Lifting The Spirits #4

{Image by Eruwyn at Deviant Art}

Wings of white. It is impossible not to be cheered by the sight of a butterfly.

There is poetry in their movement. There is dance.

They seem so fragile, so vulnerable. There is the fear that they will be eaten by a large bird or blown so far out to sea by a hostile wind that they might never make it back to land.

There is another fear that we are damaging their ecosystems beyond repair and that soon they will be a thing of the past. A creature of myth like unicorns.

Yet they go on. Tiny but tenacious. Fluttering but not foolhardy.

No matter where I go when I see butterflies I always hear people exclaim :

Look at the butterflies. Look at them fly.

There is joy in their voices and a sense that maybe the world still has a little bit of magic left.

The most beautiful thing I have ever heard a complete stranger say about a butterfly was :

They are little flowers flying in the sky.

There are those who think of butterflies, in particular the whites ones, as messengers from the spirit world. Many people speak of seeing a butterfly passing by briefly at a funeral or when thinking of a loved one who is gone.

At my grandmother’s funeral there was a delicate blue butterfly that stopped to observe the mourners squeezing into the church for a moment. Her wings were the colour of the plates my grandmother put her famous spongecake on. She did it because the strawberry jam and cream in the sponge contrasted perfectly with the sky blue plates. She was a food stylist before it became fashionable. That butterfly was a cheerful message on a sad day that Grandma was fine and still with us in spirit.

We have lost several of our beloved goldfish over the years. We bury them in the garden next to the gnome whom Nick believes protects them. On the day we buried our dear Fatty and then our even dearer Seb, a white butterfly came each time as we cried and said goodbye, hovered for a minute, then was gone. Whenever we see a white butterfly now we think of our dear fishies whom I swear were more than creatures of water. There was an inexplicable connection there.

Butterflies. Gracing the air with tenderness and light. They always lift my spirits.