Storyteller seeks solace via mariposa reflective moments

away. If by walking into another room the abuser still follows you, attacking you verbally, take your keys and go to a neighbor’s house or get in your car and drive away.

Step 6. Build a support network At this time, seeking a therapist and having a trustworthy friend to confide in will help relieve anxiety, stress and bring you calm and support you can rely on.

Step 7. Create your own “Safety Exit Plan.” If you are in a relationship and the abuser is not willing to change or get help for their abusive behavior, it is time to get your own help. No one deserves to be abused and help is available. Remember you are not alone, and the abuse is not your fault.

If you, or someone you know is experiencing emotional and verbal abuse, call this Helpline: Alternative to Domestic Violence, 951-425-8900, in Riverside County.

open the little envelopes and hold them carefully until the colorful creatures stretched and dried their wings and then softly fluttered off.

An attendee named Cody read aloud an untitled, unattributed poem:

“Don’t weep at my grave for I am not there.

I’ve a date with a butterfly to dance in the air.

Tim O’Leary

Special to the Valley News

Storytellers are a restless sort. They love to venture out to explore, to examine and to experience. One such junket led me to a mariposa mental health outing.

I made some new friends and immersed myself in some reflective mariposa moments. Mariposa, of course, means “butterfly” in Spanish. Both words are as sweet and as magical as the winged creatures they represent.

I learned, ate and felt comforted all at the same time, amid the green, flower-filled setting of the Legends Golf Course in Temecula’s Temeku Hills tract. A harpist played heart-soothing music throughout the day.

The “Breakfast with Butterflies” event was hosted by Hospice of the Valleys, a 41-year-old nonprofit based in Murrieta. I was invited there by Mike Patton, a local pastor who doubles as the firm’s bereavement counselor.

I met Mike – I gave him the nickname “General” because of his last name – at the bereavement group meetings that I’ve been attending at the Fallbrook Regional Health District’s Wellness Center. I’m sort of an outlier of the small group that meets Thursday mornings.

Most of the participants there are grieving the recent passing of a parent, spouse or sibling. I have found myself grappling with a sudden vacuum in my life.

Until August, I spent eight years as a spousal caregiver for my sweet wife, Margaret, who was diagnosed with dementia. My spouse of nearly 21 years now lives in a care facility near Boston, close to her son and his extended family.

Plus, my life, it seems, has been punctuated by death. There are only two left in my onceabundant bloodline – myself and my 31-year-old son who lives in Nashville. All others have died.

And my 42 years as a newspaper writer have featured many brushes with the Grim Reaper. The most searing moments came two months after my son, Patrick, was born. I happened to be one of the first on the scene after a plane crammed with skydivers and the pilot cartwheeled and crashed upon takeoff. I wandered among the bodies – living and dead –strewn among the weeds at Perris Valley Airport.

I managed to drive back to the Sun City news bureau that

I headed and helped file a news story on deadline. I suffered afterward and wondered why all the first responders received trauma exposure counseling but the reporters didn’t.

But it was the butterflies, not the grieving, that drew me to the Temeku event.

The General greeted me after I parked my car, and he directed me to the registration table. The 50+ guests were asked to write a name on a paper butterfly, as well as a word or two of remembrance, for someone they had lost.

Then I wandered into an open area where harp music tickled the ear, sunlight dappled the lawn and the hedges that enfolded an array of folding chairs.

Hospice staff pointed out the muffins, scones, croissants and coffee. Cody O’Bryant, a 9-yearold Temecula youth whose mother, Gina, worked for the nonprofit, manned the “Butterfly Tattoo Station.” I received a temporary tattoo of three butterflies on the back of my hand. I chatted briefly with a woman as she received a butterfly tattoo on her cheek.

The program began, and eventually Fred Schaeffer, a hospice chaplain, talked about how the journey of the butterfly “holds many meanings for many cultures.”

He noted that Christians liken the transition from cocoon to butterfly to Christ’s resurrection. For Japanese culture, he said, a white butterfly symbolizes the soul of the departed. Various Native American tribes see the butterfly as a symbol of rebirth and hope, he said.

The names and messages that had been written on the paper butterflies were read. Eric was remembered as “my hero.” Shannon was recalled as “my angel.” Sharon was “loving and kind.” The death of Donna meant “a voice stilled.” Roy represented “pure love.”

Patton told those seated about the 1946 trip that Dr. Elizabeth Kubler-Ross, the mother of the modern hospice movement, made to the Majdanek concentration camp in German-occupied Poland.

There the woman who spent her life studying death and the dying noted that “the walls of the children’s barracks were covered with hundreds of butterflies that had been etched with fingernails and pebbles.”

“The children had left a poignant message,” Patton said. “While they knew they were going to die, they left a message of hope. Their physical bodies might not survive, but they understood that their immortal souls, represented by the butterflies, would live on.”

Attendees were each given one or more butterflies in individual packets. The Painted Lady butterflies had been shipped in from Florida in dry ice and kept at a particular temperature until their release date. We were instructed to

I’ll be singing in the sunshine wild and free. Playing tag in the wind while I’m waiting for thee.” My hosts gave me three butterflies to release one at a time.My first butterfly was for my mother, who died on Mothers Day 1987, at the age of 62, of lung and breast cancer. My second butterfly was for my only niece, Amy Joslin, who died in 1988 of suicide at the age of 18. My third butterfly was for my younger sister, Peggy, who died of cirrhosis of the liver in May 2005.