This morning, I woke up with a butterfly on my head. I felt
it moved and fluttered its tiny wings, near my shoulder down to my elbows and
wrist. I thought it was a figment of my aftersleep until I pulled myself away
from bed and found, up on my one elbow that little piece of its tiny
wings—black with white lines painted in circles and broken oval shapes, and
some more dots of white in its very tip.
The day I finally returned to school after we buried mom,
two brown butterflies came tailing me as I walked out the street. They were
there, fluttering at arms reach, waist-high, beside me, until I was able to
cross the road and board a ride. In Chinese culture, two butterflies flying
together symbolize love. At that time, when the hardest thing to do is to wake
up realizing that she is gone, mama could have just made her way to make me
feel she’s staying. Or at least her love is. I know, it was her. Daunted by my past experiences in
streets, mama would not allow that I’d be walking out the streets alone even on
broad daylight. The butterflies were a proof.
My sister told us, another butterfly wandered their office the day she resumed working days after the funeral. “She must be watching me over as I work,” she said.
In Japan a butterfly is seen as a personification of a
person’s soul. A Japanese superstition even says that when a butterfly enters
your guestroom and “perches behind the bamboo screen, the person whom you most
love is coming to see you”. This is
echoed by the Greeks whose word for “butterfly” could mean soul, in Russia it
could mean a “woman”. In my own parlance, Butterflies are friends and angels.
They bring to me my mom’s presence every time I feel hapless.
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