Butterflies are Free to Fly

"How does one become a Butterfly?" she asked pensively.
"You must want to fly so much that you are willing to give up being a caterpillar", said the Sage.
T. Paulus

Every morning when I walk thru my front yard, admiring the roses, there is a butterfly on one of them.
In the afternoon, when I have my lunch out at the Bistro table, or find a moment to just sit in the sunshine, there is a butterfly flitting about. Most often they are white, but a few times I have seen tiny, tiny orange Monarch-looking ones hovering in the lavender, or yellow swallowtails soaring above the grapevine.

Now, granted, butterflies in a garden aren't so unusual. But in my case, those butterflies are so much more.

You see, when my mother and I were sitting at my grandmothers' graveside funeral back a few summers, I was listening to the pastor's comforting words about how death of the body is not the end of life - it is a glorious new beginning for a creature that has always been inside of us. Our human body is a cocoon of sorts, protecting our spirit until it is time for it to soar free. Just as those words escaped his lips, I saw a beautiful yellow butterfly flitting through the air, spiraling downward from the sky toward me. It swirled above the gorgeous floral arrangements placed along the sides of the casket, as if to peek at them all. The butterfly then came toward me, and I nudged my mom and all I could speak softly was 'Mom...the butterfly....' She looked at it, and we both watched incredulously as it came to us, flew two complete circles around us above our heads, and then went off through the branches of a large pine tree and off into the wild blue yonder. That very tree, that shaded us from the hot summer sun, had been a sapling when my grandfather and uncle were buried there twenty five years before.

My mom and I looked at each other, both certain that what we had witnessed was my grandmothers' spirit, set free from her ailing body and mind to soar into Heaven and reunite with her husband and son, lost so long ago. No one else saw the butterfly. To this day, my dad thinks we are a bit daft. But that doesn't matter...what we saw, we saw because it was meant for us. My grandmother, my mom's mother, was telling us it was okay, she was fine, not to worry about her, and that she would always be watching over us. We joke that she was flitting about approving the arrangements, the casket, even the photo we chose to display of her in her favorite blouse, uttering comments like"All this, for ME????" Within a month, my mom and I had had the same exact dream about grandma running toward grandpa and my uncle, their arms outstretched to welcome her and all of them smiling, young, and healthy.

We are so close to divinity, so close to Spirit...all we need to do is wake up and notice it. Each time I see a butterfly in my yard, I do - and I say "Hello, Grandma!".
Especially on the days I just wish I could call her up and talk to her, and hear her comforting voice...