My daughter Kelly, lost her battle with malignant melanoma 4 months after diagnosis. She was 25 years old. As you can imagine we all were devastated. No one could believe that it all happened so fast. There was no time for "getting used" to the idea that death was a possibility, it just happened. She died on Sunday afternoon August 31, 1997, at 4:20. Her two sisters, my dear friend who had known Kelly since she was 3 years old, and myself were with her when she died. We were all holding her and telling her we loved her. It was the saddest day of my life.

The funeral was Sept. 4, at 7pm. On that afternoon the funeral director came by my house to pick up some of the flowers that had been sent to my house to take them to the church. Some of Kelly's friends arrived at the same time. They were bringing food for an open house after the service. There was a lot of confusion and people in and out of the house. The front door was left open while all of this was going on.

We all noticed at about the same time a butterfly that had flown into the house...it was beautiful...black with yellow stripes on its wings. It flew right to a spot on the ceiling between the kitchen and family room. This was probably around 2:00 in the afternoon. We all looked at it and discussed how odd it was that it would have flown into the house...we have lived in this house for 13 years and I can't ever remember a butterfly having flown into the house. We continued bringing things in and out of the house.

When everyone was finished they all left. We all did whatever we did after that, (most of that week is a blur). Around 6:30 the limos came to pick us up to go to the church...we noticed that the butterfly was still in the same spot.

We came back to the house around 8:30. The butterfly was still in the same spot! There were about 30 to 40 people in the house, everyone commented on the butterfly. Everyone agreed it had to be Kelly's spirit. We all agreed that she was letting us all know that she was OK.

By 1am everyone had gone and I was cleaning up. I asked my son Mark to try to "shue" the butterfly outside so it wouldn't die in the house. It was still in the same place it had been since it came into the house almost 12 hours earlier. He went over to it and tried to get it down by waving his arm at it. The butterfly flew into a window at the front of the house, Mark walked over to the window and put his hand out to catch it in his hand, but the butterfly flew right onto his finger. He walked about 20 yards to the front door with it just sitting on his finger...he opened the door and walked outside, put his hand in the air and the butterfly flew away.

Since that time there have been other "odd butterfly happenings." I've seen them at odd times of the day, almost right in my face.

Kelly's sister Ashley went to the cemetery on the one year anniversary of Kelly's death. She was talking to Kelly and crying, asking her to give her some kind of a sign that she is OK. Ashley said as she was driving away from the cemetery a butterfly flew right past the windshield of her car, she drove a little farther and another butterfly flew by. I truly believe that was her "sign" to Ashley and to us all.

We all love you Kelly and now see you in every butterfly we see................How does one become a butterfly?...You have to want to fly so much that you are willing to give up being a caterpillar- Trina Paulas

May everyone who has suffered a loss like this find Peace.

We have built a web page in memory of Kelly...please visit when you have time....

http://members.tripod.com/~KellyConiam

Back to: Index
Back To Angelwings