Soul Butterflies

It’s been one month since the last time I saw my mom. My dad says that I will soon her someday, but I am not sure about that. I’ve been wandering around town lately, looking at the places that leave traces of the mom I once knew. The mother that smelled like cinnamon and had the most beautiful brown eyes one could ever see. I know it is strange to think that someone could call brown eyes pretty, maybe she made them pretty. There was something about them that drew you in, that made you want to tell her everything about your life. I suppose that is why they call eyes the window to the soul, because there is not a more beautiful soul out there than my moms. I still try to look at old pictures of her, just to get a small remembrance of what it was like to be in the presence of her. Sometimes it works better to just not think of them at all.

There are times when I wonder why she left, my dad tells me to not think too much about it, but I can’t help it. It doesn’t help that there are traces of her wherever I seem to go. This town is so big but she seemed to touch every space at some point. What makes it even worse is that just about every person seems to tell me I am the spitting image of her, or what they used to know of her. No one seems to speak about it. Maybe it is because while this city holds so many people, it seems that everyone knows what is going on in your home. While it was comforting for the first few days, their kindness soon became overbearing tho the point of having dozens of calls a day from people we never even knew asking how we were holding up. Attention has never really bothered my dad, I think he even craves the sympathy we receive. Myself on the other hand, would rather that people would just leave us be, but that was how my mother was as well. 

I think the hardest thing about our situation since she left is that the same amount of butterflies visit the garden my mother planted the day before she left in the middle of the night as they did every year. She had this thing about butterflies, that they were the souls of our loved ones telling us they were okay. My mom said when she dies she hoped she would become a butterfly as well, one with bright orange wings and brown spots. I always thought this was kind of an ugly idea for what you would want to be recreated as, but after all, it wasn’t my butterfly to choose. She even believed that no matter where you are in the world, the soul butterfly of your loved one would find you, as long as you still had love for them in your heart. I fear that the next time I see my mother will be when I see her butterfly, and who knows when that will be. I am not sure if she will even be able to find me. 

It may be different if I lived in my house for the rest of my life, but my dad says he is tired of feeling the ghost of my mom lingering around this town. Maybe he was right, even though she wasn’t dead, what was left of her sent a tingle down my spine. It’s strange to look at it, my house so empty and full of boxes getting ready to be packed away and sent three hours away from the place that I grew up. I have never been far away from something that made me feel so comfortable and safe. Maybe that is why I am writing this letter, to cope with the loss of so much in such little time. Mom always told me that writing made her feel better about hurting in ways she couldn’t describe with her words. I am not sure how much that is working for me because as I am sitting here, writing in this journal of hers, I am looking at my window and I am looking at a butterfly with orange wings with brown spots sitting on my window sill. 

I cannot tell you what makes me feel more sick to my stomach, the fact that I am seeing my mom’s butterfly, or that I am watching my dad throw away all of my mom’s stuff. I don’t want to scare away my mom’s soul butterfly, but I feel like I should get a good look at her just once more before the only memory I truly have of her is in my mind.

I closed my journal and walked carefully to my window sill, praying I would not scare my mom away. As I stepped closer I realized why mom always wanted brown spots on her wings. They looked exactly like her eyes did, way better than any picture or memory could show. I looked at her for a while, and for the first time in a long time, I wasn’t sad anymore. It wasn’t happiness by a long shot, but a sense of calm seemed to rush over my entire body. I knew she was safe, I just wish that I was.

I watched as she flew back to the garden, she landed so gracefully on a pink tulip just on the brink of blooming. The sinking in my chest was not just the thought that this was the last time that I will see my mother, but the realization that what I once saw as other butterflies flying around the garden, were actually flies buzzing around the freshly sowed dirt.

My heart rate began to speed up as I watched carefully to see if my father was still packing up the moving truck. I dialed 911 on my phone as I listened to it ring, I could still see the butterfly of my mother sitting restfully on the tulip she planted. The tulips were on the very edge of the garden, and on the other side were roses. My mom has always hated roses but my dad hated butterflies so much more.