Do Butterflies Mourn?

Share

I have been without my mother for exactly one year. She passed away July 29, 2018 around 6:00 a.m., just moments before a thunderstorm woke me and I went to check on her. I think her spirit was still in the room when I walked in.

I have been without my mother for exactly one year. She passed away July 29, 2018 around 6:00 a.m., just moments before a thunderstorm woke me and I went to check on her. I think her spirit was still in the room when I walked in.

I miss her so dreadfully. I miss the smell of her, the light fragrance of her before she got really sick. She wasn’t someone who wore much perfume. She just smelled like clean; like Tide mixed with a good fresh bar soap and warmth.

I miss her laugh. She didn’t laugh without reason. She had a beautiful smile and a comforting chuckle that she shared generously. She saved her laughs for things that truly deserved it, like she had a finite supply and should preserve them for the treasure they were. The full out belly laugh, when it was apparent that her smile could no longer contain or express the moment’s mirth adequately, usually at a time in which she became the center of attention, and she was delighted and embarrassed at the same time.  Her birthday party at Ted’s Mexican restaurant when they came out to sing for her. They put a giant sombrero on her head and started singing “Yay Carolyn!”  She laughed so hard, she had no strength to protest or remove the enormous bejeweled hat. She laughed and covered her mouth so tightly, as if she was trying to keep all her joy from escaping. Her smile was so broad it might have split her face in two, but with her hands she could hold her face together. The laugh took over her entire body, and she looked like she might literally die laughing.

I wish that we could die from laughing, instead of from cancer. That would be nice.

Writing about losing someone so dear, without sounding overly weepy or dramatic, but also giving her proper respect is difficult. This will be sloppy and drippy and without rationale but, dear reader, this is from the heart.

Few things are more horrifying than watching the first person you ever loved, the first person you ever met, die. It is not just the moment of death, but the weeks, days, hours leading up to the moment that are both awful and indescribably precious. To watch her formerly strong body that kept a household going, that raised 5 kids and a husband, become smaller and weaker with each treatment, while you plead with God to slow it down or speed it up, depending on the level of her pain, is not for the weak. But, when they put her tiny body on that gurney and moved it down the hallway, through the house, with the family lining the way, like some macabre parade without the ticker tape, I was crushed forever. As long as she still lay in her bed, she might wake up and smile. But now all hope was gone.

I think of her every day. Every morning, for months following her death, I would wake up and re-remember that she was gone. She was my first thought of the day. Nearly every waking moment in the prior months had been about her, planning doctor visits, figuring out care shifts between my siblings and Mom’s sister, Sharon. It was strange trying to figure out what to do with that time, now. Not a week goes by where the realization that she is gone doesn’t hit me like it is brand new information, and I am unable to stop the tears. I sometimes think to call her. Her voice mail messages are still on my phone. There are six of them. They all say the same thing “This is Mom. Call me when you can.” She never wanted to be a bother. Call me when you can. She should have been insulted that she even had to leave a voice mail message. Who was I not to have just taken the call?

Mom was not overly demonstrative with her affections. But she showed her love in subtle ways; the cooking, the cards she signed “Love M & D,” the refusal to let anyone pay for anything in her presence, her fried chicken.

This year, I’ve been canning things from the garden.  The kitchen shelves are filled with strawberry, blueberry and peach jelly. When I make her mother’s pickle recipe it fills the house with the smell of dill that brings them both back to me in such a strong way. I hope this activity says to her “Hey, I remember how you showed us how to do this. I remember your apple butter recipe by heart. I paid attention. I didn’t forget. I’ll never forget you. Please don’t forget me. Please don’t forget me.”

When I think of Mom in Heaven, she’s outside gardening. She loved being outside. During the hottest Oklahoma summer days, people could drive past her house and she’d be sitting on the porch rocker admiring her lovely little yard and the garden she had created within it. A magnificent passion vine lined the fence and threw off an intoxicating fragrance. Large lacey peonies in shades from pink to magenta smiled up at her from their bed. Knock out roses grew simply because she told them to.

Even at her sickest, she wanted to be outside. When she was no longer able to walk, when the cancer had made her bones brittle and painful, and even holding her head up was difficult, she wanted to be outside on the porch.  We would get her up in the mornings for breakfast. She would eat a few bites of raisin bran or an orange cinnamon roll, and a cup of coffee. Then she would request to be taken to the porch. The spring and summer of 2018 we spent a lot of time on that porch, just sitting. It is where she felt best and where we had some of our best conversations. We were forced to slow down and just be with each other. Visitors would come and sit with us. That porch became a happy place in a horrible time. The passion vine was particularly beautiful last year. All her guests would comment on it. Passion vines have a symbiotic relationship with the fritillary butterfly, but almost all butterflies are attracted to it. She enjoyed them so much, and they seemed to enjoy her too. But during her final weeks, those butterflies were really making a show of it. They were everywhere, and not just the butterflies but their caterpillars too.  Cocoons hung from every surface like strings of Chinese lanterns. My little sister, Piglet, commented that maybe all of us on the porch made them feel welcome. Yes, I like to think of butterflies as being a little vain. Such beautiful creatures must delight in having an audience to their beauty and last July they had an extended engagement on Mom’s porch. Mom would point out how this cocoon was getting ready to open or look at that one just coming out. The butterflies would emerge, rest while their wings unfolded, then take flight.  Sometimes they would land on us. Even when the cancer in her brain had taken most of her words, she still smiled at the butterflies. It was like they had a language with her that only she understood… and they understood her.

The sheer volume of butterflies on Mom’s porch in July 2018 was breathtaking. I have never seen that number of them before, or since. It was as if they had shown up purely for her enjoyment and then to escort her to Heaven when she was ready. How lovely to think of my mother being shown the way to Heaven by an army of fritillary butterflies. Two days before she passed, Mom had expressed concern that she would not know which direction to go when she passed through the door of this life. Mom always had an anxiety about getting lost or being somewhere unfamiliar. Piglet and I tried to assure her that there would be happy familiar faces there to greet her and show her the way. But now, I really hope it was the butterflies who gently lifted her soul from her broken body and took her to the entrance to Heaven. How fitting for it to have been the butterflies who said to Jesus, “This is Carolyn, your good and faithful servant.”

Mom’s porch is barren this year, I might be imaging that the peonies didn’t bloom as gaily or the roses weren’t as plentiful, but the reality is my mother is not there, so nothing is as beautiful as it once was.

This weekend when I visited my dad as I normally do on Saturday, I noticed the passion vine and inhaled to receive the fragrance. Something had changed. The fragrance was faint, there were only half dozen blooms, when last year there were hundreds. I saw a few caterpillars, but no butterflies. This is July, this is their time. But they are not there. Did they fly elsewhere this year because the lovely keeper of their vine is no longer there to appreciate and admire them?  Are her butterflies mourning, too?