..."
Immediately, a weird feeling washed over me. I felt like I was being watched by someone. Then, I don't know if it was my mind playing tricks on me or a shadow of something outside, but in the kitchen, I saw a shadow quickly move out of view of the doorway leading into the kitchen in the pale moonlight. I swear, it looked about the same size of my grandpa Bob, if he was standing. Sitting down, my grandpa didn't look big. But, he was a big guy, standing six foot four at his tallest. Whatever I saw just briefly move in the kitchen was about that tall, and appeared to have the same physique as my grandpa as well.
Instead of getting off the couch and yelling, "grandpa!" like a little kid getting off the plane at the airport, I got spooked and laid petrified on the couch. I only got more afraid when I heard what sounded like heavy human footsteps walking around in the upstairs bedroom above me. It wasn't my grandma, as she was fast asleep in the downstairs bedroom, right next door to the living room I was in, and they sounded way too heavy to belong to a small animal. And, I was completely alone besides my grandma, and nobody ever slept upstairs. The house was too dilapidated up there for anyone to sleep comfortably.
To this day, I don't know what that was. Frankly, believing what I now believe about the spiritual realm, I don't really want to know what that was. But, based on my current beliefs, I think I was being toyed with by a spiritual entity that was almost trying to mimic my grandpa in a way, knowing I was naive about the spiritual realm (after all, I was asking for anything to give me a sign of its presence). I know that sounds crazy, but based on what I've heard biblical scholars say and I have read in my own bible, I do believe spiritual entities not of God exist and can manifest themselves in this world. I also don't believe human souls can linger, so I don't think it was actually my grandpa responding to my request.
Thankfully, nothing else happened, and I was eventually lulled to sleep by boring Pawn Stars re-runs. I woke up around six AM the next morning to the smell of grandma's cooking when a ray of sunlight landed right on my face. Over bacon and pancakes, grandma and I had a conversation about the day's plans, though I didn't dare tell her what happened the night before while she was asleep. I felt like I was going crazy, and I didn't want my grandma to think something was wrong with me. She had more than enough to worry about. Her husband of over fifty years was gone, and we still had to hold a celebration of life and bury him six feet deep in God's country.
Over 500 people visited my grandpa's wake later that day, and another 250 people were present at the tiny Lutheran church for a sermon and his burial. I sobbed harder than ever when I saw my grandpa's body laying lifeless and cold in an oak casket at the wake, and cried just as hard again when I watched his body being lowered into the ground, literally just across the dirt road from some of the land he worked on his whole life. Before we began to throw dirt onto my grandpa's casket, we threw dried wheat stalks and fresh wildflowers over his casket. Someone even placed a little metal crucifix on his casket before we buried him under six feet of Minnesota soil.
That afternoon after the funeral, I took a long, silent walk around the family farm. My cousin had a herd of mix-breed cattle grazing the sweet, spring pasture alongside their playful little calves. The warm sun shone through partly-cloudy skies, and a swift, cool breeze brushed over the fields and through my hair. As I trudged over a dusty field of young cattle corn, heartbroken and in agony, I silently began to mull over the possibility of there being a life after death, and whether or not my grandpa was there. If my grandpa really was alive and well in the spiritual realm, I wanted to go there too and see him again. But, at that time, I had numerous issues with religion, and especially the Christian faith.
As a bit of a science nerd, I couldn't figure out how the bible could be true if it said God created the world in six days and humans from dust. As someone who had suffered greatly, I struggled to reconcile a good, perfect God with an evil, imperfect world. As someone who had LGBT and POC friends, I struggled with the bible seemingly condoning stoning homosexuals to death and keeping people as slaves. As much as it hurt me, I decided I'd rather live my life in painful truth as an atheist rather than accept a comfortable lie.
On that dusty field, I decided to admit to myself that I was an atheist. Perhaps, I was even an anti-theist, though I figured I'd leave the job of being an obnoxious anti-theist to someone like Richard Dawkins.
"Fuck God." I thought to myself as I kicked a rock as hard as I could, "A good, loving God wouldn't let this much suffering and strife happen. I am in so much pain. I wish I was born healthy. I wish my grandpa was still here. Why? Oh why, is there so much death and suffering and illness and gore in this sick, cruel world?"
