Monday Morning Musing: Aunt Mary, Queen of the Butterflies

(My apologies that this is finding its way to your inbox a day late!)

In August my dear friend Mary died. I got the call from her family as I was driving away from a wedding and had to pull over to weep. At age 92 and in unrelenting pain, in some ways this was not unanticipated news. But oh, how I felt that world was just not quite as bright without her in it.

Some of her family called her Tía María Reina de las Mariposas or Aunt Mary, Queen of the Butterflies, because she loved those winged companions. They were on the many notes she sent, and on the fashionable scarves she usually wore. Mary was beautiful, inside and out. She also paid attention to dressing well and combing her hair and wearing lipstick. She once admonished me to "never lose my sense of style." She loved tea parties with delicious baked goods and candy and beautiful napkins and sprinkles. She dined with the hummingbirds and surrounded by pots of overflowing flowers when the weather was warm and she snuggled into her home filled with tokens of her travel and adventures when it was not. Her laugh tittered and tinkled and as one of her sons said at her memorial service, you could not help but laugh along.

On Saturday we commended her to God's eternal care. I write to feel her close. I write to remember that she loved me without condition, just as she loved countless others in the same way. I daresay that the collective condition of our souls and hearts is infinitely better because of her.

Yesterday she would have turned 93. I've no doubt that we would have celebrated in some beautiful fashion, as we did in the photo below, when she turned 85. There are so many poems about beauty and butterflies, it's hard to choose. But unexpectedly, perhaps, Lenny Kravitz offers some words for this Monday morning:

You’re My Butterfly by Lenny Kravitz

You are the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen You shine just like sunlight rays On a winter snow I just had to tell you so

Your eyes sparkle as the stars Like the moon they glow Your smile could light the world on fire Or did you know?

Your minds full of everything That I want to know I just had to let you know I just had to tell you so Your’re my butterfly Fly high Fly fly fly