It had been a month since I lost my sister Theresa to breast cancer, and still nothing felt real.
Grief, as it turns out, is not linear. It doesn’t follow rules. It doesn’t care how much time has passed or how many casseroles are left in your freezer. And no matter how “prepared” you think you are when someone you love is terminally ill, the truth is, you are never actually prepared to bury them.
I thought I had been. We had known for months. We had said the right things, shared the hard conversations, even made jokes when we could to lighten the weight of it all. But hope is a funny thing—it hangs on tight, even when it’s hanging by a thread. I didn’t stop hoping for a miracle until I watched them lower her casket into the ground.
After her passing, my mother and stepfather had gone to help clean out her house. A few days later, they handed me a large trash bag full of her clothes. Most of it I wouldn’t wear—she was a little bigger than me, and her style was nothing like mine—but I couldn’t bring myself to let it go. That bag sat in the corner of my bedroom like a silent monument to her absence.
One morning, I was running late after dropping my three kids at school. I had a quick window to run home, change clothes, and get to work. My gas tank was dangerously low, and so was my bank account. Payday wasn’t for a few more days, and I remember distinctly thinking, *How am I even going to make it to work and back until then?*
That’s when it started—the strangest internal dialogue I’ve ever had.
*Try on the brown corduroy pants.*
Excuse me, what?
*The brown corduroy pants in the bag.*
Absolutely not. I’ve never worn corduroy a day in my adult life. Brown is not my color. And those pants are at least a size too big.
Still, the voice in my head was persistent.
All the way home, I argued with… myself? With her? With God? I wasn’t sure.
By the time I pulled into the driveway, I was so annoyed by this ridiculous internal back-and-forth that I almost missed the butterfly. A large, beautiful butterfly landed gently on my shoulder as I stepped out of the van.
It didn’t fly away.
I blinked. “Okay,” I whispered. “This is getting weird.”
The butterfly stayed with me as I walked up the sidewalk. It didn’t fly off until I opened the front door.
I stood in my living room, still skeptical—but now, deeply curious. Something about the moment felt… intentional.
I opened the bag and found the brown corduroy pants.
Rolling my eyes, I stepped into them. They were a little roomy, but surprisingly not terrible. I slipped my hand into the front pocket—and froze.
Two folded twenty-dollar bills.
$40. Exactly enough to fill my gas tank at the time.
I laughed and cried all at once. The absurdity. The timing. The butterfly. The inner argument. The pants. *The pants!*
I held the money tightly in my hand, looked up at the ceiling, and through a blur of grateful tears whispered, “Thank you, Theresa.”
People often talk about “signs,” especially after someone dies. I’d always been a little skeptical. But that moment? That was a sign.
She was still with me. She *saw* me. And in the middle of my heartbreak, she found a way to say, “I’ve got you, sis.”
I’ve never looked at butterflies—or brown corduroy—the same way again.
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