My Special Butterflies

It all started when my daughter and son-in-law went with me to Cherokee July 2024 for Rich’s and my anniversary and his birthday. This was my first trip up there without him and it was hard. But as soon as I saw all the beautiful blue butterflies around me when we sent a small memorial boat in the river I felt peace, I know Rich was home were he loved.

I had mentioned I wanted to get a small angel wing tattoo and my son-in-law had some of his done there. We stopped at the shop, thinking I would get ideas and go back at a later date if I didn’t chicken out. But it worked out that the tattoo artist had an opening at 5pm, so my daughter told him without even debating it, yes we would be there. I’ve never even had my ears pierced because I was afraid of the pain! But I felt nothing when the angel wings were being created on my forearm. I was so happy I cried when I saw my angel wings, they represent Rich will always be with me.

I had always wanted to add a rose to the angel wings but wasn’t sure where or when. So I stopped at the shop in May of this year when I went up to Indiana to see Alex, Lia and Zac. He gave me an idea to add the rose on top of the wings so it would look like the bud and leaves at the bottom of the rose. I already knew I wanted the stem to be in my handwriting, “forever in my heart” but placement couldn’t go straight down because of getting too close to my hand. So he come up with the idea for the stem and I changed my idea of writing “heart” into having a heart tattooed. I went back up to Cherokee on June 14th, Father’s Day weekend and had my rose tattoo added. I love the idea and am so happy with my heart and angel wings combined.

While I was there I showed him one of Rich’s last love notes he wrote to me and asked about making another appointment for that. He had time right while I was there so I got my love note tattooed about my angel wing rose.

I believe when I see a butterfly that it’s Rich’s spirit and both the blue one from Cherokee and the yellow from Lia’s rose garden last fall were definitely signs. The yellow Swallowtail crawled up my arm and stayed with me for almost an hour.

I knew my next tattoos would be the butterflies. So last weekend when I went back to Cherokee to celebrate our anniversary I stopped at the tattoo shop to get placement ideas and set a date to have them done. An hour later they called me and he had time to do them that day. People were telling me that colored tattoos are painful but other than a few pinches on the blue one, I felt nothing.

I dropped some roses in the pond at church this morning and sat on the edge to reflect all the memories that Rich and I have made over the past 59 years. Now Rich will always be with me through the angel wings, his rose and love note and now my two special butterflies.