Widowed Mom Shares A Video Of Her Little Girl Calling A Butterfly Dada — ‘Come Back Dada, We Miss You’
“May he be in every butterfly she sees."
Yuliya Evstratenko | Shutterstock A little girl who never got the chance to meet her father still gets signs that he will always be watching over her.
Her widowed mother shared a heartbreaking video of the little girl chasing around a butterfly who she believed was her late father.
The little girl chased after the butterfly, calling, ‘Come back, Dada! We miss you!’
Santana McElroy and her three-year-old daughter Jayana were visiting a park when McElroy spotted a butterfly. "I told her that her deceased dada is now a butterfly," she wrote in her TikTok, which has been viewed over 5 million times.
Amin Shahin Shakur, McElroy’s boyfriend and Jayana’s father, was killed in a shooting behind his store in July 2020. At the time, McElroy had no idea that she was pregnant with their child.
Although the little girl never had the chance to meet her father, she found comfort in the idea that the butterfly was her dad looking after her. As the winged creature began to fly away, Jayana chased after it calling, “Come back, Dada! We miss you!”
Viewers were overwhelmed with emotions after watching the video.
“As a father, this is the most heartbreaking thing I’ve ever seen,” one TikTok user commented.
“This would break me every time," another user wrote. "I’m so sorry for your loss."
“May he be in every butterfly she sees,” another commenter added.
Tatevosian Yana / Shutterstock
McElroy said that Shakur was the love of her life and that the loss devastated her.
Shakur passed away in a shooting in 2020.
On July 13, 2020, Shakur and a colleague, Mohammad Abu-Sharife, got into a heated argument behind Shakur’s business before Abu-Sharife pulled a nine-millimeter semi-automatic firearm and shot Shakur four times.
While Shakur was able to retreat back into the store, he succumbed to his injuries before police arrived.
Abu-Sharife is currently serving a 15-year prison sentence.
Now, McElroy is doing her best to keep Shakur’s memory alive for the sake of their daughter.
“I show her your pictures and talk about you all the time. She loves you,” she shared in a TikTok video. “I’m not sure what I’m going to tell her when she starts to ask about you. For now, I tell her that you are in her heart. And in my heart too.”
She pays tribute to Shakur every year on his birthday by releasing balloons into the sky with their daughter and thanking him for giving her a new best friend.
Still, she believes that her daughter deserves the chance to know her dad.
“Our daughter doesn’t deserve to grow up without her dad,” she said during the sentencing of Shakur’s killer. “On top of raising a daughter alone and trying to play both roles as best as I can, I carry tremendous fear about our future. I worry about the effects that this trauma will have on her as she grows up.”
In many cultures, butterflies represent souls and the lifecycle, and many people who have lost a loved one report that butterflies have followed them shortly after the loss.
Many believe that butterflies are messengers from the other side, reminding us that our loved ones will always be walking by our sides, whether they’re physically here or not.
Megan Quinn is a writer at YourTango who covers entertainment and news, self, love, and relationships.