The Black and Yellow Butterfly...

Easter Sunday...again I wake up sad. My first instinct on days like this is to check the MISS Support Group page on Facebook. (A closed group for the LA MISS Chapter of baby-loss parents, normally it helps me feel a little less alone). Reading other mothers posts on how they mourn and honor and their child on a day like today; when instead they should be celebrating with them. Reading their posts, their pain just made me so sad, so mad. Why should a mother have to spend this day at the cemetery sitting by her babies grave site. As a loving gesture, decorating it with fluffy bunnies and Easter themed decorations. Such a precious and beautiful gesture, one I wish I was brave enough to bring myself to do. It shouldn't be this way. It's so wrong. I am so angry. Why should mothers not get to spending this day hunting for Easter eggs with heir children.....OR dressing them in cute little Easter themed outfits just like I had planned to do. (I think of Amelie's little onesies with the little ducks on them, now sitting in storage boxes, my fragmented heart crumbles a little more.) As the day passes, I gain a little strength. Aaron, Sweet P (Preston) and amazing mother (who is in England and I only see every 4 months but religiously speak to every day) - all of whom are the lights of my life, helped to cheer me up in their own special ways. We venture out and go for a walk with my husband and it's such a beautiful warm sunny day. As we walk with Aaron, we chat aimlessly about about nothing in particular, we start to be in a good mood. I look at us, I'm proud of us, how far we have come. How strong we are, how in love and close we have become in the last 10 months. I love the new us. Our new bond, strength as a couple, as husband and wife, I so admire, so proud. As we walk hand in hand and I'm thinking this; the biggest butterfly I have ever seen almost the size of my palm swoops down and hovers close, flutters and starts to fly ahead of us at eye level. Very steadily it flutters ahead of us, paving the way along our path for a whole block or so for what seamed like a whole minute. I stop as I stare, the butterfly also stops and comes up next to me before stopping and resting on the ground next to me. I take a closer look. It is black with bright yellow spots. As we start to walk again it also moves along with us, continues it's path ahead of us a little longer. It was all so beautiful, so special. We said nothing but both felt something. I am not saying my dead daughter came down from heaven to say hello as a butterfly, that would sound totally crazy. But to me it was something, it meant something. A little sign. A sign from her. A sign to say that she is beside us. She is proud of us. She is happy when we smile. That she is by our side, always walking with  us along this journey, paving the way on this path that is our life. This was my Easter surprise from Amelie. I ended up having a better day after all.