The Butterfly
Christine loved bright colors. She incorporated them into her creative pursuits and our everyday life. It wasn’t optional. She would often strike when I was on business trips. It wasn’t uncommon for me to come home from a few days away to find the front door of the house painted lime green or an entire room a bold new color.
And orange was her favorite.
I’m not sure if attending Syracuse in the ’90s seeded her love of orange or just intensified it. But as long as I knew her, there was always a generous amount of orange around. And as I got to know Christine’s father, I learned that he had become a Syracuse superfan during her time there and possibly loved orange even more than she did.
The summer of 2025 was kind of rock bottom for me. I was still trying to process what had happened. I was navigating all of the “firsts” — adoption anniversaries, wedding anniversary, birthdays — without Christine and Spencer. I was facing some significant challenges with parenting.
One routine that helped was regular walks with my dogs, Harley and Charlee.
My mental state varied wildly day to day on these walks. Some days, I would feel the comfort of happy memories walking the same routes that Christine and I used to walk with the dogs — each of us holding one leash. Others, I just needed a good cry and would intentionally listen to songs that I knew would remind me of Christine or Spencer and let the tears come.
On one of these “crying on the dog walk” days, Charlee and I were making our way around a field near our house. Out of nowhere, an orange monarch butterfly fluttered right into our path. I’m not really a spiritual person or someone who believes in “signs,” but when I crossed paths with this butterfly, I felt Christine’s presence.
The butterfly’s appearance didn’t make everything instantly better. But it was comforting. The message I felt was that even though things were an unimaginable mess, I was doing the best I could. She was proud of me.
I saw orange monarch butterflies several more times on dog walks that summer. I had told some family members about the first encounter, so each subsequent time I would scramble to try to get a photo or video as evidence that I was not hallucinating. But just like in real life, she never cooperated with having her own photo taken.
Christine and I had a long-term goal to buy an RV, a boat, or both. We liked the idea of traveling in ways that would make it easy to bring our dogs and provide opportunities to see things that were off the beaten path. Given the time and financial demands of Spencer’s skating journey and college costs on the horizon, it wasn’t something we planned to act on anytime soon. But we often sent one another listings for RVs and boats that we liked and daydreamed about someday.
I continued browsing RVs and boats on my own after she was gone. About a year ago, a listing popped up for a type of boat that I had been obsessing over for five years. They had stopped making this particular boat in the late 2000s, and the one listed was one of the last ones made. It was the best example I had seen, and it wasn’t even close.
But life was still hanging by a thread. There was so much I still needed to figure out and clean up. Buying a boat was the last thing I needed to be doing. But my dad and I drove down to Connecticut to look at it.
It was the right boat at the wrong time.
But I decided to push myself out of my comfort zone and go for it. I knew it would add stress and complications on top of what I was already dealing with, but I viewed it as a gift to my future self. I made an offer, and we came to terms.
Even though I knew Christine would want me to find ways to be happy, I felt a bit of guilt over the decision. Why should I get to enjoy our daydream without her? But I pressed ahead through the doubts.
As a final step, I drove back to the marina to complete the transaction. Afterward, the seller and I walked out of the marina building. When we were a few steps into the gravel parking lot, an orange monarch butterfly fluttered by and stopped me in my tracks. The seller and I continued out to where the boat was berthed — about 100 yards away — so he could walk me through its systems. As we stepped aboard, the monarch landed on the boat next to us.
She was proud of me for doing something other than just surviving.
Monarch butterflies are migratory, so I stopped seeing them as winter approached. I hoped that they would return this year, and my eyes would always dart to any winged insect during my dog walks. It didn’t happen right away, but I finally spotted my first of the season. It was on a dog walk again. Just a regular one — not the “crying to Beyoncé” kind.
Our house has a very small backyard, but it’s kind of a cozy spot. Christine in particular really liked spending time out there. But it had some issues. The deck was on life support, and we were always fighting a losing battle against the weeds coming through the gravel that surrounded the deck. But she worked her HomeGoods magic and turned it into a really nice space with outdoor rugs, furniture, and several umbrellas.
This was a temporary solution, though. The deck needed to be replaced, and we wanted to add more grass and plantings in place of the gravel. We started doing it ourselves, but it was one of those nightmare home improvement projects. It was like an archaeological dig. We got a few shovels into removing gravel and hit a row of heavy concrete pavers that ran the length of the fence, left over from whatever the original setup was in 1970. And where there weren’t pavers, there were giant rocks. And the gravel itself seemed bottomless.
At the time of the crash, the backyard was still very much in the “it needs to get worse before it gets better” phase. Every time I looked out the window, I saw both a disaster area and a project that Christine and I started together but would never finish.
My inexpensive solution was to close the shade.
In the spring of 2025, a group of neighbors chipped in and had two trees planted in my front yard. A landscape designer one of the families had been working with took the time to learn about Christine and Spencer and help me pick the right trees for each of them. Christine’s turns orange in the fall, naturally.
Several months later, I asked the same landscape designer to create a plan for the backyard. We went back and forth on refinements over the winter.
This past summer, we put the plan into action. It brought me a great deal of joy to see the backyard improvements take shape. But I also couldn’t shake the feeling that it would have been better if Christine had been involved.
On the very last day of the project, the landscape designer asked me to come out to the backyard to walk through a few final details. I couldn’t have been out there for more than five or 10 minutes. But as I was talking with her, an orange monarch butterfly flew across the entire backyard and right past where we were standing.
She liked how it came out and was proud of me for finishing the job.
I’ve had several more encounters with orange monarch butterflies this year. The last time was exactly a month ago. Unlike all the other times, she didn’t flutter away as I fumbled for my phone. She sat still as I slowly walked closer. She finally let me take a picture.
