On the Wings of a Butterfly

Carolyn Johnston always loved butterflies. So when her husband, Bill, died of cancer, she ordered monarchs for his funeral. “We all went out into the sunshine and released the butterflies,” she recalls. “It was just awesome. A lot flew onto the canopy and onto the flowers there. My sister-in-law said hers flew into the sunshine. She said she felt like it took Bill’s spirit into heaven.

“His funeral turned out to be a celebration of his life,” Johnston adds.

The Katy, Texas, woman is one of the many touched by the butterflies that Bethany and Reese Homeyer raise at their lakeside home in the community of Swinney Switch near Mathis, Texas (pop. 5,734).

“We’re constantly getting cards and letters from people telling us how butterflies have touched their lives,” Reese says. “I used to keep a 4-inch binder filled up with them, but I finally gave up and put everything in a cardboard box.”

The couple knows first-hand how the butterflies can symbolize new life. When their 18-year-old son, Michael, died in an auto accident in 1993, they found unexpected solace in the delicate, colorful butterflies that the youngest of their eight children would have loved.

“The healing never ends,” Bethany says of losing a child. “It’s forever. But it helps me if I can help someone else.”

After Michael’s death, Bethany sank into such a deep depression that Reese worried she might break down. Then one day Bethany read a magazine article about a butterfly farm. The idea of raising something her “bug kid” would have loved, intrigued her.

“I connected butterflies to Michael,’’ she says. “He didn’t die. When a chrysalis forms, it’s symbolic of our human death. When the butterfly emerges, it’s symbolic of our life on the other side. We’re a whole new beautiful being.”

Encouraged by Reese, Bethany researched the business and decided to raise butterflies for release at funerals, weddings, and other special occasions. In 1996, she quit her oil refinery job and started Michael’s Fluttering Wings Butterfly Ranch at the family home on Lake Corpus Christi.

It was a year before she sold her first butterflies. “We’d practice placing them in envelopes, packaging them, and putting them in shipping boxes,” recalls Bethany, whose butterflies sell for $75 to $98 per dozen. “I’d put them in the garage for a day and sometimes go out to shake them a little because I knew that happens in transit. I figured if they could survive out there, they’d survive being shipped.”

These days, Bethany and Reese—who still works part of the year as an instrument technician at another oil refinery—raise seven species of butterflies: monarchs, southern whites, variegated fritillaries, Gulf fritillaries, zebra longwings, queens, and painted ladies.

They split the many tasks. Bethany searches for and gathers the tiny butterfly eggs attached to plants in the greenhouse and tends the growing insects. Meanwhile, Reese cares for the hundreds of plants in the greenhouse and gardens that butterflies need to reproduce and feed upon.

Monarchs, for instance, lay their eggs only on milkweed plants.

Reese, too, finds comfort in the butterflies he once hardly noticed. “Now I find myself watching them religiously. They’ve made me more aware of the beauty in life.”

The butterflies help them connect with others. Often, a telephone order for butterflies turns into a lengthy conversation with someone who’s lost a family member. Then there are the calls from happy brides who want butterflies for their wedding.

Such stories keep Bethany and Reese going. Though they’ll always grieve for Michael, knowing they’re giving others a little bit of joy at seeing a cloud of sparkling jewels flutter skyward at least gives them peace, Bethany says.

“The good Lord gave us these butterflies as a gift.”

Sheryl Smith-Rodgers is a writer and photographer in Blanco, Texas.

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