I was told this story by a dear, dear friend, of her trip of a lifetime, to Ireland. That is where my quest began.

About a dozen years ago, I was working as a visiting nurse for patient's in their home's. This was while I lived in Houston, Texas.

The agency that I worked for, sent me to a patient, who would forever alter my life's direction (they all did, but to a lesser degree).

The patient was an elderly woman, a diabetic, who needed her blood sugar checked on a daily basis to determine the amount of insulin she was to get that day.

She lived in a sub-division in Houston, called Foxwood, with her husband of 55 years. They were both sharp as razors but had failing health and could not see well enough to make her daily insulin determination.

They were New York native's with strong New York accents, whose grown children had settled in Houston and wanted them near by because of their advanced years. I was also a Yankee with a very pronounced New Jersey accent (unbeknownst to myself), and this endeared me to them, and visa versa.

I took the case 7 days a week and looked forward to my daily visits. What I did on this case, should have had me in and out of there in 1/2 an hour, but I sat and visited with them for a couple of hours, on my own time of course, everyday. I loved those people so much!

They had the greatest stories of lives filled with travel and adventure. But this one will forever stand out in my memory.

As a result of her diabetes, she had lost her sight (except for shadows). A couple of years prior when she was told of her impending blindness, her husband and herself planned a trip that they had always wanted to go on but hadn't. They wanted to see Ireland once before they died. It was the homeland of their parents and they were raised on stories of this wonderous place.

In their haste, they booked nothing but a flight to Dublin and arrived with no real destination or plans. They rented a car and just drove. All this seemed a little odd, because even then they were elderly.

They wound up in the town of Waterford, Ireland. They went on to tell me the history of the town, and how it was made world famous because of The Waterford Crystal factory. The best crystal in entire world was made at this factory. And how, although it was extremely expensive and fine, everyone in the town had Waterford Crystal. Even the 800 year old castle where they were staying, had enormous Waterford Crystal chandelier's throughout.

After a day of sightseeing, they returned to their "room" exhausted. She lay on the massive old bed staring up at the illuminated Waterford chandelier, with it's dozen's of hanging prisms. There it hung, in the middle of that gigantic dull gray room, that was made entirely of large blocks of plain cut stone. She said the chandelier was huge and looked so out of place in that old "chamber", but that it was magnificent.

After a while, she realized that it was damp and cold in the room and asked her husband to close the drapes, maybe that would cut down on the draftiness some. The drapes looked to be a hundred years old themselves, old red velvet curtains that stretched all the way from the floor to the 20 foot ceiling.

When her husband yanked those curtains shut, out flew hundreds of Monarch butterflies, that went directly for that chandelier where they landed. One of the last things that she saw before losing her sight completely, was that magnificent illuminated chandelier covered with hundreds of beautiful butterflies!

That story so touched my heart, it is now my life's dream to visit Waterford, Ireland and attempt to retrace some of their steps in that wondrous place. And if I am very lucky, who knows, I may see a butterfly or two...

This is my very 1st attempt at a "real" webpage, done entirely by myself in March 2000. That is except for the 1000 or so questions that I asked of Jan516. Thank you girlfriend..."Lil"

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~Jewell In The Mud~