Butterfly and hummingbird

I laid down in bed again and began to listen to my Barbra Streisand tape. Then, looking up at the sky I saw a butterfly take shape. I thought of my only brother Bill who had died of lukemia three years earlier in January 1981. "His spirit has taken the form of a butterfly", I thought. My brother loved tinkering, and one of his hobbies had been to try to invent perpetual motion. My mind went wild. "That's it! Bill's figured out how to complete the circle of life, death and resurrection from the dead. First, Christ had to die, then him." And then I had the horrible thought, "and then my father and then me." My hands went repeatedly to my face and I wept and wept and wiped away the tears in long, sweeping motions. "My God, not my father!" And I lived Daddy's death back in Montreal, five thousand miles away like I was there. And then I ooked back at the sky and saw his favourite creature, a hummingbird, and I thought, "Dad, you're a hummingbird now." And for it to be perfect, for us to be together for all eternity, I had to let the hummingbird in to the room, and then my father would materialize. And then the party could begin. Because Jesus, Bill and John were waiting in the hotel lobby, ready to come upstairs. And I began to recite of all my closest family and friends aloud because everyone I named would be present too for this eternal party.