Grandfather's Death Visit

My grandmother was married to an incredibly abusive man decades ago. According to my mom, he drank constantly, had a violent temper, and made everyone around him miserable. They divorced long before I was born, and after that my grandmother refused to speak his name. She rebuilt her life, remarried, and never once showed any interest in what became of him. As far as she was concerned, that chapter of her life had ended forever.

One night, sometime around 3 a.m., my grandmother suddenly woke up and walked straight into the kitchen where my mom was sitting after waking up with insomnia. She looked completely calm, which was unusual because she had been sleeping only moments before. She told my mom, "He was just here." My mom thought she was talking about my grandfather until she quietly said her ex-husband's name. Then she added something that neither of them ever forgot: "He said he's sorry. He apologized for everything. I forgave him." Before going back to bed, she looked at the clock on the microwave and said, "It's 3:17."

The next morning, around breakfast, the phone rang. It was one of the few remaining relatives from her ex-husband's side of the family. They explained that he had been in the hospital after suffering a major stroke and had passed away during the night. My mom remembers asking what time it happened because she was still thinking about what my grandmother had said. The nurse had recorded his time of death as 3:17 a.m.—the exact minute my grandmother had walked into the kitchen saying he had come to apologize. Neither of them had known he was sick, let alone hospitalized. My grandmother never spoke about it again, but she never seemed afraid of the memory either. She simply said, "I think he wanted to leave with a lighter heart."