Belinda Hirsh: A picture of a butterfly in purple.

To Ester,

I am sad because I will miss you and because I wanted to show you all sorts of beautiful things here in cornwall, and take you to special places and let you share in the goodness here. I am sad because you have been there for me and now I have to learn to live without your lovely words, without your lovely voice, without the pleasure of an evening spent chatting with you.

Remember our conversation about God? About how when someone you love and who loves you dies, you can still feel the love there and you still know that that person loves you and has your back even though they are no longer here? And how that feeling of love, we felt that must be the person's soul still living, and that all the souls connect together to form a vast expanse of pure love and that must be what God is.

Now all that is left of you is your soul but that's ok because that's the important bit. That is the pure love with the background noise removed; no bitterness, no regret, no guilt, no shame, no jealousy, no self-doubt, no secrets, no hiding. Just love.

When I first found out how depressed you were, that time we talked on the phone and you were crying, I drew a picture of a butterfly in purple and I put it on my bedroom wall - a butterfly because that is your animal like a hedgehog is mine, and purple because that is your colour like orange is mine. I entitled it 'a unique purple butterfly far far away that I am thinking of' and next to it I wrote:

"love can fly and love can float,

love can swim and love can bounce from cloud to cloud to cloud to you.

it's all in purple and it's all for you,

it's all in purple and it's all for you."

It looks like a poem but it was a prayer, and I stood touching it on my wall and I prayed it over and over, hoping the love would reach you. Maybe it did, I don't know. Only last week, I wrote again. I drew another purple butterfly and I wrote, "it's still in purple and it's still for you. stay purple forever."

It doesn't matter whether you will stay purple forever but it matters that you stay you forever, in whatever form that takes. It may be as a soul or a spirit or something external, but it's just as ok if it is just in our memories and in what you have taught us. Maybe a soul is just a memory anyway, but it's a powerful one.

At the moment I am sad because I will have no more of you, but I am going to try to keep those butterflies up on my wall, I am going to try to keep you on my wall and I will touch them and pray my little prayer for you and maybe you will receive the love I am sending you.

Thank you for being my friend.
Thank you for all your love and support and for all your belief in me.

All my love,
Bini