The First Vision I Remember

The first vision I remember came to me when I was twenty.

I didn’t know to call it a vision then.

It arrived through a lucid dream — the kind where you are fully present, aware that you are witnessing something rather than imagining it.

I was standing somewhere undefined when my grandfather appeared before me.

He was upright. Calm. Smiling.

Flames surrounded him — not violently, not painfully. They didn’t burn the way fire is supposed to. They moved like light with warmth inside it, contained, almost gentle.

I was horrified.

I remember the confusion more than the fear. I couldn’t understand why he was there like that, why I was seeing him this way. My body knew something was wrong before my mind could catch up.

He saw it on my face.

He stepped toward me and held his hand out, his voice steady and familiar as ever.

“It’s going to be okay,” he said.
“I’m not in pain.”
“It’s time.”

I didn’t understand what he meant. But hearing his voice softened something in me. I relaxed enough to breathe, enough to listen.

He said goodbye.

He told me he would see me soon.

Then I woke up.

I felt calm — strangely so — but deeply confused. I didn’t tell anyone. I didn’t know what to say. I didn’t yet have language for what I’d seen, and I didn’t try to create it.

The confusion faded over the next few weeks, replaced by nothing at all. Life continued.

Two months before my twenty-first birthday, my grandfather was admitted to intensive care. We were all told to say our goodbyes and go home.

Not long after, we received the call.

He had passed from a massive heart attack.

It was my grandmother’s birthday.

That was the moment the dream returned — not as fear, not as shock, but as recognition.

I understood then that what I’d seen hadn’t been imagination. It hadn’t been symbolism. It hadn’t been something my mind produced to cope with loss.

It had been a premonition.

That was the first of many visions to come true.

But it was the only one that didn’t ask me to believe anything.

It simply asked me to remember.