Butterfly release sends 'secret longings up to heaven'

MERRILLVILLE, Ind. (AP) - Mary Rose closed her eyes and gently whispered a wish to the small butterfly.

The 80-year-old widow slowly opened her hands to release the butterfly into the air, but it contently remained on her fingers. It didn't fly away along with hundreds of other fluttering butterflies released Saturday at Calumet Park Cemetery in Merrillville.

"Dad doesn't want to leave you," Rose's daughter, Theresa Barlas, told her.

Mary and Edward Rose were married just three months shy of 50 years before Edward's death Aug. 14, 2016. Mary struggles with severe macular degeneration in both eyes. Her vision is very poor. She stared hard at that butterfly in her hand.

"Dad doesn't want to go," Barlas said again.

Rose smiled. Barlas' 15-year-old daughter, Nicole, released another butterfly at her grandfather's gravesite.

"The butterflies love my daughter," Barlas explained. "We always tell her that grandpa is around us."

Native Americans believe if you want a wish to come true, you must first capture a butterfly and whisper your wish to it, then let it go. As the legend goes, a butterfly makes no sound so it cannot reveal the wish to anyone but the "Great Spirit" who hears and sees all. In gratitude for giving the butterfly its freedom, the wish is granted.

"The ceremony is very beautiful and really touches our hearts," Barlas said. "You never think your loved ones will leave you. And when my father went to heaven, part of my heart went with him."

Despite Saturday's oppressive heat and humidity, hundreds of other guests also performed the ritual to remember a deceased love one during the cemetery's 11th annual butterfly release ceremony. Guests listened to live music and inspirational readings before releasing more than 800 butterflies into the thick, muggy air.

I watched from under a shady tree, thinking of my family members buried at that cemetery. I pondered the symbolism of the butterfly release, as well as the metamorphosis between grieving and remembering, between prayers and wishes, between life and death.

"When you go to work every day and feel the pain of so many deaths, it is imperative to have a strong belief in something bigger than life," said Dan Moran, the cemetery's general manager. "I absolutely believe in God and Jesus, and the whole eternity thing."

Throughout his many years in this business, Moran hears the same refrain from distraught mourners - why? Why does God allow our loved ones to die, too often prematurely or unfairly? Grievers either believe in God's love and His plan, or they question it, sometimes through anger or bitterness, Moran said.

When Moran was diagnosed with cancer two years ago, he lost a kidney but not his faith.

"I surprised my family with having no fear of what might happen," he recalled. "I even went so far as to talk to God. I told Him that if this is what had to be, then I trusted Him."

Moran was 9 when he first encountered death while living in upstate New York. His cousin's dog got distemper and his father told the boys to dig a grave in the woods, take the dog there, and shoot it with a .22-caliber rifle.

"I guess he thought that would make us men," Moran said.

Moran's cousin pointed the rifle at his dog but he couldn't get himself to pull the trigger.

"He stood there crying, the rifle inches from his pet's skull," Moran said. "I grabbed the rifle, pointed and shot the dog. We cried, filled in the grave, and never went to that part of the woods again."

Two years later, Moran's father died from a perforated ulcer. Later, in high school, a couple of Moran's classmates died in drowning accidents, and another one committed suicide. After high school, Moran was sent by Uncle Sam to Vietnam.

"It was kill or be killed," he said. "I stopped making friends there during my year and a half in country as a way to avoid the pain of loss when a friend would die in action. And a number of them did die."

Later, Moran's uncle was killed by a train, and his mother and sister died from cancer. He and his wife also lost their first child in a miscarriage, in addition to other relatives and coworkers dying through the years.

"I have a lot of shared grief and personal losses in my 70 years," Moran said.

About 10 years ago, he met a woman who lost two daughters within months of each other - one from a drug overdose, the other in a car crash while texting. The woman worked at the cemetery as a family service counselor. But being around so much death, dying and mourning prevented her from learning how to live a healthy life without her deceased daughters, Moran said.

"She had so much trouble understanding why her girls were taken so young," he said.

Still, she was absolute in her belief that she would see them again in heaven. As a culmination of their heartfelt conversations, Moran wrote a song about it.

"In a way, this song was penned by me but written by these many experiences of death," Moran told guests Saturday before singing the song.

Moran told me, "This song is as much yours as it is for all the people who braved the heat to let a butterfly go free to carry their secret longings up to heaven."

I didn't release my butterfly there. I brought it home as a gift to my fiancé's daughter, who released it later that day. Her wish is her secret.

At the 400-acre cemetery, which houses more than 50,000 interments, hundreds of families showed up to release their secret longings up to heaven.

"We wished for my father to watch over us and to keep us safe," Barlas told me afterward. "And that he was at peace and at rest with no more pain."

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Source: Post-Tribune

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Information from: Post-Tribune, http://posttrib.chicagotribune.com/