I found a ladybug a few weeks ago.

You should’ve seen me. My childhood blinders turned on when I found ladybugs. I loved to watch her crawl on my hands from finger to finger, preparing to fly away. This used to really hurt my feelings. I’d say, “Hey, come back!”

Now that I’ve grown older, I realize that ladybugs are like me; they’re busy. I can respect that.

This ladybug was sitting on the sidewalk in a deep crevice. I picked her up and held her in my palm, appreciating her beauty. I expected white wings to peek from beneath her symmetrically spotted shell. I expected them to expand and to watch her fly away, but she didn’t.

This puzzled me, “Ladybug, why aren’t you flying away?”

She didn’t answer. I cradled her in my palm as I walked to my vehicle, Bruce, stuck in disbelief.

I got into Bruce and opened up a water bottle. I poured a capful and then dropped her into it. I expected her to feel the water and wake up, to shake, as canines do when their bodies are wet. I expected her to daintily twist about, as do the paws of felines when they’ve stepped in a puddle and the cat has forgotten its galoshes. But I got nothin’.

I gently placed the ladybug atop a 3×5 notecard in the center console of my car and drove her home with me. As I got out of my car, I told her, “Bye ladybug! I hope you wake up soon.” Then I went inside my apartment.

In the morning; I awoke feeling startled and guilty. “Oh no,” I thought, “I left the ladybug in the car all night! I’m such a jerk. What if she woke up? She’s probably roaming around in Bruce without a reasonable exit in sight. She is miles away from her home, so even if she escaped Bruce, where the hell would she go?”

When I went downstairs and opened the car door I found her sitting perfectly on the notecard, unmoved.

Unsettled, I finally accepted that she was dead. She had been dead the whole time.

I wondered what to do with her body. Such a creature that had always brought me joy. She deserved a respectful burial. It wasn’t something one customarily does for a ladybug; Hell, I think it’s stupid when people let their children give pets funerals. No pet = no funeral = no grief. But this ladybug deserved it. Any ladybug would deserve it.

Fortunately, this was the morning I was “on-time” for work. So, imagine me in my business casual attire, stooping down and digging a hole in the ground with that random key to nowhere on my key ring. I dug a lady grave. I thought to myself, “If humans are buried six feet under how can I dig her grave to scale? 6 centimeters? Centimeters, that sounds right.” I covered her body with fresh soil, placed red peppercorn sprigs on top of her grave and gave her a moment of silence. I didn’t know what to pray. I just felt. Maybe my action, my process on her behalf was prayer. I hope so.

My dirt-stained hands smelled like fresh earth recently renewed. I made myself OK with that. I stood up and then drove myself to work, inhaling the post-rain smell and listening to music all the way there.

This was all very odd for me. I mean, I’ve never seen a dead ladybug before, have you?

They’re good insects, you know? I remember learning that they eat aphids off of roses. “To preserve roses… well, that makes you an important bug,” I thought. Sometimes I would collect and relocate ladybugs to another section of my grandmother’s garden. Put them where they’re most useful. Grandma’s roses still always seemed to die. Aunt Juanita was the better gardener. Remember her roses?

No, stupid. Not the ones at the funeral. I think when people say the dead look like they’re sleeping, they only say it to pacify themselves.

My aunt Juanita looked asleep in her coffin. She looked perfectly peaceful.

So peaceful that I did something I never do to dead people: I touched her.

Frozen. It was like a block of ice. I was shocked by the death in her hand.

Shocked that my aunt’s normal warmth was no longer fueling her body.

I was touching the appendage of an empty compartment.

As I walked away from my Aunt, I looked back to see if she’d sit up and smile at me. But she didn’t.