Editor’s note: for the next two weeks we’ll be running the best of our This Ordinary Day pieces. We’ve enjoyed working with so many great writers and wonderful people and felt it was high time to take a look back at some of what they’ve brought us. If you’d like to see more pieces, please take a trip over to our archives page — it’ll be well worth your time.

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Come outside. You’ve got to see.

I was numb. Painfully numb. It had only been a few hours since, at the edge of morning, we had stood together at my dad’s bedside as he took his last few breaths. The shell of the man I had known all of my life was still just down the hall.

C’mon, you guys. You’ve just got to see it.

After he was gone, we had prayed and cried and leaned on each other, physically and emotionally.

And then we scattered.

My brother had fled north to the pond — Dad’s pond. As the dark of night gave way to the gray of dawn, a startlingly white egret took off from the bank and circled the pond, coming so close to my brother that he could hear the wind in its wings.

I had wandered to the east where I watched the gray give way to purple and then blue and red melting into yellow. The tall prairie grasses were silent as morning arrived in a world without my Dad — a world I had never known and had not expected to encounter for many more years. As the meadowlarks and mourning doves called to their mates, the sun broke over the horizon.

My aunt disappeared down the lane to the south. My husband headed northwest into the prairie. My mom stayed with his body. She insisted on bathing him for the last time by herself.

Morning arrived bright and clear. Slowly the light drove our worn bodies back into the house.

You are not going to believe this.

She wasn’t going to give up. She grabbed my hand and pulled me to my feet. The others followed.

She led us across the front yard and behind the tall pines that whispered in the breeze of a brilliant October morning. She led us toward the shed where Dad’s toys — a ski boat, the RV and his tractors — were housed. She veered to right and kept walking until we passed Dad’s woodworking shop where he had created detailed doll houses for his granddaughters, where he and his sons had spent hours completing any number of projects, where his own father’s woodworking tools now resided. And we kept walking until we rounded the corner at the back of the shop.

Look, my Dad’s sister whispered.

A small patch was left unmown right behind the shop and, in that wild space, bronze tall grasses and lavender prairie flowers had flourished. Milkweed and musk thistle moved gently in the breeze. But that slight movement could not account for all that was in motion.

Butterflies perched and clustered on every plant. A Mourning Cloak fluttered over the tiny patch of meadow and a Painted Lady or two danced on the breeze. Monarchs chased each other over our heads. Yellow Sulphurs and Wood Nymphs lazily flitted from one flower to the next. A Zebra Swallowtail and a cloud of Red Admirals joined the crowd. At least a hundred butterflies had congregated along the back wall of the shop.

The four of us stood, slack jawed, in awe.

My Dad died of ALS. I knew nothing of the disease before he told us of his diagnosis. This is not what I would have chosen, but this is the hand I have been dealt and I will play it, he wrote to his children and his sister just after the initial diagnosis. A trip to the Mayo Clinic in January made the death sentence official.

ALS slowly leaches the ability to move from its victims. First he lost fine motor skills in his legs and then his arms and hands. He lost the ability to feed himself. He couldn’t breathe as deeply, so speaking became difficult. He lost gross motor skills. He lost the ability to turn his head, to nod yes or no. In the end, all he could do was blink. But the disease does not impair the mind. As his body slowly went limp, he was excruciatingly aware of what was happening.

We were told we had three to five years. We were given only 10 months.

We laughed and we joked and we adapted to the changes that we saw every week. We teased and we cherished and we cried all 10 of those months. We carried on just as we always have. Nothing was so awful that we couldn’t laugh. In August, after my sister-in-law’s double lung transplant, she and Dad exchanged pictures via e-mail… a grinning but pale Karlene with all of her prescription bottles in front of her appeared on Dad’s computer screen and, via Mom, he fired back a picture of himself… with what was left of his smile behind the drug bottles arranged in two rows on the tray of his motorized wheelchair. When his speech became so garbled that we couldn’t understand, we worked at learning how to quickly narrow down the possibilities: Does it begin with a B? A D? A P? A T? A V? We learned to anticipate when he needed us to spread his fingers on the arm of his chair so they wouldn’t cramp. Eventually, when the difference between a nod and shake became indistinguishable, we even communicated through a new language… one blink for no and two deliberate blinks for yes.

In the end, we were grateful for those 10 months — for the warning that came both too early and too late.

When we have done all the work we were sent to do, we are allowed to shed our bodies, which imprison our soul like a cocoon encloses the butterfly and when the time is right we can let go of it. Then we will be free of pain, free of fears and free of worries — free as a beautiful butterfly returning home to God…. —Dr. Elisabeth Kubler-Ross

Dad died on October 2. As his friends and family slowly arrived for his memorial service a week later, the butterflies continued to gather, too. More every day until thousands of butterflies covered his 37 acres of Kansas prairie. They fluttered and danced and lifted our spirits. After his memorial service, those who came by the house were mesmerized by their vast numbers and sheer beauty.

Throughout the following week, family members returned to their homes and their lives. Relatives from across Kansas loaded into their cars and departed. My cousins left for Michigan. The number of butterflies in the fields dwindled. My youngest brother and his children returned to Arizona. My mom’s sister headed back to Topeka and the five of us were again alone. By the time we parted company at the end of the week, the butterflies were gone and the weather turned cold.

Two years have passed, and they have not returned.

This may seem like an odd entry for a site dedicated to finding the beauty, the peace, the blessing in the moment, but I’ve never felt more blessed than in the moments I spent out in that field photographing and cavorting with the butterflies. They sometimes landed in my hair or settled on my shoulder as I tried to capture their beauty. At a time of great sadness, at a time when the cloth of my life had suffered a huge rent, I found peace and comfort and the tools I needed to mend while I sat alone in a crowded field.

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