As one of the primary pillars of support in my life from infancy into adulthood my grandfather had never once asked me for anything. This is why the summer he died, I dropped everything I was doing the day he asked me what would turn out to be the first and final favour I would ever complete for him.
He still lived out in the quiet countryside with my grandmother, down a no-exit gravel road on an expanse of Central Alberta parkland that was large enough for all his outdoor hobbies, but not excessive. After retirement his days were filled with regular rounds of the property in his longhorn-mounted ATV. He'd locate and cut down dead or dangerously leaning trees with a chainsaw to put through his wood splitter, then to be stacked into neat piles for the wood stove in his garage. According to him, natural gas fireplaces just didn't carry the same type of heat density as a wood fire, and I would have to agree. Eventually, even his home insurance company ended up agreeing with him too. He had enough room for a small outdoor shooting range made especially for his coveted, antique black-powder gun collection – the kind of firearm that took physically loading the powder into it, tamping it down, and then waiting a considerable time for combustion before a single shot was fired, often missing the target. He tampered with his tractor that served as a driveway snowplough in the winter, and as a grader to smooth out ruts in the driveway after wet conditions in the summer. Ride-on lawn mowers, fence staining, landscaping projects; he was a man that often said, 'first I got tired, and then re-tired.' He was one of the few who did not interpret retirement as the start of the end, but rather a new beginning and he found plenty of purpose for himself daily to keep him meaningfully engaged.
Neighbours and family were always welcome and would frequently stop in for a visit, oftentimes leading to conversations that ended around bonfires which stretched well into the evening. The next day's chores could always be rescheduled for another time if it meant time spent with those worth spending it with. People loved coming by to visit my grandfather, and he truly enjoyed showing them what project he was currently in the midst of, his opinion on the political climate, the rising cost of fish and game licenses, and the best ice fishing spots on the local lakes in the winter. His ice fishing shack was an old truck-mounted camper that he had welded and placed on a set of metal skis so it could be easily towed along the ice with a trailer hitch. Inside the camper-on-skis were four circular openings he had drilled into the floor that perfectly fit ice-augured holes through the ice into the water below. There was also a satellite dish mounted to the outside of his ice fishing shack. It was not connected to anything. There was no TV inside but he got a kick out of the idea of anyone nearby thought he might be watching global channel streams in the middle of a remote, frozen lake.
The day of his favour request was mid-morning on an early August weekday. His latest project had been a new outdoor garden plot meant specifically to grow the types of flowers that several species of local fauna enjoyed. Unfortunately, the only local fauna that seemed to actually partake in his offering was an infestation of aphids. In a newspaper ad he read earlier that morning, a greenhouse in Calgary claimed to sell live ladybugs as a natural pesticide; a single ladybug apparently consumes a surprisingly large amount of aphids in one day. They sold them by the pound and he called to request, if I had time, to buy two pounds so that the little warriors could help him in the battle of the aphid. "If you could maybe swing by and pick them up for me and drop them off next time you're here I'll pay you cash for them." This greenhouse was 2.5 hours from where Grandpa lived and was too close to a major urban centre for him to want to spend time driving there. I happily obliged, cleared my day, and headed to the greenhouse. "I need to buy a couple pounds of ladybugs" I said to the woman at the counter, suddenly concerned that this may very well have been one of Grandpa's famous practical jokes. To my relief she smiled and said they just received a new shipment and had been quite popular as pest control for local horticultural organizations. "Two pounds," she cautioned was "going to be a very, very large number of ladybugs." Well, I reasoned, Grandpa said two, so we may as well go with what he asked for.
She took me into a room behind the counter to a large double glass-doored fridge. Inside, I could see hundreds of plastic-sealed bricks, each package containing what appeared to be hundreds, if not thousands, of ladybugs that were in a state of suspended animation. The cool temperature made them enter a dormant state, but 'once they warmed up', she informed me, they'd be 'well rested and ready to go.' I purchased two brick-sized packages of them and then set out on a sunny morning, looking forward to a pleasant, blue-skied summer drive.
I was about one hour into the drive when out of the corner of my eye I saw a small movement. I glanced over and was surprised to see a single ladybug slowly crawling up my windshield. Several moments later, more movement caught my eye and when I looked over at the passenger window there were a dozen more ladybugs, all on the inside of the window, crawling around. It didn't take longer than another five minutes for these ladybugs to start trying to take flight and when I looked in my rear-view mirror, I was horrified to see the entire back of my truck was slowly being filled with a steady stream of ladybugs pouring out of the greenhouse bag. Hundreds at this point I first noticed, but closer to thousands by the time I had avoided a panic-induced car accident and was able to pull over on the side of the busy highway with my hazard lights flashing. By the time I had removed my seatbelt, all of these ladybugs were actively flying around the cab of my truck and it was difficult to see, as I fought off a panic attack. I desperately grabbed my door handle, pulled it open and leaped out for fresh air, feeling the bugs all over me. Anyone driving by at that time would have been quite curious to see a massive black cloud stream out of my open truck door and into the sky. Once the bulk of them had vacated and I had managed to calm the heebie-jeebies of having that many ladybugs flying around me in such an enclosed space, I investigated what had happened. I still had one pound of perfectly sealed (but increasingly restless) ladybugs intact for delivery, but the other bag had a small hole in it that neither myself, nor the greenhouse employee had noticed during the transaction. They woke up on the drive, and they found a way out. Every single one of them, in the small space of my vehicle interior.
Once I had triple-wrapped the remaining bag of ladybugs and performed some deep-breathing exercises, I was ready to finish my drive to Grandpa and get the rest of the bugs out of my possession.
As I pulled into Grandpa's long, treed driveway, August's long rays of sunshine were warming everything to the perfect temperature, bringing out the many shades of greens in the trees and grass while also highlighting the myriad colours of other natural flora that Grandpa let grow wild out of respect for the beauty of native species. Serenity in an instant. He was sitting in his new garden plot with his best friend when I walked over with the remaining pound of ladybugs. "Only one pound I'm afraid, the other pound…escaped."
"Escaped?" he asked in bewilderment. "They're ladybugs, how exactly do they escape?"
"Well, they warmed up, found an escape route, and as a matter of fact, even tried to kill me on the highway."
"They're for killing aphids, not grandsons. You look just fine! Let's see these little guys!" His enthusiasm was always contagious, and I couldn't help but smile as I watched him and his friend open the remaining pound of them like two excited little boys.
"So, what do you do now?" asked his friend.
"Well," Grandpa scratched his head for a moment, "I suppose we just set them here on the ground and let them go find their dinner."
With that decision being made, Grandpa placed them strategically in the middle of his outdoor garden, cut open the now fully-awake bag of ladybugs, and stood back. The three of us watched in silence (me with a mild twinge of PTSD) as a black cloud of ladybugs flew out of the bag and away into the sky, not one of them staying in the garden.
His friend, in between gasps of laughter, said "you do realize they're most effective in a place like a greenhouse where, you know, they can't just fly anywhere else on the planet. I don't want to know how much that cost you, but it was well worth it because I just got to witness one of the stupidest things you've ever done."
The three of us shared a long laugh over this, but Grandpa was insistent that many would return and remained optimistic that he'd see benefits. In the weeks to follow he did see many fly back, and I'm happy to report that his aphid problem was successfully curbed with at least partial credit due to his spotted little garden assistants.
A couple months later, in that same garden on a warm sunny day, he fell over and died suddenly. While incredibly heartbreaking, I truly believe it's how, and where, he would have wanted to leave this world.
The Medium
A couple years later my cousin had discovered through small town word-of-mouth that a very talented medium lived near us. She pleaded for me to go see the medium with her and was met with several eye rolls in return. They just weren't my thing. Only after she offered to both drive there and pay for my session did I concede.
I waited outside in the waiting room for my turn, while my cousin and the spirit-talker had their session behind a sparkly beaded curtain that served as the only separation from the rest of the room. Beaded curtains make a certain kind of statement about an establishment, and it wasn't boding well for my mounting skepticism. Once her session was through, my cousin slid her way through the curtain, mascara running down her face and dabbing her eyes with a tissue. "She really got through Bryan, she's the real thing."
I slowly got up from my chair and heard my name summoned through the dangling strings of beads. I parted the curtain cautiously to see an unassuming woman with brown hair sitting comfortably at a small round table, drinking tea. She offered me water, which I accepted, and looked into my eyes in the way one does when they're looking for truth. It intrigued me.
"I can tell you're a skeptic" she said to me with a smile after I had taken a seat, my arms crossed. Before I could reply she said, "that's okay, many are, and you don't have to believe in everything." I simply nodded in agreement as she closed her eyes and said:
"There's an older man here. He has a tough-guy demeanour but he's incredibly funny and he says he's your grandfather."
I was still a little sensitive about losing my grandfather and this caught me by surprise. I gulped, but then thought about how many people have grandfathers who had passed on. This was a very general statement that had mass appeal and I wasn't entirely convinced.
I told her that my grandfather had passed away a couple summers back and that he was very much missed. She cut me off mid-sentence by saying "he knows you don't believe me, but he's telling me that to convince you, to say the word 'ladybug,' and you'll know what he means."
My jaw dropped. Sure, it's easy to predict the odds of someone having a dead grandfather, but to associate them with a ladybug, of all things, is an exceptionally strong coincidence.
The medium continued on "he says he's proud of you, to keep working hard, drive safe, and that whenever you happen to see a ladybug, it's him saying hi to you."
Think what you will about mediums (I still haven't entirely formed my own opinion), but I left that session feeling comfort and a sense of my grandfather with me.
The Name
Since that day, I have noticed ladybugs in the most unusual places, all over the world. I was once near Alice Springs, the geographic centre of Australia in the middle of the Outback, when I opened my water bottle and a ladybug landed on it. Our tour guide, knowing the area quite well, was absolutely mystified as to how it was there in the scorching heat, and more importantly, why. What could it possibly be sustaining itself on?
Sometimes in my condo, on the 28th floor of a high rise, I'll see a small ladybug in the evening, slowly making its way across the wall in my line of sight. Weather permitting, I'll let it outside on a balcony plant, or simply let it go where it may, depending on whether or not it's winter (yes, this happens year-round). I find ladybugs land on me frequently during the summer months, and have seen them on airplanes, in my suitcase when I unpack, and usually at least one will appear at some point on any given plant I have growing in my condo. If I grow the plants myself (I'm a sucker for balcony-grown sunflowers), it's guaranteed there'll always be a ladybug on them at some point during the week.
While deciding on a name for this special place, I went through many names. Hansen Lodge. Kenneth's Cabin. I was scribbling away on my notepad when my partner Stuart, having remembered me telling this story when we first met, walked into my office and simply said "what about Ladybug Lodge." It struck such a chord that I cried a little, and he hugged me while I sniffled back the tears and told him it was perfect.
So, I wish everyone much enjoyment, relaxation, laughter, and joy during your stay here. Keep a watch out for any ladybugs that you may encounter and of course, feel free to report any sightings to me, photographs welcome. It's Grandpa saying hello to the guests, and he's the friendliest fellow you'll never meet.
Bryan