Grandma and God Brought Me Home
Powerful results from believing, trusting, and taking a leap of faith
My phone rang as I was getting ready for work. It was my aunt. I knew something was horribly wrong. She never called me this early in the morning.
“She’s gone,” my aunt said sobbing.
“Gram?” I asked, but I didn’t need to.
“Yes, she passed away at 12:34 AM this morning.”
“Oh my God. I’m so sorry,” I said as the shock turned into tears.
I couldn’t find any other words to say.
What do you say to someone who just lost their mom less than 7 hours ago?
I stayed on the line with her. Very few words were said. The line was filled with the sounds of both of us sobbing. It was the only way I could be there for her because I lived 1,300 miles away.
Death is so final.
Once again, I’ll have to smell the stench of fresh flowers.
I always hated the smell of flowers. They reminded me of hospitals and funeral homes, the latter of which I had spent way too much time in as a child.
It started with my Aunt Nancy when I was five. My only memories of her were of that scary hospital bed sprawled out in my grandparent’s living room. She required round-the-clock care from my grandma and visiting nurses. It was jarring as a five-year-old to see my mid-20s aunt completely bedridden with wires and monitors everywhere.
I still don’t know why she was sick or how she died. I think it had something to do with her brain because my mom always changed the channel anytime a TV commercial came on with doctors talking about brain conditions. For the first time at five years old, I was faced with the scent of fresh flowers filling a funeral home.
Two years later, when I was seven, it was my grandpap’s turn. He came home from work after the midnight shift and went upstairs to get ready for bed. He said something to my grandma and then collapsed. My grandma screamed when he fell, and upon hearing the scream and thud, my aunt rushed into their bedroom. She ran and grabbed the phone to call 911. While on the phone with the 911 operator, she heard another thud where my grandma had fallen off the side of the bed with a heart attack of her own. She dragged the phone cord as far as it would go while the 911 operator instructed her on how to perform 2-person CPR on her parents. The sudden widow-maker took Grandpap’s life, while Grandma was transported to the ER with her own heart attack.
Grandpap was set to retire in two months. Grandma only received a fraction of his pension because he wasn’t retired at the time of death. Companies are so cruel.
He was laid out at Peter’s Funeral Home, and I made the comment to my mom, “Look, Grandpap is sleeping.” I didn’t understand what happened, but I remembered the smell of fresh flowers.
My other grandpap took his turn when I was ten. He collapsed in the bathroom, and my other grandma found him deceased. Another instant widow-maker. Boom — gone. The scent of more fresh flowers followed.
Two weeks after I turned 16, it was my friend Amanda’s turn. She flipped her sister’s convertible three days after getting her driver’s license. She was driving the car she wasn’t allowed to drive. I can’t fathom the amount of regret her parents felt after learning the consequences of that fatal decision they made that day.
The accident happened about a mile and a half from my home. My brother was a volunteer firefighter who helped at the crash site. I can still see his lip tremble and hear his voice shake as he broke the news to me. “Sorry buddy, it was Amanda’s car. She didn’t make it and died.” A few days later, as I walked into the funeral home, I was engulfed with the smell of more fresh flowers.
After the phone call from my aunt, my wife and I immediately made the 20-hour drive from Dallas to Pittsburgh to attend Grandma’s funeral.
Twenty-nine years after burying Grandpa, there I was once again greeted with the scent of fresh flowers as I walked inside Peter’s Funeral Home. After battling heart disease for 30 years, God called Grandma home at the age of 85, just two weeks shy of turning 86.
There she was, lying peacefully in her pink casket. I don’t recall seeing her more beautiful than she was at that moment, decked out in her pale green suit. She had a youthful glow that I had not seen in many years. I even noticed a soft, peaceful smile. She was finally set free from the endless doctor appointments and heart issues that tormented her body through the years.
How is it even possible for one person to have had five confirmed heart attacks, triple bypass open-heart surgery, 15+ heart catheterizations, three balloon angioplasty procedures, three separate stent procedures, hundreds of EKGs, echocardiograms, and stress tests in their lifetime? It wasn’t fair, but she was a fighter.
I imagined her heart and arteries looked like the Terminator with the amount of metal holding them together. I hated that she spent so much of her life enduring so much pain. She deserved better.
She was my favorite grandma, which earned her the nickname “Golden Gram,” named after the cereal. I spent a lot of my childhood at her home. Sleepovers were frequent. There wasn’t yelling at her house like there was at mine. She always made me feel calm and safe.
Above all else, her greatest accomplishment was that she was the most God-fearing woman that I had ever met. She served the Lord every day. She lived a life of faith over fear that allowed her to face so many daunting health circumstances with courage and grace.
Right before she entered into her triple bypass surgery, she asked my aunt to read her Psalms 118:17.
I shall not die, but live, and declare the works of the LORD.
The doctor estimated she would live about ten years if the surgery went well. She had the surgery on January 25, 1990, and died exactly 29 years later on January 25, 2019.
It’s incredible what the power of faith can do when we believe.
Grandma taught me that.
My wife and I spent the week of the funeral in Pennsylvania. It was nice to be home. I moved to Texas 14 years earlier, and I missed home. I missed my family.
Through those years, I frequently thought about and struggled with the guilt I’d feel if I lost my dad and other family members while I lived out of state. I had already missed so many family birthdays and holidays. I only made it home once a year for Thanksgiving. I knew I would never get those moments and memories back. The guilt increased even more after Grandma’s passing.
As my wife and I drove back to Texas, I kept thinking about the loss of Grandma. Death always made me realize my own mortality and reevaluate how I was living my life. I daydreamed about what our life would look like living in PA, being close to our family, attending family gatherings, sharing holidays together, and attending Pitt football games with my dad. My mind painted the picture of a better, more fulfilling life than what I had in Texas.
All of a sudden, a calming, unexplainable peace came over me.
Something told me after 14 years away that, it was time to move home.
When we arrived back in Dallas, I couldn’t shake the thought I had about moving home. It pulled on my attention day after day. As someone who battled anxiety, I worked better in absolutes. I always chose the safe option. I wanted to be in control. This nudging took me to a completely uncomfortable place. A decision of this magnitude required an immense amount of faith. Faith that I didn’t know if I had in me.
I struggled with so many unanswered questions.
Where were we going to live? How were we going to pay our bills if we quit our jobs?
How was I ever going to convince my wife to leave our jobs, sell our home, and pick up to move across the country to start over?
Did I really want to give up my career with the Fortune 500 company I was working for and was finally starting to rise the corporate ranks to start over?
Was it worth leaving behind the lake house and life that we worked so hard to build in Texas?
The answer was yes.
I chose to live as Grandma did. I chose to trust God. I chose to have faith.
Now, it was time to have a talk with my wife.
I married the right person. The talk with her went better than I could have ever expected. It turned out the timing was perfect. She, too, was ready for something new. She had been a lifelong Texan and was tired of living there.
She wasn’t happy with her job. She was sick of the Texas heat. Texas was being infiltrated by people moving there from California. I saw a newscast one day that mentioned over 1 million people had moved to the Dallas-Fort Worth area since the beginning of 2010. The traffic was getting worse by the day. She was excited to start a new chapter together in Pennsylvania. Her support only reinforced my feeling that it was time to go.
She immediately started searching for a job in Pittsburgh. The plan was for her to get a job there so at least one of us was working. I was going to stay at my job in Texas until our home sold, and then I would join her in Pittsburgh and land a new job.
Four months after we made the decision to move, we packed up a Uhaul, and she made the 20-hour trek across the country to Pittsburgh with our three dogs. Since our home in Texas had not sold yet, I stayed behind.
She arrived safely in Pittsburgh and was set to start her new job on July 1st. Within three days of being there, she asked to change the plan and wanted me to move as soon as possible. Without our home sold and no job for me, this required an immeasurable amount of faith.
How were we going to continue paying a mortgage on our house in Texas without my income?
How were all of our other bills going to get paid without my income?
Scared and uncertain, I did as Grandma would have done and put my trust in God that things would work out. I respected my wife’s wishes and decided we would change our original plan. It was time to quit and join her.
The hardest part for me of the decision to move was leaving my job. I finally found a company that I loved working for. I loved the people, the culture, the products it made, the compensation, and the opportunities for career growth that it provided. I didn’t see how there was any possible way that I’d find a job in Pittsburgh that paid as much or provided the opportunity for career growth, and that was important to me. It was too late because there was no turning back now. My wife was already gone. Our house was already empty and for sale. This was it.
I was overflowing with nerves as I waited for Jason to join me in the conference room. He was my boss for only six months, but he left a lasting impression on me. I respected him. I loved working for him, so it made handing over my resignation very difficult. I didn’t want to disappoint him.
He joined me in the conference room where I had been waiting. After some small talk, I handed him my letter of resignation. I explained the importance for me and my wife to be near our family, and my reason to leave had nothing to do with the company. In fact, the last line in my letter of resignation read, “If there’s ever an opportunity in Pittsburgh for me to rejoin the company, please don’t hesitate to call me.” I knew that was never going to happen. No one in the company lived in Pittsburgh. We had employees who lived four and a half hours away in Philadelphia that covered the Pittsburgh market. I wasn’t going to live in or near Philly. I was heartbroken that I had to resign, but my family was more important. I accepted that my tenure with the company was over.
Jason was so gracious and understanding with the whole situation. He wrote a letter of recommendation for me to help with my job search in Pittsburgh. I finished out my two weeks; then, I was on my way back home to join my wife.
In August, with the help of Jason’s letter of recommendation, I started a new job with a competing company. I was an outsider from day one. The employees there referred to me as “Mr. (Previous Employer’s Name).”
I wasn’t one of them. They made that clear. I felt it every day. I was miserable working there and hated it, but I felt stuck because Pittsburgh’s job market didn’t offer the same opportunities as Dallas.
One afternoon in October, I was at work when I felt the vibration of my cell phone on my desk. I looked down, and the caller ID was from my old boss, Jason. Why was Jason calling me?
I stood up and took the call in one of the conference rooms.
“Hey Jason, what’s up, man?” I asked.
“You’re not going to believe this. The company is doing some restructuring, and there is an open position key-pointed in Pittsburgh,” he said.
“You have got to be shitting me!” I said in shock.
“No, I’m serious. Go ahead and submit your application, and I’ll get in contact with the hiring manager and put in a good word for you,” he said.
Are you really telling me that all of a sudden, there was an open position in the city I just moved to that offered me the chance to come back and work for the company I never wanted to leave?
Were Grandma and God playing some kind of joke on me? Is this what happens when we have faith that things will work out?
I was so relieved after that call. I knew the job was mine before I hit send on the job application. As a cherry on top, it was a promotion from the role I had just resigned from. More money, company car, company phone, company iPad, work from home, make my own schedule. It was the job I was preparing for and wanted before I resigned. No way this was real.
It was real. I got the job and was rehired in my new role.
Before we moved, I remember thinking, how are we ever going to make as much money as we made a living in Texas? And now, there we were, making more money, higher up the job ladder, and living closer to my family.
I thought about Grandma. Even though she was no longer here, she was right.
Faith will take you farther than you can ever imagine if you believe.
Thanks, Grandma; because of you, the next time I take in the smell of fresh flowers, I won’t have to drive 20 hours in order to smell them.
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