Butterflies Falling: Death is Returning to the Flow of the World

me at Japan's teamLab: Borderless

Sending you love to wherever you’re reading “Butterflies Falling…”

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It was an experience I can only attempt to articulate. I’m not a crier (at least, not usually) but there was something about this piece that took hold of my heart.

teamLab’s Borderless is a virtual art museum. Its exhibits are unique and life-inducing. The art travels throughout the whole building, so even if you visit the same room, you won’t experience the same art.

All of the pieces had me in awe. It overloaded my senses that left me tingling with excitement.

This specific piece, Butterflies Falling: Death is Returning to the Flow of this World, kept me in tears. The title alone had me hot, weeping.

When I was just eight years old, I had lost my great-grandmother to liver cancer. Seven years before that, I lost my grandmother, her daughter, to causes still unknown to me. I could never ask my mom; couldn’t force her to relive those days.

On the day of my great grandmother’s funeral, two monarch butterflies landed on my dress. One big, one a bit smaller. We were walking from her burial site, on our way to celebrate her life over lunch in the chapel. I can’t remember how or why, but they sat on the dark tulle and clung to me like cellophane. Their bright orange, paper-thin wings were transparent under the gloomy sun, and their antennae tickled my skin as if my mothers were there kissing my cheek.

It wasn’t until I plucked them off my dress, and put them in my palm did they ever move. They fluttered around me the rest of the day, until we had to leave the cemetery. They bid me a loving farewell. Every day since, I always wait for another visit. Every quick flash of orange makes up for the lifetime we have to spend separately.

And maybe that’s why Butterflies Falling: Death is Returning to the Flow of the World. Death is not what’s returning—it is what delivers us to the flow we’re meant to be in. People as my beautiful as my mothers don’t deserve eternal static. They were meant to be in flux with life beyond life.

I walk into this pitch black room, surrounded by pink and blue projections as music dances into my ears. Smoke enshrouds my figure as I made my way through. The flowers stood, watching the butterflies glide around them, like the art of seduction.

Suddenly, it goes dark. Wings melt into the unknown. Everything halts, as if someone took their hand and covered the heavy mouth-breaths of hushed lips.

Just then, in the midst of my confusion, the screen is dashing with streaks of light. It’s conquered by glowing crows that soar across the walls, as if I was riding on their backs.

The music continues, and I’m wobbling on its notes like a child.

And, as a child would, all I thought was:

“This is what Grandma saw when she went to Heaven.”

And it must have been the music, or the butterflies I could never touch, but Heaven wasn’t just an idea anymore. For a moment, I actually felt it like an itch in my eye—invisible but undeniable.

Surely, it was just pixels on a screen, carefully thought out to draw out precise emotions. Or someone’s next viral post.

Or worse. It meant nothing at all, and I’ve read into this entirely with the incorrect assumption it was destined to be mine; an imagined soul I’ve given it.

But, anything that lets me hold onto them just a little bit longer, is enough to conquer all those maybes I carry like rocks in my pockets.

“Is this what she felt when her wings sprouted out her back?”

If that’s the case, I’ll reconsider this God of hers; for she’s the only reason I need to get up to the castle in the sky.

“If I don’t believe in God, then where should I meet her?”

Maybe our worlds would make an exception—just ten minutes to be with my mothers is all I would ask. And I’ll accept whatever eternal fate I’m supposed to.

Author’s Note:

Hello!

Thank you everyone for reading this piece, this one means a lot to me.

Grief is something I’ve had to explore since I was a child, and I’ve never had the outlet to do so until now. I hope this reaches you, in whatever phase of life you’re in.

I was really lucky to experience this in person, and thankfully teamLab has a YouTube channel where they upload most of their exhibits. I’ve linked it so feel free to explore :)

Until next time!

♡︎, always, Emery Elise