What Carried Me Through the Week I Lost My Grandpa

By Crystal Virgin

"I am still grieving. But I am grieving with hope. And that is a different thing entirely."

The night before my grandpa died, I had a dream.

I was sitting at his bedside with my oldest daughter, Amelia. We were just there — quietly, the way you sit with someone you love when there are no words left that feel adequate. And then, without warning, he got up. He stood. He walked — completely healed, completely whole, the grandpa I remembered before illness took so much of him. He was almost floating. Luminous in the way that things in dreams sometimes are.

In the dream I understood, somehow, that we were watching his spirit leave his body. That we were being allowed to see something the physical world doesn't normally let you see.

I woke up the next morning carrying that image. And by Sunday night, he was gone.

I don't believe the timing of that dream was a coincidence. I believe God was preparing me. Reminding me, gently and specifically, of the world we cannot see — the one where people live on, where suffering ends, where someone who has been slowly leaving you finally arrives somewhere whole.

The Week Before

Grief is strange when it comes slowly. You start mourning before the person is gone, which means by the time it actually happens you are already exhausted — hollowed out from a week of anticipating the loss, of making peace with something you aren't ready to make peace with, of saying goodbye over the phone because they live in another state and you can't get there in time.

I prayed a lot that week. For comfort for the family gathered at his house. For peace for him. For the ones holding his hand through the hardest hours.

And then Sunday night, when the reality finally landed — he's gone, he's actually gone — I didn't want to pray anymore. Not because my faith had wavered. But because I was tired of feeling. Tired of crying. The grief had taken up so much space that I had nothing left to bring to a prayer, and I wasn't sure I could open that door again without falling apart.

I think God understood.

What Music Did When I Had Nothing Left

I have a playlist of primary songs I turn on in the mornings while my girls play. Simple, familiar, the kind of music that has lived in my bones since childhood. This week I leaned on it more than usual.

But the song that has really held me — the one that keeps finding me when I need it most — is one called I See a Hero by Shawna Edwards. It's the song our family chose to sing together at his funeral. All of us — me and my cousins, gathered to honor him the way you honor someone who meant that much.

The lyrics are beautiful. As I listened, I kept thinking about my grandpa — who he is to me, what his presence has meant. He has a way about him that is completely irreplaceable. His jokes, the ones he's told a hundred times over the years, are somehow still funny every single time. He is just a special man. And hearing a song about a hero made me realize that's exactly what he is to me.

Music has always done this for me. On the hard days — grief, loneliness, anger, anxiety — it reaches somewhere that nothing else quite can. When every family member I've called isn't available, when I don't have words for what I'm feeling, when I'm too tired to pray and too sad to think, a hymn or a primary song or a piece of gospel music from any tradition can be there in a way that feels genuinely supernatural. It carries something of the Spirit that meets me exactly where I am.

I don't fully understand why. I just know that it works. And this week, it has been one of the ways God has shown up for me when I didn't have the energy to reach for Him.

What I Know, Even Now

My faith has not wavered this week. I want to be clear about that — not because I think wavering would be wrong, but because I think it's worth saying that grief and faith can coexist without one destroying the other.

I don't doubt what I know. My grandpa's spirit lives on. He is no longer suffering. He has been reunited with people he loved and lost, and with a God who I believe welcomed him home. The plan of salvation is not an abstract concept to me this week — it is the thing I am actually standing on.

That dream was a gift. God gave it to me the night before so I would have something to hold when the morning came. A reminder, specific and personal, that the world doesn't end at the grave. That what we can see is not all there is. That healing is real, and wholeness is real, and the grandpa I remember — the one who was almost floating — is more himself now than he has been in years.

I am still grieving. I will be for a while. But I am grieving with hope, and that is a different thing entirely.

For Anyone Else in a Hard Week

If you are in a season of loss right now — if grief has made prayer feel too heavy and you don't know where to put what you're carrying — can I suggest something small?

Put on a song. A hymn, a primary song, something that has lived in your bones long enough to feel like home. Let it do what you can't right now. Let it carry the prayer when you're too tired to form one.

God meets us there too. He always has.

And if you need a starting place, find I See a Hero by Shawna Edwards. I can't promise it won't make you cry. But I can promise it will remind you of something true.