“Happy Birthday,” Abby said softly to the gray headstone before her, still unable to believe it marked the place where her younger brother lived.
A gentle breeze wafted over her, and the sun gently kissed her skin. It seemed too beautiful a day to do what she was doing.
Her eyes caught a flash of movement and bright color—a red-orange ladybug with black spots had landed on the stone marker. She pulled back a bit in surprise as the ladybug crawled over the ‘A’ in her brother’s first name, then meandered over the top part of the engraved dates.
Aaron had died just before his twenty-second birthday—a little over a year ago. For a brief, crazy moment, Abby wondered if the ladybug was his new body. It’d flown to the top of the headstone just after she’d laid down a bouquet of flowers—a mix of red and yellow carnations and baby’s breath.
It was all she could do now to show others her brother was valued and loved—something she couldn’t do when it mattered the most. The ones responsible for his death couldn’t care less about those left behind to grieve the massive loss, the hole left in her family.
The ladybug kept crawling over the engraved numbers, and Abby’s eyes remained glued to it as if waiting for a sign.
Growing up, she and Aaron had been fairly close, but because of the nearly four-year age difference between them, they hadn’t remained that way as they got older. Still, she missed being able to talk to him every now and then, hear his snorting laugh, see his cheesy social media updates.
The two of them didn’t end up with much in common, but Aaron was still sort of a friend to her, beyond just a family member.
She’d side-eyed him while he was in their mother’s growing belly, then later watched him change and develop from a squishy baby to a confident young man.
They’d laughed together, plotted mischief together, gotten in fights they always made up from—often without even addressing whatever petty problem had vexed them temporarily. They’d watched cartoons together, experimented with cooking together, and after she left home to further her education, she still kept tabs on him, checking in periodically to make sure everything was okay.
She made sure to be there for his high school graduation, and he was there to see her get her bachelor’s degree. He’d been funny and caring and had dreams she’d looked forward to seeing come true.
“I love you, brother,” she said before standing up and preparing to leave. “Wish me luck on my job interview tomorrow!” Her voice was light, in deep contrast to the heaviness in her heart.
She so wished she could hear Aaron’s voice again—in person, not the voicemails she’d saved and had no intention of deleting anytime soon.
The ladybug landed on her arm, crawled on it for a bit, then flew away. She watched it, tickled both physically and emotionally.
She realized she’d been smiling the whole way back to her car once she settled into it and checked the rearview mirror out of habit, almost expecting to see her brother grinning at her from the backseat with his adorable gap teeth.