A Swallow-tail Butterfly Took to the Air...

A Swallow-tail Butterfly Took to the Air…

#7… This is my seventh article on life, death, grief, and signs.  To make sense of the journey I propose for you, I recommend that you, please, step through my articles in order.  They may be found at https://thegrieftoolbox.com/users/jamiepaulwesseler    I make this recommendation only because it is the journey this non-believer made to arrive where I am today in my belief and faith as to what happens to us when we die.  I am afraid that if you do not gradually grow into the knowledge of NDEs, the well documented happenings and studies I will present to you near the end of my writings may seem hard to accept… at least they would be for this author if I were dropped into the middle of what I am sharing with you over two months, especially the last segment.

Thank you for making the journey with me.  I hope that I may be of some help to you for considering the possibility of what we are told awaits us from those who have gone and returned…  I miss Patrick dearly… at times I just cannot stand not having him here… to hear his laugh, to benefit from his humor, to give him a hug; it is not that I have fully accepted losing him.  I think of him daily.

“The best and most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or even touched – they must be felt with the heart.”                                                                          Helen Keller (1880-1968)

Last week, I received a query about the difference between a coincidence and a sign:  How are we to know the difference?  Great question.  And as I thought through the answer, I recalled my transition from receiving those “coincidental” signs to the certainty of having received a sign.  It is this week’s incident, which occurred just over a year ago, that “sealed the deal” for me.

Patrick gave Susan and me phenomenal signs:  The incredible swallow tail flight at Anna’s wedding (article #5) and the swallow-tail butterfly in the locked garage near his belongings (article #6).  We did not consider either of those moments as coincidence… they were too phenomenal to be anything but signs from our son.  But, to have one more… just one more “test” would be incredible – something this amateur archaeologist would love to have, since I do need considerable proof to convince me of most everything.

Susan and I moved to Greensboro, NC, for several reasons:  The tragic, unexpected loss of our son was something that would never happen to me.  I lived a blessed and charmed life… I knew it to be divine, in fact (which will be shared in a later article).  So, how could Patrick’s death ever be in my deck of life cards?!  Spending as many life minutes with family became even more important than ever – one could never know when that life clock would stop ticking off more minutes.  Ours with Patrick had come to an abrupt stop.  With one daughter in Oregon and the other in North Carolina, Indiana could no longer fulfill our needs.  Too, I needed to shed myself of this new twisted life plan, if one existed.  We needed to turn our lives upside down… to take control by going out of control… leaving everything we had ever thought was in The Plan and cast it to the wind.  What more could we suffer through by taking bad risk?  We had experienced a parents’ nightmare; we could face and do anything from this point forward.  We were invincible, because our spirit, our souls remained.  We would fight for everything we had left for us.

Susan and I loaded three moving vans for three separate loads, put our belongings of 40 plus years in storage, and moved in with our daughter and her incredible husband as we looked for homes (and a job for me) in Greensboro.

And to ensure that Patrick had somehow gotten word of our move (and to prove that those other two incidents were, in fact, signs), I asked for him to give me yet another personalized sign.  So, the search for yellow swallow-tail butterflies was on.  Surely in North Carolina I would see swallow-tails early on, much sooner than in Indiana.

Despite my wishes, mid-June had arrived and I had not seen one yellow swallow-tail butterfly…  I worked from nearly before sunup to sundown at a new job trying to take that office to the top in performance, so I didn’t have many daylight hours to track butterflies.  But even so, I expected to see one when I arrived at daylight to work… or maybe one toward evening on my drive home in the last moments of daylight… but I saw nothing.  Why not so much as a single sighting whizzing over my car on the highway, or one zipping over the fields around the dispatch center, or one around the flowers… somewhere?  And even if I had seen one doing the ordinary things butterflies do, I would not have taken it as a sign from Patrick… but at least I would have known that yellow swallow-tail butterflies still existed.

None were to be seen despite my dedication to the cause…

until June 17^th… Patrick’s birthday.

The young man had a writer’s flair.  He loved eastern philosophies; he loved to write.  He had a poet’s sense of life, but never wrote poetry.  But like a poet, he made his point with a great sense of timing and a flair for presentation.

Patrick’s birthday enters my mind every first day of June.  Each day after that, I get more irritable and anxious as time forces me toward the vortex of his birthday... June 17^th… many times Fathers’ Day.  I am not sure why, but I believe it is because I know I won’t be celebrating it with him any longer, and to me, no greater day exists than the day each of us was born.  Our family celebrates birthdays with a meal out somewhere and a movie… at a minimum.  We try to dedicate time and the day to the soul who joined us in this life.  What can I possibly do WITH Patrick now that he is gone, and that last word, gone, eating at my soul in that I am his dad and I had no control over keeping him safe so that he would outlive me, as it is supposed to be.

June 17^th… Patrick’s 33^rd birthday… no celebration today but another dawn to dusk day at a thankless job; a dreaded day of not being with my son on his birthday.  I hadn’t even seen any swallow-tail butterflies in all of my attempts to see just one somewhere.  How spiritually void had my life become… and yet, I had a life better than that of 99% of the planet.  I knew it, but I had reached a valley in this good life… another soulful low.  But then, my headlights swung around and down the bush-lined canyon of my daughter’s drive and what to my amazement appeared but a yellow swallow-tailed butterfly!  It didn’t just flutter on a line somewhere, but instead it zigzagged back and forth across the drive, across my headlights, leading me from the garage to the road!... in the wee hours of the morning!  Yes, I cried.  No butterflies seen until June the 17^th in North Carolina and now this beauty, on my son’s birthday, not only appeared in my headlights but led me entirely down the driveway!... gliding back and forth with no apparent intent other than that of giving me a sign of faith that I just need to remember to believe, that I am never alone, it’s just that my plan is not always that of the spirit world.

Without Patrick’s setup – no butterflies until his birthday – I would have seen the butterfly on his birthday as possibly being another tiger swallow-tail butterfly sighting.  But now, I had read the last line of his beautifully constructed soulful life poem.  …

As hope had given way to loss and despair,

A swallow-tail butterfly took to the air.

He said…

Follow me with joy to the end of the lane,

                      Along the way, release your pain.

Know always that my soul is near;

                      Know that your wishes brought me here.

And as the road at the end of the lane splits in two directions

                      as too have our souls,

          You must choose one,

                      to travel today... yes, maybe alone.

But a tomorrow will bring both of us home again,

                      as we will travel together once more from the end of the lane...

                                                                                                                                                      toward home.

I have experienced no less than three signs from Patrick.  Of this I am certain.  Of what I have written – personally reported and professionally recorded near death experiences – and of the experiences of which I have yet to introduce to you, I am certain that we are in for an incredible “last journey” down the lane at this life’s end… when we go home again.