Butterflies & Oatmeal

Dearest Grey,

I have seen your presence in a gazillion things the past few days.

Since your loss, butterflies have seemed to be your way of getting my attention, starting from the minute we picked out your urn, engraved with butterflies. Ceci gave me a book. The main characters were butterflies. There were butterflies on her birthday card, and pictures of you in it.

On Friday, a friend came to our school to be in a few meetings with me. I hadn't seen her since before I lost you. We made it through the morning and right before our afternoon meetings started she handed me a bag, leopard print like your room. In it was a box. I opened it to find a beautiful glass bead she had made, a bright blue butterfly. There is a cool story behind the bead. She works with a local hospital making Beads Of Courage. For every test a child has to have they receive a bead for their courage. Once a child beats their disease, they receive a purple heart. When she heard we lost you back in December, she made that butterfly especially for you. It was the first ever. It is now used as their "End Of Life" bead. What an honor Grey. She didn't even get the chance to meet you. I plan on wearing it Tuesday as I speak on your behalf to the Senate.

Then today I was out with Melinda getting ready for our DMB tour. We went to the outlet mall. Going to check out we walked past some stuffed animals. Melinda immediately picked up the Dalmatian. We looked through the rest and under a few others sat one single Oatmeal. You know how impossible he was to find for your memorial, being discontinued. We all must have gone a dozen places looking for him before Aunt Larissa went back to the hospital gift shop and found one left. But there he was, like he was just waiting there for me, on sale for $4.99. I gave him to Melinda. She misses you so. We'll take him with us next weekend as we travel across the state watching Dave.

Then we were walking through the parking lot into JC Penney when this gust of wind came. A piece of paper came out of no where and wrapped around my ankle. I kicked it off and as it flew away, I saw that it was a picture of a butterfly that a child had colored. Amazing.

Thank you Grey, for continuing to give me gifts. You know I need them.

Love,

Forever Your Mom