8. Beyond the Veil: A Grandmother’s Last Goodbye and Life Lessons

Intro:
I was actually my grandmother's first grandchild. So obviously with that comes a lot of privilege and a lot of special attention. She was just really dedicated to supporting, loving and making her grandchildren feel special. In her mid 80s, her eyesight got worse, so she had to give up driving and made the hard choice to enter an assisted care facility. We ended up, you know, saying goodbye and I love you, I love you and then ended the call that night I ended up having this dream. He goes, did your mother call you? And I said, no. Almost before he could finish that sentence, Amber, tears were rolling down my eyes.

Welcome to Next Realm, beautiful Stories from Beyond, a show that explores the profound and heartwarming stories of individuals who've experienced messages from their departed loved ones. I'm your host, Amber Rasmussen, and today is my very good friend Jake Deptula, host of the podcast Strictly Stalking and Love lust, fear.

There is no other bond quite like one with your grandmother. And when Jake's beloved granmma, as he called her, passed away, she made sure to show up in the most profound way to say her goodbyes.

Jake: My grandma was born in 1923. She had kind of come of age post-World War One all the way leading up to World War two, and she married young in the early 1940s. She married my grandfather, who was significantly older by about 17 years, and so her parents did not approve. She ended up having to isolate herself, ended up having my mom first and then my uncle, and the marriage went completely south. She ended up having to go through a divorce and move back in with her mother and father to help her take care of my mom and my uncle. And around that time she was born and raised Roman Catholic. And divorce was not something that was taken easily by the church. She was basically 23, 24 years old, two young kids, divorced and living at home.

So it was very difficult for her. But all through this, though, she kept true to her faith. Throughout my life, my grandpa was a bit estranged from the family, like he was a fixture, but there was always some sort of thing that we never got the full details on. But he was always sort of this outlying figure, and there were moments, I love my grandfather, but now doing the work that I do, you can see how custody battles work and how the toxic nature of divorce and how things can come up where even though the person is legally out of your life, they do not make it easy to carry on and live a happy and healthy life.

And my grandmother had wanted to go to school for design, but it was not in the cards after she had gotten married and she had to put those dreams on hold. And this was during World War two. Okay, so there were other complications there. By the time I came around, my grandma had been in her 50s. I was actually my grandmother's first grandchild. So obviously with that comes a lot of privilege and a lot of special attention. I have three sisters, all younger, and I have two cousins, both boys. And what my grandma was to us is, was she was a constant support system. She was someone who made things festive and fun. Every holiday she would decorate. And basically if our parents wouldn't, let's say achieve via the route of Santa Claus things that we wanted, she would always make sure that we got those things, and it was just this magical experience that you knew that you were going to get loved and respected and heard from grandma at grandma's house, everything in between. And she was just really dedicated to supporting, loving and making her grandchildren feel special.

Amber: Right. I think grandma's too. They're just special in that, you know, they've already raised their kids, so now they can just spoil grandkids and send them along their way at the end of the day. Right?

Jake: 100%. And I've heard many different stories about grandparents, but, uh, grandma, which we called her, not grandma, but granmma. Granmma is how she liked to spell it. There really was nothing she wouldn't do for her grandkids. She even created, back in the 90s, a special one 800 number that we could call her toll free. What if we're in trouble? That's a time when you could do those things.

I grew extremely close to my grandma when I was about 12 years old, and I ended up moving in with her. My high school was right across the street from hers, and at home it was kind of difficult because, not that I needed individual time, but my parents had been dealing with a lot of things, and my three younger sisters had, you know, sort of their own lives. And I was kind of feeling isolated and feeling like I needed my own personal space. And my grandmother and great grandmother, who lived in one house together, ended up opening up their home to me.

So I ended up staying with my grandmother pretty much through college. I ended up, living on campus, for a couple semesters, but, she opened up her home to me and made me feel loved and supported, and was always there to talk through things that I was dealing with. There to support my media dreams and my eventual move to California. So that's when I really started to grow closer, because in the rapid succession of grandchildren, it was me, my sister, who was born two years after me. Then, um, my cousin who had been born the same year as my sister. Then we had my other cousin who was born, then my other little sister, my little sister. So as you can imagine, the attention was sort of, uh, divided and diluted by the time my youngest sister, uh, came out.

But still, grandma gave us personalized attention. She never strayed from making us individually all feel safe, special, and loved.

Amber: I know in our family, my nephew almost looked at my mom, who was his grandma, as a second mom, and sometimes it was almost easier to confide in my mom versus his mom. If that makes sense. Did you ever feel like that yourself?

Jake: To be fair, um, grandma was not judgmental of her grandchildren. Mother was definitely judgmental. And if you confess to one of your parents something. There's the nod and then there's the. How am I going to deal with this? But with grandma, it was like, how do I help you through this problem. With my parents it was like path to punishment and with my grandmother it was path to redemption.

Amber: They have a different perspective on children versus when you are the parent and you, you have a lot of pressure on yourself to make sure they're following the right path and this and that. And grandparents kind of know there's going to be some ups and downs and all arounds, and they respect your dreams too, like I'm sure I don't know. How was your parents as like, oh, you want to work in media, you want to move to LA? Like, I know my parents would be like, oh yeah. No.

Jake: Exactly. Oh, that was a thumbs down situation. I mean, if it weren't for my grandma who helped support me and get me into a media program through college, uh, at Webster University in Saint Louis, I wouldn't have been able to pursue that. My mom wanted me to become a nurse because she was a nurse, but at the time, I couldn't stand the sight of blood or wheelchairs or there anything remotely medical related? So that was out. My dad was the one who influenced me in terms of growing up with the culture of media, you know, music, movies, TV. He was pretty much the barometer for all those things that I ended up becoming a pop culture junkie and loving.

But when it came to the practical sense of a career, that was not something that was valued, like even my mom would say, you know, he's staying up all night, he's late for school because my grandma obviously would at times let me be late for school. It ended up being like, my mom was like, oh, he's oh, he's up late at night watching all those sitcoms. And my grandma goes, he's studying now. At the time, I didn't know I was studying. I didn't know that I was sort of ingesting all these things. But I'm like, grandma, you make a lot of sense. Exactly, mom. See? I'm studying. I didn't know that. But later it turned out to be true. So she had a lot of foresight to understand the dynamic of what her grandchildren were capable of, and then see how they could turn key that into a career or follow their passion. Whereas my parents were definitely more rooted and practical.

It ended up working out in so many ways, but my grandmother had been there to support me through school. I mean, she would show up on college campus and it always became this sort of festive experience. When Jake's grandma showed up, she was so nice to everybody, kind to everybody, and she ended up being an actor in my senior thesis, oddly enough, and it was such a full circle moment that she got to do it, and she was the only actor who landed her takes perfectly every time. No training whatsoever. But she landed it and it was one of the and we were shooting on film at the time. So that was really expensive to be able to have to shoot on film and everything else like that. So that being said, it was it was a really remarkable experience to have that. But I think that, uh, finding a way to, uh, tap into what her grandchildren were thinking and, and believing in them really went a long way. I could speak for every one of my cousins and my sisters when it came to how much she supported us and how much she ultimately became our champions.

Amber: I mean, you totally won in that department, so it makes it even harder when you lose someone like that. Because usually, unless there's something tragic, your grandparents are kind of one of the first major deaths for some people, you know? It's like your introduction to someone passing on and that hurts and that like, oh, what am I going to do without them?

Jake: You know, it really was Amber in this case, because I had spent decades with her. Okay. She had been there through most of my early life experiences, all the way to like, you know, early to mid to current career in that sense. So I think that, um, you know, it's interesting too when I would make movies like some of the first movies that I made when I produced, she would call me up weeknights and goes, guess what I'm watching tonight? And she probably watched my first film that I produced more than anybody living on this earth the director, any of the actors, actors, families, the audience. And so, um, it extended above and beyond that.

Like even my friends, she would send greetings, say hi when she could, um, anything that technology didn't limit her on. She would basically make sure to know that she supported them too, which by extension was incredible. So she really was very, uh, a huge champion of forming good friendships and surround yourself with good people of great character and cherishing that.

Amber: Yeah, she's kind of like everyone's grandma then, right?

Grandparents brings so much joy and wisdom to our lives, and you can just feel the impact Jake's grandma had on him.

Jake: My grandmother had taken care of my great grandmother all the way up till she passed. She had taken care of my great grandmother's husband when he was there. Who was my great grandfather who I never met. He passed away in the mid 60s.

When I moved out to California. It was, I think, harder on my grandmother than she let on. She was so happy for me and she was so supportive, but she was actually living at the house then alone, because my great grandmother had gone into a home and passed away. And, uh, some of my siblings were still in Saint Louis around that time, so. And my mom and my dad. And so there was a definite community feel. But she and I have always had a special bond, and I think that that was hard for her, harder than she let on, because I don't think she wanted to put that guilt on me.

She had lived alone for many years and was fiercely independent. I mean, she valued her independence and every which way and be able to do things. But in her mid 80s, her eyesight got worse, so she had to give up driving and made the hard choice to enter an assisted care facility. Five years after that and she sought the support of my mother, my uncle and ultimately me to help organize her affairs.

And it's interesting, in the past couple of years, um, when she was there, um, I had stayed with her a few times. They had guest houses on, on the property, which I never thought I would do to be 100% honest with you. I mean, assisted caregiving, retirement homes are just not my thing. I think it depends on what the circumstances are and how comfortable you are with that. But I never imagined myself staying there, even be uncomfortable. But it ended up working out and we would have breakfast in the mornings, and she would introduce me to her friends that she set the table with. And this is my grandson, Jake. He's out in Hollywood making movies and TV.

Amber: I love that.

Jake: Oh my gosh, it was it was the highlight of her, of her, uh, of her mornings and in her day, like, just have her grandson there and doing that. And we'd go out and do, like, shopping trips and eating and spend time with my sisters and my mom and dad and everyone else. And, um. I remember that, uh, you know, when I used to have to go to, like, let's say a Starbucks or Panera and break out my laptop and do something that I may have been working on that I had to kind of extend over the holidays at times, even though I couldn't pay her any attention because I was working. She just wanted to sit there and she just wanted to hang out, and she just wanted to be in my presence, which which was amazing.

So, um, I remember that I visited her in the summer of 2015 and, um, we had gone through her house because she had been in the assisted living facility at that time and started going through a lot of her old stuff. So she wanted to kind of gather all these things from her old house before she sold it. And so it ended up being on this trip through memory lane with me and my sisters and my mom, and I'm like, we've got to kind of be realistic with this. But she she started piling stuff up on a bed and the pile just got bigger, bigger. I said, grandma, that's not going to fit in your room at the retirement home. It's just not going, not going to happen. So we had to get very practical with that. But um, around Thanksgiving of that year of 2015, everybody came into town to visit her because she had been in the facility ended up hurting her ankle, basically hurting her leg, and she had fallen out of a chair, and she ended up having to go into a more, uh, stricter care facility, per se. So at that time, uh, my mom and my uncle had had sort of a rocky relationship. They've had one off and on throughout their lives. But, um, by the time they came in and visited her, she's looking around, but she was obviously well aware of this. She sees my cousins, my sister, uh, and then my, my uncle and my mom at her bedside. And she's like, miracles do happen. She was very much like, I can't believe all these people together. So I can imagine her waking up from her nap and seeing like, we got everybody in the same room.

So on a Thursday night, I called her and she asked me, she goes, are you going to come to visit me? I said, yes, grandma, I'll be there for the holidays. She goes, oh! And I said, well, don't worry, I'll be there. I promise you, I'll be there. We ended up, you know, saying goodbye and I love you, I love you, and then ended the call. And then for some reason, I just I called her back and I said, grandma, are you okay? And she goes, yes, I just miss you. And I said, oh, I miss you too.

So I called her the next night and she was in the room and she was having kind of a party with my uncle and my cousins. And I was like, one of them answered the phone. I was like, oh no, don't don't bother her, don't disturb her. Tell her I love her and I'm glad you guys are all having fun. I didn't want to like rain on the parade or stop the party down. She doesn't get many of those moments at the retirement home or the assisted care facility after she broke her ankle.

So that night I ended up having this dream. I'm sort of walking or maybe gliding closer to this big yellow school bus. And I look and I see my grandmother's eyes, but it's the image of my friend Ola's grandmother. And I get closer and I see that that she's crying. And I ask, he must have been. I say this off camera. He was off to the side and I said, why is she crying? And he goes, because she's happy. And then I see her wave. And the bus moves off, and the next morning I'm awoken by a call for my dad and he goes, did your. He goes, did your mother call you? And I said, no. And he goes, grandma died last night. And almost before he could finish that sentence, Amber tears were rolling down my eyes. There was something that I knew in that moment of what he was going to say, and immediately I flashed back to the dream. And then I looked on this cabinet because my grandmother had asked me to get this watch fixed. All right. She was so happy because her eyesight was kind of going bad. And she'd gotten this watch from this vision impaired charity. Right. And it was one where you push the button and it tells you what time it is, right? Instead of having to look at the time. Right. So she's so happy with having that. And I, I was always going to get it fixed. I was going to say I never got to it. And I just remember that watch just sitting there in that moment.

Amber: What an incredibly beautiful moment, a final goodbye on a spiritual level between a grandmother and her grandson. But that wasn't everything. Jake's grandma also left a little sign that only he would know who it was from. But before we hear more about that, let's take a listen to the incredible tribute Jake posted on social media after her passing.

Jake: For anyone who knows me well, you know my grandmother is an extremely important part of my life. Her love, advice, support and encouragement always got me through the difficult moments. She set the stage for me to attend Webster University and pursue my passion for film and television, with very little evidence that I could actually do anything productive within film and television. She became a welcome fixture around the University Center where I worked on campus. When Jake's grandmother came by, everyone took notice. When I moved out to Hollywood with no job but an apartment I was obligated to pay rent on, she made sure I could bridge the gap to stay here until I locked in a job two months later. She made every holiday memorable, from her beautiful decorations to her fair system of Christmas present distribution amongst her six grandchildren, oldest to youngest Jake, Carlos, Nicole, Armando, Annie and Gina. Her wit contagious, her stories always entertaining. Some have even made it into various scripts in development, including The Dawning. Her stubbornness. Truly charming. An independent spirit born into a time when it was not appreciated to be a woman. Most of all, her love was a gift that I will cherish in my heart and mind. Marion, a wild man, has touched more lives than she will ever know, and I look forward to celebrating her spirit with my family and friends forever. March 26th, 1923 to November 14th, 2015.

Amber: Oh, I love that. Thank you.

Jake: So I ended up posting that, and I got a lot of, you know, feedback and a lot of sympathy and everything else like that and kind of opened up the, uh, the floodgates to kind of a tribute to her. So I ended up going home and, uh, I remember, um, a couple of days later, we were in the limo and there was a hearse with my grandmother's body and head of it. And I remember just looking over to the side, and I saw some guy just walking along the street, just minding his own business. But he saw the hearse, and then he basically touched his chest, kissed his fingers, and then put it up in the sky like a tribute. It was like this little kind of, you know, pedestrian moment. But it was it was interesting.

So during the time my grandmother had been at home, she was so proud of the film that we had done together that I mentioned my senior thesis. So she kept asking me to get it transferred from VHS to DVD, and I said, grandmother, wait until I get the pristine copies I want you. She says, oh, I got a VHS. So just let's just wait till we I get the the the more suitable master. And I was always like trying to get that make that happen. But it was in storage and it was complicated to get. But, um, she wanted to show it to her. A friend and a friend at the home ended up passing away. Right. And she was sad about that. And I was sad, too, obviously. So we get to the funeral parlor, uh, to the wake where my grandmother was. And the name of the movie that I had done was The Parlor Boys. So we get there and I look up and it's the, the the room she's in is is parlor B okay? And I'm like, okay, grandma, I get the message. I was like, okay, okay. This makes makes perfect sense.

Amber: When you first saw the bus with her saying goodbye. And that morning you clearly it clicked for you like that was my grandma saying goodbye to me, or were you still kind of like, what was that? Was that did you correlate it or…

Jake: I didn't have time. My my dad woke me up with the phone call, so I didn't have time. So it was in Saint Louis. It was two hours ahead. So she had passed away in the middle of the night. My mom hadn't reached me or hadn't woken me up with the call. And by the time my dad called me and I woke up, um, that's what I'm. So I didn't actually even have time to think about it. It just it just in that moment, connected and made perfect sense.

Amber: Did you talk about it with your family? The dream and then the parlor. Coincidence? How were they open to it? Or tell me about the woo. How into the woo are you and your family? Were they like, that's crazy. That's a coincidence. Because honestly, I've had several people write in already to the podcast talking about being told when someone passed away via a dream. So, you know, they're like, oh, you know, I got I had this dream and they basically were like, I'm not going to see you again or I love you or whatever. And I woke up the next day and I found out that that person had passed so very similar. So it must be a thing.

Jake: I gotta tell you, that's a really good question. And my family does come from a sort of, uh, psychic realm, if you will, and things that couldn't necessarily be explained. But I had a great aunt who was my great grandmother's sister, who at its heart for a time live with my grandmother, my, my great grandmother. And she was always going through some sort of emotional what they'd call at the time. This was like the 40s or 50, right? Um, actually, no, she was born in, uh, 1902. So, so, so and she had gone through a variety of different psychiatric treatments at that time. And you can only imagine what kind of rudimentary psychiatric, uh, sort of treatment that she had. She had gone through those times and she had psychic abilities, but they didn't know what to do with these things. Um, they didn't know. And I think that when I see a lot of people going through things, that they're very perceptive and they're very sensitive to, but people can't quite put their finger on it. They don't know their own powers and they don't know how to necessarily channel them.

So my family does come from a degree of that, and it's gotten passed on. And to be fair, it gets a bit diluted because I think the older you get, um, and the more media we're exposed to, the more static that you have in your life, and you start to sort of stray away from the clarity of those things, because I can only imagine back in the when she was going through this, maybe in her teens or 20s, you know, there was radio, There wasn't TV. There was a newspaper. But now we have every single thing to keep us occupied and off focus of our own abilities and our own capabilities. Right. Uh, whether promoting them, second guessing them, or feeling the need to amplify, uh, our own lives. Right. So I think that sometimes it's more difficult to sort of hone in on those psychic powers that you may have or cuz that you may not notice because you're so distracted, unfortunately, um, where it comes in, in my world, oddly enough, is in film and TV.

Like when I was a kid, we used to have the TV guide. I would think about a movie, and then I would look and oh, see it in there. And then I would think about a movie or TV show, and then I would see a commercial for it right after. So that has happened when I was a kid. So I was like, well, that's just weird, whatever. But my family was a very soft landing for this kind of experience. Like nobody questioned nobody, I would say. And my friend Alou, whose grandmother then I saw the vision of but it was my grandmother's eyes, so I could tell if there is, uh, he got it right away. People know me as a non bullshit artist, to be fair, Amber, so I don't get a lot of people like skeptical. They may be skeptical, but they're not skeptical of my story for some reason, but I haven't. It's this is this is by far your show is going to be the biggest amplification that I share it with, um, at this point in my life. So for whatever that's worth.

Amber: Yeah. Oh, well, I mean, well, first of all. This topic is very taboo for some people. So the fact that your family like way back they did not, I'm sure take it well. When someone had these psychic abilities, I'm sure they put her through all kinds of procedure. You must be crazy if you're, you know,

Jake: exactly. Went through shock therapy at the time and I can't. I don't have the information to say. Well, what other emotional issues that she was going through, but it was rudimentary, so. But but she had she had things that were unexplained, like she would guess things she would think about things, she would predict things. And it wasn't something that was valued. It was something as either naysayer or, uh, deemed as something, uh, psychologically aloof, I guess you'd say. And to your other point, the other people in my life that I've shared this with, I have a really good friend, Crystal. Coral, who's a spiritual medium, amazing, has done some amazing wonders. She's also a victim advocate. Also a private investigator has her own podcast, uh, called The Visitation and does a lot of it.

But I would say this is that I didn't tell her much about my grandmother, but she knew things there's no way she could have known. I started to get on board with understanding that any skepticism I had for the afterlife, or people trying to connect was evaporated. The day that I woke up to my dad's phone call and my grandmother had, um, appeared to me in the dream night before. And then by the time we got to the funeral parlor and I saw the indication on the door, I laugh because I was like, okay, grandma, and she's here, she's there. And and I've had other people who who have said things to me and about, um, about her and everything else like that. I know she's watching over us now, you know, obviously blessing this episode or not blessing it. She'll leave her comment on Apple review if she could. Maybe. Maybe. We'll see. Yeah, grandma loves Jake or Jakey. That was my nickname.

Um, but that being said, is that. Yeah, I think that, um, you know, it's easy to disregard certain things when it's maybe people you don't know that well or don't have that much of a bond with, but when it happens to you as directly like this, it's really I think you might be doing yourself a disservice not to explore it more. I'm not saying you have to have faith in the next realm, but. It's worth looking into, and it's worth understanding that sometimes there are things that are not just coincidence, but there's an energy or connection that is extremely valuable to understand at least at least doing analysis on. Uh, because it could open up some things to you and could enrich your life, I think a lot more than than, um, you know, we we think it does.

Amber: Let's hear Jake's final thoughts on the afterlife.

And why do you think they come back? Is there a reason, like, do you feel like there's something that they just need you to know? Or, like, I'm here with you. I'm in a good place. What is it like? Why do you think she. She kind of was on that school bus.

Jake: It's something I pondered, but I think it's also spirits try to get through any way they can. And I think that this really opened up my life to thinking how temporary this physical presence is. When you find this, you realize that it's just something that it brings you a level of hope and connection. And also, um, I want to say closure, but it's not really closure. It's more of a sort of advancement of your capabilities to understand there's more to this.

Amber: I always feel like they kind of want to just let us know, like it doesn't end here. There is a bigger picture and I'm actually still living. I'm just in a different realm. Essentially, I'm just energy somewhere else. Like, I don't know how you're raised, but I just remember feeling like, oh, you know, we go to heaven. We just they're gone until it's my turn to go to heaven. And like, like it. Almost like it just, I don't know, it's such a black and white thing. When I was growing up, like, I didn't realize there's so much more to spirits and the evolution of life. And this really is just a small part of it here on Earth, you know? And it's like almost like they just want to give that last like. Hey, like, don't be sad for me. Like, I'm still going. I'm still being grandma somewhere else. Like I'm still here. I'm always here, you know I'm right with you. And I will always be there.

Jake: You know I love that. And I got to tell you is that, um, I think it taps into what is energy and what is existence. Because, you know, we exist on some level, as, you know, physical, tangible human beings. But when I look at things like reincarnation, I don't think they're exact replicas of someone who once lived. But I think there are traits and there things that are passed on, not just practically through DNA, but also, uh, there are things you can explain in terms of how people have certain memories and certain things. And, you know, granted, we talk you can meet things with a level of skepticism. But I think when it really happens to you and it happens in a way that's not with a ton of fanfare, to be fair, like even what happened with my experience with the dream, with my grandmother, it wasn't a lot of fanfare. It wasn't something that was so focused. And yes, she was in a home. Yes, she was in, um, a certain level of condition. But, um, the way that the dream happened, how the dream happened, the timing of the dream. Okay, that's one thing. And then we go to the wake and we see the sign on the door above. Okay, that's the second thing. And then I talked to some people. Then I talked to a spiritual medium. Then I talked to a variety of other people. And you realize is that, um. You just kind of have to sometimes pay attention to these things. You don't have to agree with them. But I think also to Amber, I believe that these things scare people. I think sometimes, too, I think that people want to feel like there's a beginning, middle and an end. The things, as I said before to me, you know, and no offense to anyone, but I'm not a big funeral or gravesite. Um, sort of, uh, how do I always say participant? No. Um, I mean, on a regular basis. Yeah. I just I've never I've never visited my grandmother's grave because my grandmother isn't here. She's not exactly. She's she's in she's in my existence. She's in my everyday life supporting and believing and thinking and looking over me. Um, you know, uh, in that way, and I, I just, uh, it's just different for me. I don't have any disrespect or any feeling one way or the other, because I know that's important to people, but for me, it's that.

So I think that also leans into it, that if there's something that's like non tangible, like my emotions or my feelings or my motivations, then why couldn't that be the case? Why couldn't that be something that exists in that way? Doesn't mean we always have our radar up that we're picking up on it, but it doesn't mean it's not there. Just because I can't see it doesn't mean it's not there.

Amber: A big thank you to Jake for sharing his story with us. I encourage you all to go check out his incredible podcasts, Strictly Stalking and Love, lust, fear. I'll have those linked both in the show notes.

And as always, if you were inspired by the story, it would mean the world to us. If you would like to make a small donation on behalf of Jake's grandma to the American for the Arts, we'll also provide a show link for that as well in the show notes.

If you are interested in sharing your story, please send an email to Next Realm podcast at gmail.com.

Take care friends, and we'll see you in the next episode.