Mom’s Butterflies

Lately I have a feeling that my Aunt is dead. I haven’t seen her since she left a few days before Thanksgiving. She was basically homeless. I had wanted her to come and stay since I found her seven years ago but she was all the way over in Florida and it seemed like a daunting task to get her all the way to California. She wouldn’t let me spend any money on her beyond a few dollars when she was hungry, or a motel room when the weather was particularly bad, so I couldn’t just get her a ticket. But then we moved to Texas and she did come. But she insisted on taking a bus and it took days for her to get here. When I picked her up I felt something ominous but she was my spiritual mentor and I trusted her so I disregarded my feelings. Turns out she had some kind of psychic parasite or something because she was a completely different person while she was here. Things got darker and darker until I found myself not wanting to come out of my room. When she would leave the house to go for a walk, I would compulsively cleanse the whole house with sage and prayed for whatever it was to be gone. I would feel great until she came back. I didn’t know what to do, I love her, she’s my family and if you knew my history, you would understand what a huge thing that is to me. But it just kept getting worse. Every day she was here I felt more and more depressed and afraid. Of what, I wasn’t sure but by then I had all but narrowed it down to something to do with her. She left on her own, without my having to engineer it, but she hurt me pretty badly by giving all the gifts I had bought her back. Not to my face, of course, she just left them in the room she had been staying in and when I went in to tidy up, I found them all.

She had been teaching me how to honor my divinity and the universe and how to access energy to raise my vibration. She had been showing me how to find my path and figure out my life purpose. Her direction has been the single most defining thing in my life, leading me to so many epiphanies and insights about myself and the earth and the way things work. The things she taught me have been invaluable. My life is so much better than it was when I found her. And now I think she is dead.

One of the things she insisted upon is that when a person dies, it is a happy occurrence, only sad because we will miss them. She said that our loved ones visit and send signs that they are there with us. One of those signs, she said, is butterflies following you or flitting about you, especially yellow ones. I used to scoff at nearly everything she tried to tell me, until I had experiences that made them seem not so fanciful. Every time I would smile an inner smile and nod along, within a few days, I would have an involvement that spoke to me about that very thing. It was uncanny. And now there are butterflies following me every time I go outside. They fly in my face, light on my head, my arms, and right in front of my feet when I’m walking or my tires when I’m riding my bike.

I hope she’s not dead. I love her. I miss her and wish I could have helped her more. But she did just teach me that the universe takes from your life that which no longer serves you and puts in what will. Maybe the butterflies are her telling me she’s okay, that she left to spare me the pain of her more permanent loss. Coins are supposed to be another sign of the presence of a loved one who is no longer with us. Yesterday I found a dime where I had just stepped minutes before.