Sayonara
Pink butterflies may exist, but they are extremely rare…and should be cherished if encountered. Outlife Expert
“I loved that movie. It was so romantic,” my mother started to talk about an old black and white film I think I remember seeing but can’t recall its name either. It’s where a woman waits on a hilltop waiting for her lover. While she stands there, we know, although she doesn’t, that he has been killed in a distant military operation.
“They promised each other they would meet there. It was their special place.” My mother’s eyes are welling up at this point. “Then she’s surrounded by these butterflies,” she continues, her voice breaking, “they just appear out of nowhere, fluttering around her. It’s so beautiful.”
I swear, if she starts full on bawling, I’m outta here. I mean, I can only take so much romance. I make a joke and change the subject.
My mom has been a voracious reader of romance novels for several years now. She left shopping bags of those books to me after she died that she picked up at thrift stores. They all seem to have absorbed the mood of those places—musty, old and lonely. I guess they were her legacy. I really find romance novels boring. I know there’s a formula to them and as a writer myself I realize the genre is not as easy as it appears. They’re all pretty predictable, ending on a high note; yet the paths are so circuitous it allows a sense of individuality to each story. Maybe I will take a few of those books to read, I thought. Couldn’t hurt.
I was not surprised when my parents began sleeping in separate bedrooms. I knew it was mainly because my mom spent long nights with her light on reading those books. She was a very affectionate woman and I believed those books soothed her and perhaps gave her a more attentive husband, even if he was fictitious.
She’d tell me that she believed, as many cultures do, that butterflies symbolize transformation and resurrection of a soul. “When I die,” she would proclaim, “I’ll come back as a butterfly and let you know I made it to the other side.”
This was perhaps the beginning of her descent into dementia, although I didn’t recognize it. I just thought she was being poetic. My Italian mother was always a believer in the spiritual realm, influenced by the church and by her grandmother who was considered the neighborhood healer during the Great Depression and had visions beyond the scope of reason. Neither of us thought that was an oddity, unlike my dad who thought we were both a bit bat crazy.
I remember mom telling me how she witnessed her grandmother having a seizure and when she came out of it, she told my mother what she saw. She claimed she witnessed her brother, who was in the military in Italy, thrashing around in the ocean. She cried, worrying he was drowning. Days later she received a telegram saying his military ship had been torpedoed, but he survived!
Mom was a young 80 when her dementia became too overwhelming for my dad to handle by himself and was brought to live in a nearby nursing home. She actually seemed happier to be surrounded by more people, conversation and the owner’s pet dog. They also offered more activities and outings than my father was able to undertake. Unfortunately, by then my mother was not mobile or able to talk. A shower accident contributed horribly to her death a year later.
After she died, my husband’s job ended which had brought us to California where my parents lived, and we returned to our home in Tucson, Arizona. We resumed our normal life, which included taking care of our garden of saguaros, mesquite bushes and oleanders.
That summer, while I was piddling around in the house, my husband came inside and insisted I go outside with him into the yard. “Outside” was not my favorite place to be in summer when the temperatures are in a feverish pitch but he was anxious to show me something, so I followed him.
He brought me to the oleander bush filled with pink blossoms and just stood there without saying a word. I commented on how pretty the flowers were, wondering why he was so fascinated by the oleander until I saw the blossoms move, then flutter. Realization came slowly. By every flower was a pink butterfly. The entire oleander was filled with pink butterflies—a plant that is extremely toxic to them as well as humans! But apparently, not to my mother.
My reaction was typical for me. I shut down; went back inside the house and continued with minor, unimportant chores before my eyes welled up and I started full on bawling.
Originally from Chicago, Marlene DeVere has traveled and lived in various parts of the country and in the Middle East, but she admits it has been the inner journey—explored through writing—that has been the most rewarding. Retired from a career in teaching, broadcast journalism and copywriting, she lives in Tucson, Arizona. Her work has been included in Root Smoke, FemiNICHE, Angels on Earth, Lowestoft Chronicle, and The Bad Day Book Anthology among others, including being a Finalist in the Bellingham Review’s Annie Dillard Award for Creative Nonfiction.
