Loosing my best friend Nichole Mcwatters suddenly and tragically has been the most painful and challenging experience I have ever attempted to navigate. This story was shared by her Grammies and it has brought me and other loved ones comfort during our mourning and grieving. I believe my friend is in peace in heaven and that our spirit lives on after our body is buried.

Once, in a little pond,  under the lily pads, there lived a little water beetle in a community of water bugs. They lived a simple and comfortable life in the pond.

Once in a while, sadness would come to the community when one of their fellow beetles would climb the stem of a lily pad and would never be seen again. They knew when this happened; their friend was dead, gone forever.

Then, one day, one little water beetle felt an irresistible urge to climb up that stem. However, he was determined that he would not leave forever. He would come back and tell his friends what he had found at the top.

When he reached the top and climbed out of the water onto the surface of the lily pad, he was so tired, and the sun felt so warm, that he decided he must take a nap. As he slept, his body changed and when he woke up, he had turned into a beautiful blue-tailed dragonfly with broad wings and a slender body designed for flying.

So, fly he did! And, as he soared he saw the beauty of a whole new world and a far superior way of life to what he had never known existed.

Then he remembered his beetle friends and how they were thinking by now he was dead. He wanted to go back to tell them, and explain to them that he was now more alive than he had ever been before. His life had been fulfilled rather than ended.

But, his new body would not go down into the water. He could not get back to tell his friends the good news. Then he understood that their time would come, when they, too, would know what he now knew.

So, he raised his wings and flew off into his joyous new life!

Here is the link to donate to the Go Fund Me set up to support Nichole’s son Avyn. I am beyond proud of my friend for her bravery she is honoured by the following words in the media

Every child should have a mom like Nicole McWatters. The courageous Oshawa woman died Sunday in a selfless act of love. She sacrificed her own life in the frigid waters of Lake Ontario to save her six-year-old son off a Pickering beach.

“She worked so hard to provide the best possible life she could for him. She spent every waking moment with him. She was there for him through thick and thin, happiness and sadness,” friend Dane Watts wrote on  GoFundMe