The Truth About Butterflies: A Memoir

by Nancy Stephan

  By now the waves were huge and seemed to linger in the air. There was a small closet, and I ran into it to avoid getting hit by the next wave. They seemed so close, and I knew they would crash down on the shack. But when they finally came down, the water only reached the edge of the door. I went back out into the room, and again giant waves were at both doors. Water was crawling onto the floor and along the walls like it was being spilled out. I ran back to the closet, but the water never reached me.

  After a while, I came back out and stood in the middle of the floor. Another wave rose up, and I stood looking at the inside of it. It was so blue. I was in awe, but I was also terrified. The wave came down on me. It was cold like an awakening splash. It happened so quickly, and I was surprised because I didn’t have to hold my breath that long.

  Five years prior to Nicole’s dream, I dreamt that I was in a cabin:

  Nicole was with me. There was massive flooding all around us. In the dream, Nicole was around eight years old. She lay in the middle of the floor on her back staring up at the ceiling. “Why does God destroy everything we put our hands to?” She asked. I was surprised that such a thought would come from the mind of a child. Seeing my exasperation, and as if to prove her point, she asked, “Where’s our car?” She already knew the answer to that question. Everything was under water. As I stood looking out the window, all I could see was brown, muddy water.

  The water had risen all the way to the cabin window, which was open. Soon the water began flowing in through the window. It ran down the wall but never pooled on the floor. Nicole and I never got wet. As I stood looking out across this muddy lake, I could see on the horizon a massive waterfall. Even at its distance, I could see the cascading blue waters. I wondered how long it would take for the fresh waters to reach us. Nicole couldn’t see the waterfall. I couldn’t convince her that the muddy water was temporary, that beautiful blue water was on its way.

  The second dream was revelatory. Her illness, her withdrawal, and her death… all of it I saw in a new light, perhaps a light meant to bring peace and closure. But initially peace was marginal at best. I wondered how different things would’ve been if I’d only known about the dream. I wondered if Nicole herself thought about the dream as she suffered, or if she simply wrote it down and never thought about it again. I wondered if the dream had been given to Nicole for my benefit all along, seven full years before her death. August 2000:

  I dreamed that I was a warrior fighting the enemy in a battle. The battle wasn’t modern with modern weapons. Instead, we used handmade weapons and all kinds of sharp objects. I was a warrior, and I looked forward to a good battle. I was on the front line and was very capable with my weapons. My army was victorious in defeating the enemy, and there was rejoicing in the camp. But we quickly had to prepare for another battle. We could see the new enemy in the not-so-far distance.

  Instantly, I found myself clothed in a bright red dress that fell past my ankles. It came to me that I was the General’s daughter. Being that the enemy was close, I led my army into prayer. We thanked God for victory in the past battle, and we thanked Him for victory in this now present battle.

  As I stood up from praying, something happened. I became discouraged and consumed by an unshakable fear. I couldn’t understand it. I looked around me, and everyone was filled with such confidence. I tried to gather my weapons, but every weapon I chose seemed inadequate for the battle. Everyone expected me to lead the fight because I was the General’s daughter, and when they saw that I was scared, they were angry and said, “With or without you, we fight!”

  I decided to run into the woods and hide. So I took off running into the woods, but I couldn’t hide because everywhere I ran, the red dress gave me away. My father was coming behind me, and I was tired of running, so I stopped. My father asked, “Why aren’t you fighting?”

  “Because I’m afraid. My weapons are no good, and I’m too afraid to fight.”

  “Why are you afraid? God has already given you the victory. This enemy is already defeated.”

  I read this dream over and over until my eyes would no longer focus. Then, in the predawn hours of March 24, 2008, I placed all of the letters, cards, and journals back in the box and sealed it.

  Over the next nine months, I found myself shackled in a dark place from which, it seemed, there was no liberation. Nicole had insisted from the beginning that she couldn’t fight this battle; I insisted that she could, that we could… together. But I lied, and I was angry with myself. What kind of mother allows her child to suffer the way she suffered? I resented the doctors because when they saw that Nicole’s raft was sinking and that they couldn’t save her, they turned their ships around and just left us in the middle of the ocean. And then there was God, Who, after years of guidance, suddenly had nothing to say. When the nightmares and sleepless nights consumed me, not once did He answer me when I cried out.

  A well-meaning friend told me that I needed to pull myself together and stop acting like I’d never see Nicole again, and I wondered if that’s what those close to me believed, that I was heartbroken because I thought Nicole’s death was the end. I’d never even considered that I wouldn’t see Nicole again.

  When she was just five or six years old, Nicole told me that she knew a secret about butterflies.

  “Tell me,” I said, “so I can know the secret, too.”

  “Well, the secret is… butterflies are really caterpillars, and caterpillars are really butterflies.”

  And I listened in pretend amazement as she recounted what she’d no doubt learned at school, that butterflies are caterpillars, only prettier and with the ability to fly. Such is life and death. This flesh in which we live is nothing more than a cocoon, and only when we step out of it do we truly begin to live.

  I know that Nicole is alive, that she’s profoundly happy, that her memory is intact, and that she can’t wait to see me again. This is not what I think or what I hope; this is what I know. To live is good; to die is even better.

  Chapter 24

  With winter approaching, Cynthia had decided to make a final trip to the lake house before the cold set in, so she, my friend Eunice, two others, and I packed our overnight bags and made the two-hour drive to the lake. Eunice was dealing with her sister Vivian’s death, and I was close to dying under the weight of Nicole’s death. Cynthia took measures to keep us all afloat. This trip was one of those measures. It would be a weekend away from husbands and lovers to provide the kind of nourishment that only sisterhood can offer.

  The next morning, I walked down to the lake and stood looking out over the gray, frigid water at boats resting in boat houses, listening to the gentle lapping of waves. Across the lake, a lone black dog stood pacing in the shallows, stopping briefly to stare into the water, perhaps thinking he’d found a new playmate but quickly realizing it was his own reflection.

  I thought what a wonderful place to reflect and to bring all nature together—clouds and sky and trees and water and wind. This is the kind of place that lends itself to answers. I was sure if I stayed there long enough, staring into the water at my own reflection, that all of the pieces of my fragmented life would begin to float together.

  As the gray ceiling of clouds settled low in the sky, I knew I had much to be thankful for. I was able to be with Nicole through the end of her earthly journey. I didn’t have to conjure up images of what her last moments might’ve been like. She had not disappeared while vacationing in Aruba, nor had she been attacked while hiking with her dog. Instead, with the last beat of Nicole’s heart, I was kissing her lips. Filled with gratitude, I turned my face to the bitterly cold wind and climbed the long, winding stairs back to the house.

  Before leaving the following day, I slipped from the bedroom out onto the veranda that overlooked the lake. I breathed in the cold air and listened to the haunting call of the loon. I imagined my other self still standing down on the pier from the previous day gazing into the water hoping for answers. I wondered if I should call down that
it was time to go, or if I should leave myself there to contemplate. If anyone could brave the cold, dark solitude of winter, it was the woman standing on the pier.

  I went back inside and closed the doors. I would return in the spring when the woods were alive with wildflowers and everything was dewy and new. I’d rejoin myself down on the pier to find out what I’d learned, what mysteries had been unraveled, and if the pieces of the puzzle had at long last come together. I already held the answers to these questions, but I knew that I must leave her to come to these conclusions on her own.

  On December 28, a few days shy of a year of Nicole’s death, I was still struggling to sleep at night. Grief had rounded up two partners - Guilt & Anger - and the three of them together were formidable foes. No amount of praying, no amount of counseling, and no amount of sleeping could loose me of their grip. I had fallen into a state of complete and utter blackness that had persisted through the year.

  Back in June, as my lack of sleep had begun to weigh heavily on me, I’d asked my doctor for something to help me sleep. I was in the process of moving, and my emotional exhaustion had coupled with my physical exhaustion making for a very bad combination. She’d written me a prescription, and that night I swallowed the tiny white pill and buried myself under the covers.

  Later during the night, I awoke to use the bathroom but sat on the side of the bed momentarily because I was dizzy. I looked down and noticed two shadowy figures on the floor. The moonlight pouring through the window had washed the room in a blue glow, and the two shadows looked very ominous. It came to me that I might’ve left the garage open after unpacking some boxes and critters might’ve gotten into the house, but the more I reasoned it out the more unlikely that seemed.

  Deciding that it was obviously something I’d left on the floor, I reached down to pick them up. As I did, one of them moved, and I jumped back into the bed. The two critters jumped into the bed with me. And in my desperate attempt to get away from them, I realized that the two critters were my own two feet.

  That next day, I found the printout that came with the sleeping pills and read the potential side effects. Seems people could do things and not remember, such as preparing and eating a meal or having sex. I knew I needed something to help me sleep, so I decided from then on to take only half a pill, and I put all my friends on alert. If I showed up at anyone’s house in the middle of the night with a picnic basket and a condom, they were to simply turn me around and point me toward home.

  Six months later in the early morning darkness of December 28, 2008, I lay in bed having had yet another restless night. I had taken half a pill the previous evening but felt like I hadn’t slept a wink. Every day and night of the past year had been filled with a dark, deepening sorrow, but this particular morning the grief was intense. I climbed out of bed and dressed so I could leave the house. Over the months as my grief had intensified, so had the pain in my joints, so getting out of bed in the morning had become slow and uncomfortable.

  As I pulled out of the driveway, I was blinded by tears. Even though I was in the car alone, I was embarrassed by my own horrific lamenting. Unable to see the road, I pulled off the road and into a parking lot. And there I said to God something I never thought would come from my lips, “I give up.” Whatever “giving up” meant, I was doing it. I could not go on the way I was.

  I had often told Nicole that if she ever found herself in a place where she was lost, where nothing in her world made sense, she should go back to the place in time when she was convinced there is a God and that He is omnipotent, and when she returned to that moment of epiphany, she should wait there for God to show her the road ahead.

  Now I was the one who was lost, and my own place of epiphany was hollow, as if someone had drilled a hole in the bottom of it and all the exalted beauty had leaked out. I was giving up, not because I doubted God, but because physically, emotionally, and spiritually I simply couldn’t hold on any longer.

  Still weeping, I started the car and headed out of the parking lot not sure of which way to go now that I’d given up. I imagined myself driving until my car ran out of gas, then walking until I couldn’t walk anymore, then curling up on the ground and just letting the world happen around me.

  I made a right turn onto the road and within seconds, and without warning of any kind, the sorrow of the last 12 months vanished. The profound sadness was gone, the heaviness was gone, the all-encompassing darkness… gone. The drab houses and trees and landscapes I passed every day were suddenly bright and colorful as if the very dome of the sky were a lamp that had been switched on. The shift was so visceral and so instantaneous that I thought I was dying. It was the only thing that could explain this sudden buoyancy. I pulled my car off the road and sat for 20 minutes before turning around and going home.

  How could grief of this magnitude simply disappear? If I’m not dying, I thought, then perhaps I’m having a nervous breakdown. Whatever was wrong with me, I stayed in the house for the rest of the day walking softly and trying not to breathe too loudly just in case the darkness was lurking nearby. I thought about calling Eunice to tell her that this inexplicable and wonderful thing had happened, but I was afraid that if I spoke too soon, the sadness would come back.

  That night as I lay in bed, I wondered, again, if maybe this sudden and profound peace was a warning of my death. But then another thought struck me. I hadn’t had a pedicure in months. Being found dead with neglected feet was very unsettling, so I asked God if He were indeed coming for me that He come the next night. Nothing would make me happier than having the coroner announce, “She died peacefully in her sleep… and her feet were gorgeous.”

  I awoke the next morning still weightless and lucid, as if I’d been healed from a great fever. That day I cried a sweet, cleansing cry. And every morning thereafter, I eased into my day unsure if the darkness had returned during the night. The hours turned into days, the days into months, and the months into years, and yet the darkness has not returned.

  Over time, different ones have given me their opinions on what they think happened to me on that Sunday morning in December, but what I know for sure is that when I’d given up and left myself for dead, God knelt next to my broken spirit and poured in the oil and the wine. After He reset my bones, He girded me with a peace that surpasses human understanding.

  Of course, Grief still visits me. I often awake to find it perched on the side of my bed, but it never comes to stay. It follows me around like a child under foot for a few hours or a few days, but then lightness comes and almost before I realize it, Grief has gathered itself and flown away.

  On March 6 at 1:25 p.m., I saw my first butterfly of the season. White with splashes of yellow, it flew erratically along a row of juniper bushes. In three blinks of the eye, it was gone. And in that instant, without trying, I imagined myself standing on a breakwater in the warmth of the sun wondering how it would feel to be truly free—free of people and things and attachments of all kinds.

  And as I sit here on this warm, sunny afternoon writing these final words, I think of how blessed I am to have been Nicole’s mother and how my life has grown wings because she was a part of it. And each evening when I close my eyes against the darkness and think about her, I imagine her walking in the sun, her laughter rising like petals against cloudless blue skies.

  * * *

  [1] Teresa Schiavo (1963-2005) – a Florida woman at the center of a right-to-die case

  [2] Hog Maws—pig stomach, often cooked in chitterlings

  [3] Roots - a 1977 miniseries that chronicles the life of Kunta Kinte and his descendents through slavery in America.

  [4] Homework

  [5] To linger in prayer usually at the altar

  [6] Cirrhosis

  [7] Sent

  [8] Tuskegee Syphilis Study

  [9] Tests - medical experiments

  [10] Fistula – surgically-created vascular access to accommodate hemodialysis

  [11] Do Not Resuscitate

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  Nancy Stephan, The Truth About Butterflies: A Memoir