The Heavens Cried With Me

The day it all started, July 30th. The day after Grant died, the day we all found out. That day was a blur. I don’t remember it. People were appearing out of nowhere. I had no idea why they were there or why they kept coming.

Grant was dead, if they cared about him, there was nothing they could do for him or with him. So it didn’t make sense why they were coming.

July in southern Utah is hot, really hot, and dry. It doesn’t rain in July, or August. It was now July 31st and it was beautiful outside, not the normal heat. It was overcast. For July, that doesn’t happen, especially at 1 pm.

I sat outside with my friends gathered on the front steps of the house. I couldn’t understand how or why I still lived, now that Grant hadn’t come home for the last 2 days. I kept watching for him.

Being outside. I could watch the whole street for him to show up. I could watch him walk up the steps to the doorway and hold me in a big hug with a lot of explaining to do as to why I hadn’t heard from him for 2 days. I still didn’t believe it. I still hadn’t shed a tear.

I could feel the trauma of it all, but held it back because I still didn’t believe it could be true. And I’d lived without him for 2 days before so technically, my life hadn’t changed yet. I could do two more days that way, waiting for my life to be the same somehow.

So I sat on that front porch, friends and family sitting by my side, talking and interacting in the pain, feeling the unknown. Words were unspoken because no one knew what to say or how to interact with me.

They were just there. That’s all I needed anyway. If someone asked me what I needed I said, “I don’t know.” I still don’t know most of the time. I’m learning to know what I need.

Now I realize, gratefully, that these people, they were there to see me. At the time. I just thought it was a big party and I was to entertain, which I didn’t do. I just sat there, not knowing what to do.

So there we sat. I thought it odd to see so many clouds. That wasn’t typical of summer here, in fact it was quite abnormal, like my life for the last 2 days.

Then, just before 2 pm, a burst of rain fell from the clouds. It was a refreshing sprinkle that brought beautiful relief from the heat. The heat that was currently almost tolerable outside because of the overcast clouds.

The moment the drops came down and hit my skin, I looked up. I saw the heavens tears flowing, the ones I knew would come from me eventually. I saw the heavens crying. They were crying for me. They were crying with me.

This rain was for me. These droplets of moisture, so uncommon for this region, nearly impossible at this time of day and of year, wasn't just a weather pattern.

They were tears for me. It was the first thought I had the moment that first drop hit my skin. I knew these were for me. I could feel it. The heavens were crying the tears they knew were coming in me. They could already feel my heart and knew.

The heavens had a perfect knowledge of how I felt before I could even comprehend how I felt. Mortal understanding is much slower. In that instant, I knew it all. And I knew how closely I was being held. Held in the arms of Heaven.

A few days later we drove to Salt Lake. It was on August 4th 2019. It was a Sunday. We arrived later in the evening. I don’t know how I got there. I know it was by car, and I know that Grant’s brother drove the truck that I rode in, but it was surreal to me that he was driving and Grant wasn’t.

We arrived at our destination, where we used to live, and the house we’d lived in for 9 years. The house we built The King of Random in. The one I’d raised my babies in and even given birth to two of them in. I did all that right in this house, the one we just drove up to.

As we pulled onto the street where we lived previously, I realized all the trees along the whole street to our house were tied with yellow ribbons. The love of our previous neighbors woven through each bow on each tree.

I was back home, but how could this be home without Grant? I noticed the sky was again overcast, 4 days later and 4 hours north. It was a dark and brooding overcast sky. I watched it as the sun slowly went down and the blackness took over the sky.

It didn’t stay black, the sky. No, the lightning began to light up the sky that night. Somehow, I knew it was Grant doing this. Like he was back at his lab, experimenting with his new found afterlife powers. He was playing with fire, making lightning and putting on a show as he always did in mortal life.

I saw Grant in the skies that night. It was spectacular. Without a doubt, his energy was written all over that night sky's storm. He’d followed us back. I could feel him there and his familiar energy.

His energy of creating his big ideas into new projects as he played with the elements. It was a feeling I instantly recognized. The one I’d felt so many times when he was in his earthly lab playing with fire. Tonight it was a bigger show than I’d ever seen, and unmistakably Grant.

When the skies finally darkened and quieted down, I still couldn’t sleep. I sat outside on the porch, by myself now. Just before midnight, the rain came again. On the very night we’d come back here, Heaven’s tears had followed us.

It wasn’t a weather pattern. It was a message to me, for me. Now, it was Grant’s tears I saw. While my children slept and all the people who surrounded me had gone for the night. It was me alone in the dark that night that felt that rain. That’s how I knew it was Grant.

Grant would never let all those people see him cry. He waited till it was night in the safety of the dark and the quiet of the night to show me his tears.

His sorrow bore so deep from his soul that only in the cover of night could he reveal it. Just for me, straight from him. I’m so sorry those tears said.

I felt his sorrow for what had happened, the regret, deeper, more painful than my own. A sorrow so big it could only be comprehended in the dark sky. A sorrow so deep, I couldn’t live with its immensity, and yet I live with the consequences of it daily.

In my heart, through his sorrow, I heard his heart, “I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean for this to happen.”