A Little More About Bee:
The One Who Wanted to Inspire Someone Someday
In 2021 my child Bee died. That breaking, and a love that outlasted it, is where this work was born.
Bee — Abbott Lee Butler — July 22, 2002 to July 8, 2021.
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Bee was an artist and a writer and a maker of films — quirky, exacting, entirely themselves. Bee was nonbinary and chose the pronouns she/her and they/them, and you'll find I refer to Bee as both, depending on the story or the moment.
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When Bee was six, we climbed Little Whiskey Mountain. At the steep meadow she burst into tears, and I turned her around to see how far we had already come. She looked, and thought about it, and said: I want to go up.
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So we picked a point ten feet ahead. Walked to it. Rested. Did it again. Past every false summit, all the way to the top — and at the top, both arms in the air. 4.2 miles and 1,244 feet of climbing, for a knockoff CamelBak.
Around the same age, furious with me, Bee wrote me a
formal notice of departure:
You are the menesb prsun on rthe. I have evr met. Seeya ladr. I wel not be kuming don. Untel July 22! I am upsbers paking. I have kalb a tacse.
SURE!
​bi Abbott! ★ ★ ★
The return date was already planned, for their birthday.
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​From camp, Bee signed their letters "your list making daughter," and sent the news as a numbered report of thirteen items, with the heart at the very end: "13. (the unluckiest, most obvious) we are apart (you and I)." Another letter closed: "Love from your daughter who is always on the lookout for the tea you like."
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Bee once scolded an enormous elk named Junie for eating our tree, with complete affection: I like you. I think you're pretty cool, but that doesn't mean you can eat our tree. I can't babysit you all the time. Hey. Bye, have a nice day. And they would look in on Soot, their cat: "Did I interrupt your brooding?"
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And even when things were hard, Bee could find joy in little things, like a mushroom nightlight.
Oh, my God, it's so cool. It like, changes colors, and then, like, hold on, hold on. I just want you to see it.
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Bee's Creativity
At sixteen, Bee said into a voice memo that she wanted to make the kind of movie where people face something they can't fix, and just do what they can, and grow. And then: "even if I do make the movies that I do for some selfish reason, I can still hope that I inspire someone someday."
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You can hear Bee say it, in Bee's own voice, in the first episode of The Remembering Way podcast: You Can Do This Hard Thing.
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Bee made art in every medium: a painted girl flying into a purple-blue sky; a bird made entirely from aviation maps; a blazing yellow star above dark clouds, small figures sitting on its points.
When Bee was five or six I was working at the seminary, and she would go behind the two-ton altar and put her small hands up and say the Lord be with you, and I would answer, and she would do the whole interchange. Then she would come out from behind the altar and say: Mama, when I grow up we're going to share a job and take turns wearing the collar.
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And we are.
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Even our birth charts hold it, though I only discovered that recently. In astrology, the Midheaven is the high point of a chart, the calling, and the IC across from it is the root, home. Bee's calling sits on my root. And Bee's root sits on my calling, where Saturn and Neptune met in February 2026, the New Genesis point. One axis, held from both ends.
Bee loved the moon. One night, after tucking Bee into bed, I saw the enormous harvest moon hanging low in the sky, so I went back in and said, get wrapped up in your soccer blanket, we're going to go down and check it out. I can picture Bee all wrapped in a blanket, just looking at each other and the moon — the awe of life, the wonder of life.
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Bee's journey got harder and harder. Not easier and easier. Each time Bee overcame something, we said, "It has been so hard, and you have grown so much through it. Your capacity to handle things has grown, too. And the next time, the next thing won't be as hard." But the problem was, each thing was harder.
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All of us who loved Bee could see in Bee what Bee could not see in themselves — the strength, the quirkiness, the curiosity, the insight. And my guess is that most of us struggle with exactly that. We have a hard time seeing ourselves as the magnificent, courageous, beautiful people we are. I call it the Bee Effect: learning to see with truer eyes who we are, and who others are.
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All those times I helped Bee do hard things — going just ten feet at a time. I realize now that Bee was also helping me.
Bee can see it now. I believe that. But the Bee Effect is for us. Here. Now. In the density of this life, not out of it. Bee wanted us awake while we're still here to live it.
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Some days I feel Bee's presence with all of the brilliance of a super moon, lighting up in the dark, knowing the connection of love with Bee never ended, just changed. And some days, Bee's presence is the tiniest sliver, barely a hint. You can still see the faint outline of the whole moon.
By focusing too narrowly on what I've lost, I can miss the ways Bee is gently teaching me, gently and playfully guiding me to trust their ongoing presence in the one great Love at the heart of all that is, seen and unseen. I can't enter this expansive place by denying my pain but by entering into my own suffering's reality. Allowing my own pain to open me to the aching of Mamas with broken hearts, and of those who are afraid, who hunger, who are excluded or struggling, aching for and with all of humanity.
I am so grateful that I get to witness the being and becoming of so many. And we're doing it together. Even now. Thank you, for taking the time to get to know a little more about our amazing kiddo.
Elizabeth Lightfoot
midwife of being
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If you would like to make a gift in Bee's honor to this work we share, you can find more here: