A woman who has lost her child is very angry and depressed. She goes to the cemetery to visit her son’s grave and is confronted with a fateful event.
Elizabeth screams and hurls the pot of stew across the kitchen to the wall. Creamy sauce, potatoes, carrots, and peas splattered everywhere, but Elizabeth didn’t care.
She sank to the kitchen floor and wrapped her arms around her knees. She heard the distant sound of someone moaning, like a wounded animal, and realised that it was her voice.
If Elizabeth could express her feelings, she would shout out her anger, pain, and resentment. This anger and pain consumed her, she could not get rid of it.
Even the pills the doctor prescribed after the funeral didn’t help. They just trapped her in a thick fog that seemed to exacerbate her anger as she tried to dull the pain.
“My son is dead,” Elizabeth shouted to everyone who approached her. She was entitled to that anger, to that anguish. Not to feel was to deny her loss, and she could never deny the loss of Danny.
Danny was six years old and he would never grow up. He would never go to high school or college. He would never marry, and he would never have children. He was stolen from Elizabeth in one second.
Danny ran across the lawn and swung his butterfly net to catch it. Then he fell on the green lawn, just like that, and he was gone.
The doctors said it was an aneurysm, which led Elizabeth to call Danny’s pediatrician and yell at him, calling him a stupid murderer. A few days before he died, Danny went to the doctor for a check-up.
Elizabeth’s pastor visited her. Her husband begged him. He hoped Father Robert could bring her back. But when Father Robert spoke of God’s mercy and accepting His will, Elizabeth threw away the pot of meat stew…
Elizabeth’s husband spoke to her. He begged her to remember that they had another child, that their little girl needed a mother. According to him, she too was frightened and grief-stricken.
“I can’t let him go!” – Elizabeth said. “I carried him inside me, he was ME, he was MY. How can you love him as much as I do? That’s why it’s easy for you to forget him!”
Elizabeth’s husband was angry, hurt, and upset. “Mandy needs you, Liz,” he said softly. “Danny is dead, Mandy is alive. I can’t leave Mandy and neither can you.”
Elizabeth was furious. How dare her husband accused her of forgetting her daughter? She loved Mandy, but she needed to keep Danny alive. She couldn’t think of her boy in the darkness of death. Why couldn’t anyone understand?
Elizabeth slammed the door and got into her car. She drove to the only place that brought her comfort: the cemetery and Danny’s grave.
She knelt at his grave and whispered his name. ” WHY?” – she asked. “Why… Why… Why?” She pressed her cheek against the stone and let her tears flow.
“I don’t understand why? Please, Danny, please, my little boy, your mother needs you so much…” she sobbed. “How can you leave when I love you so much? Why did you leave? Where are you?”.
Elizabeth knew there were no answers, and the pain was spreading and seemed to take over her whole body. Suddenly she heard Danny’s voice: “Mummy? Turn around, Mummy!”
Elizabeth raised her head, her face flooded with tears. “Danny?” – she exclaimed. She turned around, but there was no one there, no Danny. Instead, a butterfly was floating in the air above her like a descending angel.
Then Elizabeth saw another butterfly and another… Soon she was in a cloud of butterflies, and the pain was gone, flying away, and a calmness came over her.
The butterflies disappeared, but the calmness remained. The silent blessing eased Elizabeth’s heart. Then she realised that Danny was all right, that he was with her.
Danny could leave, but his love would be with her as long as she lived. Elizabeth promised Danny in her heart that she would take that love and spread it for the rest of her life.
Elizabeth came home that day and hugged her husband. “I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I know you love and miss Danny too. I’m sorry…”
It was the first time Elizabeth and her husband had cried together over their child, and they were healing tears. That evening Elizabeth put her daughter to bed and told her a story.
“Once upon a time,” she began. “A little boy was catching butterflies in his garden. But when he pulled out the net, he found that there was something much bigger stuck in it, something with feathery wings.”
And the angel said to the boy: “Let me go, I’ll take you to see the most beautiful butterflies! The little boy replied, “Is it far?” And the angel told him it is.
The little boy said: “My mother will be worried! Can I send her a butterfly? “Yes,” said the angel. A butterfly instead of every kiss…”.
And so Elizabeth shared with her family the sweet comfort of a wonderful moment.
