We named a Spotify playlist “Butterfly.” We did so because one of our last meetings before I fell ill was at the Peggy Notebaert Nature Museum in Chicago. There we watched the butterflies as they fluttered about. The children giggled as they landed on their heads and arms. We all became child-like in that place – even the adults tittered and held out their index fingers, eager for one to take respite there. It was pure glee, but I can’t help but wonder if the butterflies knew what was in store, what epic migration, one of the most significant natural events, awaited them come fall.

One of the first songs I put on the playlist was Raign’s rendition of “Knocking on Heaven’s Door,” mind you, not “Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door,” as the original version by the great Bob Dylan goes. In my mind, I cannot separate that song and the butterflies; their graceful movement, which I had seen just a few weeks before returning home for treatment, is synonymous with this track. Even now, when sitting with my coffee and gazing at our butterfly bush in our backyard garden, I watch them and mentally hear that synthy-laden, electronic drum version. Her potent, albeit angelic voice is layered and drenched in thick reverb. I initially heard it, as mentioned, just weeks after my return to commence my very 1st round of chemo (2016). So, there is an extra layer of chemo-drug-induced and emotionally consumed intensity.

The mind is extraordinary. I woke up today (August 5th) and wished my sisters a happy “Cinco de Mayo.” I was jarred awake by a landscaping crew, and in my mind, the rhythm of their compactor sounded like an MRI machine. In this hazy mental place, it wasn’t August 5th, 2021; it was May 5th, 2017, the date I was supposed to enter Mass General to begin 1 of 2 my stem cell transplant. (This was the original date, but that was pushed back by a month because of my brain surgery.) In texting them with good wishes for Cinco de Mayo, I wanted them to feel a sense of normalcy that I didn’t have on this particular date. (It is my nature to try to protect and cacoon people, especially regarding my health saga.)

It took a strong cup of coffee to pull me into the now. First, I began thinking about my strange wake-up and where I was in mind and heart. Then, as it has been a while since I have listened to it, I put on Raign and sipped more coffee.
Little did I know then that the Peggy Notebaert Nature Museum was this sacred little bubble. Not only for me, though for obvious reasons it was, but it seemed that way for everyone there. The laughing children, the adults who regressed to a child-like place, all stepped away from the world. Then, as my mind does, at least when it’s fully awake and has a bit of coffee, I thought about the people in that blissful bubble and the butterflies fluttering about. Who was giving whom a respite from life; was it the humans gazing in awe at these gorgeous little beings, taken away from their worries and stresses, even if just for a minute. Or was it the butterflies developing a divine connection with a human by landing on their index finger or soaking in the gleeful laughter of children before embarking on a migration of epic proportions?

I will undoubtedly wake up again in a place and time far from here within the next few days. This isn’t solely for the benefit of others, to grace them with a feeling of normalcy, but also for me. I have routine bloodwork in a week (August 11th) and an oncologist appointment two days after.

Maybe I will wake up thinking I’m a butterfly.

“Once upon a time, I dreamt I was a butterfly, fluttering hither and thither, to all intents and purposes a butterfly. I was conscious only of my happiness as a butterfly, unaware I was myself. Soon, I awaked, and there I was, veritably myself again. Now I do not know whether I was then a man dreaming I was a butterfly or whether I am now a butterfly, dreaming I am a man.”

Chuang Tzu (c. 369 BC – c. 286 BC)