Jerry and Some Asters

Full transcript of the My True Ghost Stories episode “Jerry and Some Asters.” Listen to this episode.

Hello and welcome to episode 95 of My True Ghost Stories. Today I'm going to tell you a story about a peaceful sign from the other side. Now over the past month of episodes, omitting one episode, I have pretty much revealed that I am something of a butterfly fanatic and that I have a major hobby of bringing caterpillars inside and then freeing the butterflies after they close from the chrysalis and also spreading the word two neighbors that they might want to do this too. And so two weeks ago I talked about a project where I spread the word two neighbors about filling their backyards with butterfly and bee-friendly plants. And it was the story about I had a table at a block party with a lot of information and a sign-up sheet.

And so two of these people who were interested I would tell them you could plant things in your backyard and your front yard on your deck and your windowsill and for a very fortunate view in New York City you can put planted flowers on your fire escape. Now you're not supposed to do this but there are some landlords who are really tolerant and will allow you to put a plant out on your fire escape if it's not blocking the stairways at all. Nobody on my block wanted to do that because everybody had access to a backyard or a front yard or a windowsill but one person that was interested and did put flowers for butterflies out on their deck was my then boyfriend's father who would be my father-in-law now. My boyfriend, now husband, lived with his father. They were very good roommates together for a long time and my husband's father, who we're going to call Jerry, was as much of a butterfly fanatic as I am.

It was wonderful to meet him. He's also a bird watcher and a bee watcher but he was mainly a butterfly fanatic which I just loved about him. So when I told him after I met him about my butterfly project and that I was trying to spread these butterfly friendly plants and caterpillar friendly plants all through our neighborhood. He was very eager to include his fire escape in this plant and he also knew that he had a very tolerant landlord who would allow this if the flower pots were properly placed. So I assembled a nice collection of plants for Jerry to put out on his fire escape.

I brought him of course, parsley for the black swallowtails to lay their eggs on and I told him if you see any caterpillars to call me and I will come fetch them and raise them inside my house and then I also brought him a pot with asters in it and asters are a fall blooming flower that is very popular with butterflies and bees. So I brought in these plants and he put them out on his fire escape. So a few weeks after I gave all these flowers and plants to Jerry, I went over there to see my boyfriend and Jerry was home and Jerry said, Jennifer, I have to show you something and he came running over to me with his digital camera and he flips through his photos and then he shows me one and the one that he showed me was of not a black swallowtail but a yellow swallowtail which is a big beautiful butterfly and it was on one of the asters right outside his window and he said, Jennifer, I got to tell you when I looked out that window and I saw that butterfly it put me right where I wanted to be and I knew what he meant. It was just this beautiful, complete feeling of having done a good thing by placing these flowers and putting them out as an offering and then having it attract butterflies by actually supplying food for butterflies. So I knew exactly how he felt.

So as that summer went by the parsley in my backyard was so completely covered with caterpillars that I had to go get some parsley from Jerry's collection and bring it back to feed to the caterpillars in mine because his didn't really have any caterpillars on it. I needed the parsley to feed all the caterpillars in my yard but the asters stayed and butterflies continued to come to the asters and Jerry would tell me about it every time he saw a butterfly on the asters that we had put out on his fire escape. So it wasn't that long after that, maybe a year or two that Jerry's health began to decline. It was very sad and it was very slow. He wasn't in pain but his health began to decline and eventually he had to move out of his home with my boyfriend now husband and go to assisted living and we did not put the plants out on the fire escape because those were really Jerry's project and he really took good care of them and so we didn't replace them and Jerry wound up in assisted living and then into memory care.

It was a slow process and I'm not going to go into it too much now because it is very painful and it's a whole story unto itself but eventually Jerry passed away and it was devastating to my boyfriend it was very very sad for our family and we would miss him very much. So Jerry had a religious funeral. It was a beautiful service, it was very traditional and the day after the funeral my boyfriend now husband we decided to go back to the cemetery so that we could say our prayers and prayer respects to Jerry. The clergy that had performed the ceremony told us that if we were going to go back we had to stay eight feet away from the grave and that we could only say things like Godspeed Jerry you know we wish you we wish you the best we were not supposed to say anything about we miss you we wish you were still here we were really supposed to just send him on his way and not give his spirit any mixed feelings about passing on because the belief was that he was right near the grave which I believe that he was right near the grave and he would hear everything that we said. So my boyfriend and I we got to the cemetery and it was a beautiful day just like the day before when the funeral had taken place and we went and we found the grave we knew exactly where it was because we had just been there the day before and we stood at the edge eight feet away just like we had been told we stood respectfully far away and all we did was wish Jerry good luck in his travels and then after seeing these things we together decided that we were going to say silent prayers to ourselves. Now it had rained a little bit the night before and the dirt was obviously still very fresh from the burial the day before and there was little puddles in the dirt little puddles nothing major but some little puddles all around in the dirt and my boyfriend and I stood our designated eight feet away and we said silent prayers to ourselves also keeping in mind that these silent prayers had to only wish Jerry good luck in his travels and as we stood there eight feet away a small blue summer azure butterfly began to fly around in circles around Jerry's grave he began to circle flit about and not land anywhere and we just flit about now this cemetery did not have a lot of flowers on it it did not have a lot of wildlife in it it only had a few trees and just a lot of gravestones in rows and so there were no other butterflies in this cemetery so when I eventually looked up from my silent prayers my boyfriend was watching this butterfly flit about flit about fly around in circles only around Jerry's grave and then it started to circle in smaller circles and then it landed right in front of the gravestone and it began what butterfly watchers call puddling what looks like sipping some water out of the puddle and it just stayed there it stayed there even after it seemed to have stopped drinking it just stayed there it didn't fly away it just stayed there and I remembered what Jerry had said when he saw that yellow swallowtail butterfly on the asters outside his window on the fire escape he had said that that butterfly put him right where he wanted to be and I realized that Jerry after this long drawn out illness and slow decline and with us just standing there wishing him well that he was probably right where he wanted to be my boyfriend and I waited a while for the butterfly to take off again but it did not and we said that's Jerry that's Jerry right there so we talked to that butterfly as if he were Jerry and we said okay good luck on your travels we wish you well and then we left the cemetery and we were so grateful that we were able to get this peaceful message from the other side thank you for listening to today's episode if you enjoy my storytelling style you can subscribe to the patreon and if you have enjoyed this episode of my true ghost stories please take a second to review subscribe and share it with a friend to help the show grow until next time