After spending time with a friend’s family on the New Jersey Shore this past summer, Cassidy Farrelly began to notice something unusual. A yellow butterfly seemed to follow her wherever she went.

Farrelly, a junior economics major, said she would always be the first one to spot the yellow butterfly. There were never any other butterflies around it, and her friend’s mother told her she didn’t usually see butterflies in the area.

There’s superstition that butterflies are actually our loved ones who have passed away and are watching over us, Farrelly said.

When Farrelly was a senior in high school a few years earlier, her brother died. The butterfly created an immediate connection to this in Farrelly’s mind.

In February, Farrelly had a yellow butterfly tattooed on the back of her neck to commemorate her brother. The butterfly is designed as a skull with yellow and black shaded wings and antennae, done in a style reminiscent of the Grateful Dead logo. The tattoo was done at Resurrected Tattoo in Syracuse.

Despite a ten-year age difference between Farrelly and her half-brother, the two were very close. After their father moved to Ireland, all he requested was that Farrelly and her brother would get dinner together once a week. These weekly dinners, which occurred throughout the time Farrelly was in high school, made her and her brother’s relationship a lot stronger.

The weekend before her brother passed away, the two siblings went to Rhode Island for a college visit. Farrelly said her brother was really excited to travel with her, and it was the first time that they had done something big like a trip together.

“We really got so close,” Farrelly said, reflecting on that college visit. “It essentially worked out as a way of me saying goodbye, even though I didn’t know it.”

With Farrelly going to college, she said that it felt like the age gap was closing between her and her brother and it felt so great.

Said Farrelly: “I feel lucky to have had that time with him and that experience.”

Published on March 29, 2016 at 12:07 am

Contact: lmeyers@syr.edu