Do ancestors visit before you die? I believe they do. I remember the night before my father died, I had a dream where he told me he would meet me when it was time for me to die so I would not be afraid.
Then he said that would be ‘a long time from now.’ (Interestingly, he didn’t make appearances to me through dreams and visions when I was being treated with cancer with the exception of one dream when he showed me the life-saving surgery that I would have. The lack of his presence told me that I was not in the process of dying.)
Hospice workers and others who have been around a dying person often recount experiences where someone who is dying shares that they were visited by dead family members, friends and even pets. Many claim that those loved ones who have crossed over are coming to gather them and lead them to the other side.
A friend of mine experienced a visitation by her deceased grandmother through a dream a few weeks ago. In her dream, she didn’t receive the message that she was dying. Rather she received the message that a loved one was about to die though she didn’t understand the dream at the time. I do believe she may be a natural medium and I’ve encouraged her to take a class to strengthen her medium skills. Through her dream she got a glimpse of what may be a common occurrence when someone is going through the dying process.
I’ll share her story in her own words though I changed the names for privacy.
An otherworldly visitation ushers in death
I was at my house, and I’m in the basement and the doorbell rings.
And it’s like somewhere between 11:00 PM and 1:00 AM in the morning. So my mom and my sister are like, “Who in the world is ringing the doorbell at this time of night?” I’m like, “Well, you know, it’s probably daddy. He probably forgot his key or forgot to use the garage door opener, or whatever the case may be.”
So I go to open the door, and when I open the door, it’s my cousin Sam and one other person — I know I recognize the other person, but I don’t know who it is.
And I’m like, “What are you doing here?” And Sam says, “Your dad told me to meet him here.” And I was like, “Oh, okay. Well, he’s not here right now, he stepped out, but come on in and you can wait for him.“
Loved ones return for the journey
So we’re sitting around and we’re waiting. At some point, other people started showing up. I know his father showed up and several other male relatives showed up. Most of the other people that showed up were dead. Sam’s father is alive, but everyone else that showed up was one of my ancestors or one of my uncles that passed away.
For the most part, I didn’t call them by name, but I recognized who they were. And I’m kind of like, “Oh, well, what are they doing here?”
And at some point, my husband walks into the room and he says, “Hey, how you doing?” And he offers Sam a drink and wants to show him our bar, which is in the basement.
So as we are walking down the steps to the basement, we meet my father, who says, “Where are you guys going?” And I say, “Oh, well, we wanted to show Sam the bar.”
And then my dad goes, “He doesn’t need to see the bar. And, grandma’s waiting on him.” And I look behind my father and there’s my paternal grandmother who was also deceased, standing behind him.
And I was surprised to see her, because in previous dreams, I had felt her presence, but I had never actually seen her. You know, we would be at my father’s homestead, and my grandfather would be in his favorite chair with his beer in his hand, and my grandmother’s essence would be in the kitchen, but in those dreams you didn’t have a line of sight to the kitchen. I knew she was there, I could smell the food that she was cooking, I could hear her voice, but I never really saw her.
So this was the first time that I’m laying eyes on my grandmother in a dream, and I’m like, “Oh my God, grandma, what are you doing here?” And she says, “Well, I came here to meet Sam.”
And then I wake up because I’m freaked out, and I’m like, “Grandma. I saw grandma. Grandma came to see me.” And it just freaked me out.
A premonition of death
So that was at the beginning of the month, around the first week of April.
So April 20th, I believe it was, my cousin calls me to let me know Sam had passed away. And it turns out at the beginning of the month, about the time I had the dream, Sam went into the hospital and was then supposed to go to rehab.
At the time, I didn’t ask any questions. What type of rehab? Were we talking about physical rehab or were we talking about rehab for addiction? I didn’t ask any questions. He told me Sam went to rehab, and then he passed away.
And so I still didn’t ask any probing questions, because it had just happened the night before so I wanted to be sensitive, but I told him my dream about grandma coming to get Sam and that Sam is in a good place. He’s with grandma, he’s in a good place.
So anyway, fast forward; a few days ago was the funeral, and my dad’s a preacher, so he did the eulogy. And during his eulogy, he mentioned the relationship he had with Sam and how Sam would confide in him about some of the demons that he had.
And my dad was like, “There are things that Sam probably told me that he never shared with you. You all thought that it was because he just couldn’t get over this addiction, but there was more to it. There was a reason why he was in the space that he was.”
So that made me realize, “Okay, you know what? That’s why Sam came to see my dad in the dream. That’s why my dad ushered in my grandmother to come get him, because they had a very special relationship, a special bond where my dad was trying to help him.”
Later that day, I finally sat my dad down face to face because I really wanted to tell him about my dream. And so I sat him down, I told him about my dream, and my dad looked at me and said, “Oh yeah, I have those dreams all the time. And usually when you have a dream that an ancestor comes to get somebody, that person usually ends up passing two or three weeks later.”
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