top_post.json

{
    "title": "It wasn\u2019t my grandfather\u2019s body in the casket",
    "selftext": "This happened last year. My grandfather\u2019s health had been declining from dementia for several months until one day he just dropped dead on the floor at home. Despite how sudden it was, he went peacefully.\n\nI hadn\u2019t seen him since Christmas almost a full year prior, and even though he didn\u2019t look so great, he was completely recognizable as him. Then the day of the funeral came and I hesitated to get close to his body. It was my first time as an adult having a family member die, and it just felt\u2026 more bleak than my other grandparents who died back when I was a kid or teen.\n\nEventually, I couldn\u2019t avoid it anymore, and my mom led me to the casket. When I saw his face, it wasn\u2019t his. It was mine.\n\nHis hair, his nose, his bone structure were all gone, replaced with my own features. I was staring at my own dead body lying in the casket, and no matter how many times I rubbed my eyes or looked away, it never changed.\n\nI don\u2019t look like my grandfather. For starters, I\u2019m a woman. My face is thinner, my jaw has a different shape, and my nose is pretty unique. Granted, I have short hair\u2014a bit like his\u2014but not the exact same. But it was undeniably me in the casket. Not someone who looked like me. It was me.\n\nI left the casket and began talking with family members. Every so often, I\u2019d go back to see if something had changed, though it was always the same. No one else mentioned it, and I was too scared to say anything myself. So I thought I must be the only one seeing myself in the casket\n\nIn all likelihood, it must have been a hallucination of some kind. Maybe it was some sort of stress response my brain created in the moment, but it\u2019s odd that nothing else was affected by the hallucination. Not a single thing seemed out of the ordinary aside from my body being in the casket.\n\nI don\u2019t know what it means, but it freaked me out."
}