In Loving Memory of Grandpa Mike

 CW: talking about the death of my grandpa and mixed feelings about Christianity

 

              The night before the day my grandpa passed away earlier this year, I had a dream.

              In this dream, my mother and I were stopped at a convenience store/fast food joint on the side of the highway, my dad still in the car in the parking lot as usual. We started looking around for a charging cable for my phone at the convenience section, only to find it rife with memorabilia featuring negative, fascist imagery such as swastikas. I commented angrily to the man behind the counter that it wasn’t ok to sell such things, and he denied any problem.

              The dream continued as we decided to leave the establishment, only for all the people in the fast food portion to jump up and start chasing us, grabbing our hair, attacking us, shouting angrily. We needed to escape, and we tried, but the crowd was too large and aggressive.

              As soon as my stress within the dream peaked, a blinding light appeared before my mother and I, the mob vanished, and before us was the Digimon Angemon, floating down with his wings spread and offering me his hand. I took it, and in a flash of light I was in a cozy campground, a fire blazing in a pit as my grandpa stood next to me and put his arm around me. He comforted me and laughed, saying everything was fine, and told me I could have his ‘secret stash’ if I wanted.

              Time passed in this much calmer dream until I found myself in an empty space with Angemon again, who smiled at me as I woke up.

              I wasn’t there as my grandpa passed away the next day. My mom, her brother and my uncle, my dad were there, but I was three or so hours south at home when I got the call that he was gone. He went out laughing, apparently. Happy to be around the people who loved him.

              Now I don’t have stress dreams about societal concerns often, I usually manage myself fairly well in this skewed system. Dreams about Digimon though? Yeah, that tracks, I have those a lot. Dreams about Digimon taking me to people I know isn’t even something unheard of with me. Heck, having dreams about relatives shortly before they pass is a familial thing, it happened to my mother a few times. This all tracks.

              I told a few friends about that dream, actually, and we all came to the conclusion that Angemon was the perfect Digimon Partner for my grandpa.

              See, my grandpa was a devout man, and he really truly believed in “loving everyone” as Jesus taught. He didn’t understand homophobia, transphobia, racism. He thought everyone deserved to be treated equally. He did copious amounts of community service even in his old age. He called my dad crying tears of joy and excitement when he found out conversion therapy had been banned in Canada.

              I am not a devout person. I think fairly lowly of most churches, even if I thought very highly of my grandpa. He proved that they could be so much better and stronger than they were, and yet Christianity was still the source of so much hate and anger and intolerance in the western world. I had so many friends growing up that had to live in fear of their family finding out they were queer due to religiously fueled prejudice, and had so many hard conversations talking people down and supporting them over that illogical hatred.

              I’m a dirty heretic who dabbles in occult nonsense when I’m feeling up to it and calls myself a god because of a noodle incident in high school. I own several books on supernatural shenanigans and enjoy a good ghost hunt. I have a good friend who has a shrine to Odin in their home, and I’ve considered putting a shrine to Apollo in my own home in hopes of gaining some inspiration for my writing.

              I was also the one chosen to inherit my grandpa’s personal bible. The bible he read every day, and took note of all the moral lessons he could from. I have mixed feelings about this, honestly. I’m surely not going to use it for religious purposes, but I’m not entirely sure Grandpa would have been bothered by that. He was accepting, honestly if I told him I wanted to make a shrine to Apollo in my living room he probably would have been confused but laughed it off.

              I was actually chosen to receive that bible because I’m a writer, and honestly you can never have too many reference materials of religion, mythology, culture, or anything vaguely under any of those umbrellas. My mom hoped I’d use it as a reference in my writing, if I ever needed a bible verse for some character more religious than me to reference or a monster design insane enough that grabbing something inspired by Revelation would be suitable.

              That bible will most definitely be used by me. I’ll definitely read it once in a while to learn something. It’s just mildly ironic that the person who inherited it is probably the person who respects the belief system surrounding it the least in the family.

              Anyways, at the time I’m typing this it is only a couple of days until my Grandpa’s celebration of life, because funerals are too dreary for someone as spirited as him. The day before, I’ll be meeting with a friend and fellow Digimon v-pet collector to chat, swap v-pets, and hang out.

              Fact about me, but I tend to bring a Digimon v-pet with me everywhere I go. This is largely because they have a clock on them, and I have a horrid sense of time, so having to check the v-pet to look after it forces me to check the time.

              Starting immediately after I post this, I’ll be booting up a good old v-pet and NOT raising Angemon on it. I really wanted to bring Angemon back to him for his celebration, but after talking it over with friends and family we all agreed he'd want me to bring a Digimon i found comforting and helpful for this emotional time. He'd want me to bring something that symbolized what I believe in, not him. He was good like that.

              Oh? What’s the secret stash he left me?

              Heck If I know, we’re still trying to figure that one out!

              It’s probably just a dream but… I’ll let you all know if not.
             
              Either way, I'm glad I knew you, Grandpa Mike. Go give whatever God greets you on the other side a high five for me.