About Mom's Butterflies

When we lost Mom in November of 2009, we decided to wait until the following spring to have a Celebration of Life service, rather than an immediate funeral. A close friend suggested Mother's Day weekend as an appropriate date and I began planning.

Mother loved nature and she believed in preserving it. She also loved her garden and treasured its tiny residents. She knew they helped her flowers (and vegetables) grow and thrive.

Lady bugs and butterflies are good for the garden; they are important to the ecology of a garden for pollination and ultimately, to our global environment.

One of Mom's favorite poems contains the line "and a butterfly flitted across the fields and all the leaves were calling me". The poem haunted me: butterflies represent transformation, a metamorphosis - I wanted, as we all want to believe that those we love move on to another existence in spirit form.

Butterflies became my theme; I found a brass butterfly urn online , there were butterflies in the floral arrangements and I created seeded paper butterflies to present to guests. The piece de resistance, however, would be real butterflies to release at Mom's Celebration.

I explored the idea for several weeks, beginning with a search for a science lab that might sell such a thing. I discovered that not only are there companies, or butterfly farms as they're called, that raise and sell butterflies for special events, they also package and sell educational kits for schools.

After learning all I could and comparing prices, I finally decided on a supplier. An amateur entomologist in Quebec would sell me butterflies. Rene is a member of the North American and the International Butterfly Breeders Association and he proved knowledgeable and helpful.

I ordered 12 Painted Lady butterflies to release at Mom's Celebration. They would be shipped in a decorated cooler, he told me. Just keep them in the fridge until about two hours before the event. Sounded simple enough.

As it turned out, the butterflies, which were put on the bus for a 24 hour trip, actually took 4 days - and arrived two days too late for the service.

In the meantime, I had gotten interested in raising butterflies.

Along with Mom's 12  'release butterflies', I had ordered more Painted Lady larvae (the caterpillars) and pupae (the chrysalises) - plus two Black Swallowtail pupae.

After spending another day in my son's fridge in the city, they all arrived safe and sound.

Jurgen, my partner built a screened 'butterfly' habitat, I added plants and artificial food. The butterflies started breeding and laying tiny blue eggs on one of Mom's forget-me-nots, which had been planted in a decorative pot for the reception.

Soon, we were enmeshed in the complexities of butterfly breeding. A week or so later, we had our first order.