Stupid Butterflies

          You stagger down the street. You see a butterfly, flitting from flower to stupid flower. You asked for a sign and here one is, only five minutes later. She was always punctual, wasn’t she? But a butterfly? Come on. You didn’t expect the sign to be so damn obvious- might as well be a construction cone. She hated cliches, and so do you. It’s not personal, it’s genetics.

         You just had coffee together this morning. How can she already be gone, you ask yourself. Of course, she was already dead before the coffee was poured. This you knew, even though you’re the one who poured it—black for her, cream for you. Your sisters took theirs with cream. Her sister took hers black. No woman in your family did anything before coffee, kinda like Garfield, that chunky cartoon cat. Your mother would never send an orange cat as a sign, however. She hated cats, hand-drawn or otherwise.
          Time did not revolve around the clock during those days, that week or so when she went from being present to something in your past. Time was marked by coffee cups in the morning and wine cups instead of dinner- the same cup, just rinsed out as day turned to dusk. She dies in the middle of the night, which you think peculiar because she loved having the floor. Maybe dying is like going to the bathroom; you need some privacy to make things go. Your older sister and you hold vigil in her room that last night, listening for the death rattle with the anticipation of who the hell knows what, not Christmas; you haven’t slept in days—too tired for words. You wonder if her lungs will sound like jangling keys or salt in a shaker. There are a lot of ways to rattle, and the hospice nurses don’t have time to answer every question.

          You wake up first to find your mother gone, but it’s your older sister, the chef who—being more at ease with carnal matters (blood and guts)-- confirms the death clinically, so to speak. She picks up your mother’s hand, already ghost white, holding it up high in the dark, as if she will clip it to a clothesline, before letting it go. The arm slaps against the medical bed with a thud. Gravity proves what your soul already knows: she is gone.

          Everyone, your sisters and you, your aunt, knows you need to call the funeral home to claim the body. You feel overcome, gulping, gasping for air, knowing you will never see your mother, who bore you, raised you, fueled your love of Barbara Kingsolver and tag sales, dealt with the bullshit of your teenage years, sent you money in college that she didn’t have, taught you every fucking thing you need to know about being a good human. Other cultures cleanse and wrap the body in oils and linens; they wash, and sing, and pray. The women of your family prepare, too. You pour your mother her last cup of coffee and you all settle back in your chairs a final time as the grave digger rattles down your mother’s street to retrieve her. Paramedics in a medical transport van, really, but tell that to your rattled heart.

          As they say, you wish there were time for a second cup. You can’t be there when they take her away. You would want to cling when they would want you to let go. So, you run out the door, leaving your own coffee to grow cold as a corpse, and head down the street before the gurney squeaks and bumps up the stairs to her apartment door. And there you are, staggering, sobbing, breathless, when you stop to see that quiet butterfly. You think shit, Mom, couldn’t you have picked something else? I’m 37 years old- the butterfly days, the unicorn days, are over. And you were neither light, nor flighty. The butterfly kisses a tiny yellow flower and flies away.

          You don’t know yet that every stupid, stunning, unrattled, flitting butterfly will remind you of the magic of her. And you don’t know, not yet, that one day you will smile when you see her in a piping cup of coffee. Just the coffee. Not the steam. That would be too trite.

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