Butterflies

This day Nancy was laid to rest with her husband Bernard in the cemetery of St Edith's. After a bleak day on Thursday, the morning was bright and clear, with the first touch of frost on the ground. As the sun rose and the air warmed, the butterflies flocked to the Buddleia in Nancy's yard, as they have done every sunny spell these last two weeks. When she was being cared for by Caroline at home, peacock butterflies several times entered the living room where she lay. In my blip of 12 August I had remarked on Nancy's fondness for butterflies.

During the funeral service, a flicker drew my eye to a peacock that was flying high like a moth around the ceiling lights.

When Bernard died suddenly 5 years ago, we were camping in the Spanish Pyrennees and I had gone for a walk up a mountain. Caroline heard the news when I was away, and as she waited for my return, sitting at a slatted table in the campsite, a fritillary butterfly alighted on the table close to her. The butterfly was a comforting presence in her grief and she watched it for over an hour before it was eventually flushed by someone with a camera trying to photograph it.

The Ancient Greeks thought that butterflies were the souls of people who had passed away. There are similar beliefs amongst many other cultures, old and modern.

Elisabeth Kubler-Ross, the Swiss-born psychologist who helped to revolutionise the care of terminally ill patients wrote:

"Death is simply
a shedding of the physical body
like the butterfly shedding its cocoon.

It is a transition
to a higher state of consciousness
where you continue to perceive,
to understand, to laugh,
and to be able to grow."

Kubler-Ross as a young woman visited the Polish concentration camp of Maidenak and was affected by the children's drawings of butterflies in the huts. There were no butterflies in the camp. She wondered what made the children draw butterflies then fearlessly walk into the gas chambers. These images stayed with her and influenced her thinking about the end of life.