Butterfly Dreams

 
Seemingly out of nowhere, a butterfly appeared. As I looked up from my weeping, there she was, sitting quietly on the back of the Other Chair. The empty one. The one where David always sat.
 That poem sprang into my head. "Do not stand at my grave and weep….."
I watched her; this orange and black buckeye (I later found out). It was her peacefulness, her simplicity, her stillness that spoke to me. And in an instant I knew. I just knew she was sent from the Other Side to comfort me.
 According to Thai tradition, there is a belief. When you see a butterfly, it is a soul coming back from the dead to comfort the ones left behind. The message is " I am well. I am happy. Do not grieve for me."
 That night I went to sleep. My pillow was soaked with tears. "Please send me a dream," I entreated my departed husband, "so I know you are o.k. So I know you are not distant, not passed away, but passed within" (an expression I heard from someone in this group).
 And when I awoke in the early hours, a vague sense of having dreamed of David splashed across my brain. What was it? Ah, then I saw a picture of me in a boat. I don't know where I was going. I had a small child by the hand. Try as I would, I could not remember who this child was. I think it was a little boy. A grandchild? Nephew? One of my own boys? My husband as a child? Dreams are funny. Time does not run like it does here on earth. My children are grown now, but when I dream of them, often they are still toddlers, or teens. And I am the same age. A grandmother. So I don't know who this child was.
 There was a stethoscope around my neck - my husband's. I am a nurse. He was a doctor. Rather than running out to buy my own stethoscope, I just used David's when I needed to take blood pressure readings on my patients. In my dream I was wearing his. Somebody on the boat addressed me as doctor. I was too weary to correct him (or her, I forget). Upon awakening, the message was clear. David was within. We are one.
 Strange to anybody who has not lost a spouse, a partner, a lover. I've lost both my parents, but never felt this oneness. This "passing within" rather than "passing away."   Just does not feel the same.