A Final Farewell

It was a lonesome August day in 2012, a few months after my grandmother Noreen had passed away. My gram and I shared a special bond – she was like a second mother to me, since I spent most of my childhood at her house in Keenans. It was one of those days when the world seemed a little dimmer and I felt an emptiness that couldn’t be filled. I decided to visit her grave, hoping it might bring some comfort. I stepped out of my house and made my way to the car. As I approached the car door, a purple butterfly appeared at my feet, fluttering around them. I smiled and continued on my way.

On the way to the cemetery, I drove to Gram’s house, and sat in her yard for a while. The place had been untouched for months, and you could see that nature was slowly reclaiming it. Grass and small branches began to creep up the front of the house, a surprising sight given that only six months had passed since Gram’s death. Stepping out of the car, I noticed another purple butterfly near the pink lilies that Uncle Danny had gifted her years ago, for either her birthday or Mother’s Day—I couldn’t quite recall. The lilies were planted in two gray painted wooden boxes, placed on each side of the front step. It seemed odd to see another butterfly there. Was it the same one following me? Or was it just a coincidence?

I walked around the house, through the unkept lawn, and strolled along the familiar trail that divided Gram’s and my great uncle Ephriam’s properties. The trail had become overgrown, with large roots veining across the sandy ground and tree branches forming a thick canopy overhead.

Memories flooded back as I passed the hill where my sister Jennifer and I would pick blueberries barefoot under the hot July sun. We’d gather enough for a pie and then dash back to Gram’s kitchen, our feet stained blue from the berries. Gram would bake us a pie, washing the crust with egg and dusting it with sugar, and we would devour it hot, fresh from the oven, our blue teeth matching our blue feet.

I walked through the field where we once played baseball until dark, ending up covered in grass stains, bug bites and sunburn. I continued down the wooded path, passing Rosie’s camp, through the lush greenery to the culvert, a place of many childhood adventures.

The large culvert lay beneath the train tracks, and the brook bordering Gram’s property flowed through it. There, once again, was the purple butterfly, its presence now impossible to ignore. It fluttered around me briefly before disappearing as quickly as it had appeared. I had heard that people often saw signs after a loved one passed, like finding a white feather or seeing a cardinal, but I never paid much attention to it until that moment.

As a kid, my summers were filled with endless hours at the brook. We’d wade through the cool water to the other side, climbing over rocks to get inside the massive structure. Balancing on the thin concrete border, we’d make our way to the other side, then climb the steep hill, cross over the tracks, and do it all over again. Sometimes, we’d slip into the rushing water and be pulled into the brook. Although the brook itself was quite shallow, where the water funneled through the culvert, it rose to our waists – but as scrawny kids, that wouldn’t have been more than 2 feet deep at best. However, in Springtime, the water would creep up into the landing where it would nourish the fiddleheads that grew there.

I thought back to the many times I would run back to grams house, screaming at the top of my lungs, crying bloody murder that I had a bloodsucker or two stuck between my toes. I’d run into the porch and would be met by gram who heard my cries from across the tracks. She’d be ready with salt in hand and pry the slimy black vampires from between my toes. I’d thank her before racing back down to the brook, hoping that luck would spare me from a repeat encounter, though it often did not.

With a sense of quiet reflection, I left the culvert and headed to the cemetery in Howards to visit her grave. I stood by her resting place, staring at the names etched in stone, lost in thought.

I struggled with the fact that someone I knew my entire life was no longer here. That one day she was part of my life and then the next day she was gone. I began to question why things happen. I wondered why my grandmother became a widow at 47. I wondered why my grandfather was taken so young. I wondered what he was like, what my childhood would have been like had he not died that August day in 1969. I wondered about the moments we might have shared, the lessons he might have taught me, and the memories we could have created together.

I had always found it challenging to deal with loss, and that day was no exception. The passing of my McLaughlin grandparents when I was very young had been my first encounter with death. As an eleven-year-old boy, I hadn’t fully grasped the concept of loss, and their absence was something I struggled to understand. Standing at my grandmother’s grave, memories of their departure and hers intertwined in my mind, flooding me with the pain of losing them all over again.

The weight of these thoughts overwhelmed me, and then, out of the corner of my eye, a flicker of color—the butterfly once again nearby, as if offering me comfort.

Leaving the cemetery, tears streamed down my face as I got into the car to drive home. My mind drifted back to Gram’s wake, a difficult memory to revisit. I couldn’t bring myself to attend until the final night, after everyone had left and only a few family members and the funeral home employees remained. Walking into the hall basement, with its dimly lit lights and flowers adorning every corner, and seeing her lying in her coffin, was surreal. The deafening silence was only broken by the occasional sniffle or soft whisper. She looked peaceful, like she was sleeping, yet somehow also like a stranger, dressed in a pale pink pantsuit that I couldn’t remember her ever wearing before. It was a moment frozen in time, that etched itself into my memory with a mixture of sadness and disbelief.

For so long I had felt an overwhelming sense of guilt for not being able to say a proper goodbye to my gram. If only I had known that the night I delivered her takeout order would be the last time I would see her alive, and the last time I would step inside her home—the home where I had spent so much of my life, but after she was gone, I couldn’t bring myself to go back inside of. What would I have done? What would I have said?

As I finally made my way back to my house and stepped out of my car, the purple butterfly appeared one last time, fluttering around me in a final farewell. I thought to myself: could this be the last goodbye from Gram that I had been looking for? Watching it soar above my house into the sky above, I couldn’t help but wonder if it was her way of letting me know that she was always with me, even in the moments when I felt most alone. I like to think it was.

Like these stories? Dive deeper into my world by exploring more tales of love, loss, and the cherished moments that have shaped me. Each story is a window into my past, a glimpse of the people and places that have left a lasting imprint on my heart. Join me on this journey through memory lane:

• Memories of Mama – A Tribute to My Grandmother
• The House That Built Me – Memories of my Grandmother’s Home in Keenans
• It Always Snowed On Christmas Eve – Memories of a Christmas Past
• A Final Farewell