A Christmas Morning fly visit for Henry
Weird right? I know, most people pick something sweet to remember their loved ones by. Maybe a rainbow, a hummingbird, even a song or flower. Not us. But I cannot say that I really picked the fly, more like it picked us.
Within days after John died, when I would be talking about him or making a difficult decision a fly would appear. It demanded to be noticed. It landed on my nose, hair, buzzed in front of me, sometimes just out of my reach but wouldn’t stop until I gave it my attention. We didn’t have tons of flies either, only one. The fly didn’t just hang out with us at home but instead, it followed us to the important places. It was there at parents to lunch day, family pictures, the TED talks that John and I were supposed to attend together. It showed up on birthdays and anniversaries, in the winter, in the rain, on many important days. The fly wasn’t there every day by any means but enough that it couldn’t be ignored. I promise we were showering with soap, (at least most days) so it wasn’t that.
I searched high and low for what that fly could mean, and the deepest corners of Google held some interesting ideas. Finally, after months of questioning, I stumbled upon this explanation about flies. The fly can survive and oftentimes strive in the shittiest of situations. And that is exactly where I found myself. Alone. A single mother to four kids. Struggling to hold together the pieces of our former life. It was a shitty situation for sure.
Each time our fly guy showed up, I was reminded that we would survive and possibly thrive in this shitty situation. The fly had become a symbol of strength for us.
Today, our fly still shows up regularly in our lives. We have reminders of our fly guy tucked into our lives. On the bathroom mirror with the words ‘You Are Loved’, framed in the hallway, on a necklace from my sister-in-law, even engraved on our tombstone.
Over a year after John passed away, I was trying to figure out a name for this blog and I posted to Facebook asking for creative help. It was suggested to use ‘In the Blink of a Fly’ because our lives changed so quickly and the fly is the only thing that got me through many days.
So come along and join us on our journey. We are learning to survive in our new normal and hopefully, someday we may even begin to thrive.
