In Celle, below the hilltop town of Cortona, we silently walked the paths St. Francis had once walked. By then, after days of reading about him and others, I felt jaded about the martyrdom of the saints; I felt cynical about how young and rebellious so many of them were, how they starved themselves and made themselves ill. I started to see St. Francis as one of them: a religious fanatic, an idealistic adolescent.

But in Celle, after peering into the little cavelike room he had slept in—the wooden block for a pillow, the stone slab for a bed—we eventually snaked our way into the forest, and it was there I felt grateful to connect to that part of him both of my parents had loved: his compassion for animals, his love of nature.

A low canopy of live oaks shaded the path, and there were narrow open spaces where the vistas revealed the glassy sheen of Lake Trasimeno at the other end of a long, green valley. I walked in the shade, thinking of my parents—both of them dead now—and how kind they were to each other, to their children, to all animals, wild and domesticated, how they cared for all living beings.

I thought about their possible reunion on the other side of this life. They were always hovering in my subconscious mind, like hawks on the wind, a maple leaf zig-zagging down from a great tree, a dragonfly over a murky pond. What does it matter where they are now, really? I asked myself. They’re gone. And my life goes on, imperfect, painful, beautiful, confusing. But my heart stays rooted here, in this earth below my feet: rock, sand, wet soil.

In a clearing, I came upon a pair of white butterflies and watched them float awhile. And right then, in Celle, in the shadow of St. Francis, I felt how much I’d been loved. I was able to be present, setting aside the angst of not knowing anything, really, and of never seeing my parents again. “Did you see those butterflies?” I asked the whole group when we reconnected on the path. Everyone looked at me quizzically. No one else had seen them. They had only visited me.