First Person: Signs, Signs, Everywhere Signs

Jamie’s father, Robert Bellavance, with his favorite, a lobster dinner. Photography courtesy of Jamie Coelho

It’s Aug. 22, 2025, and I have some time to kill while browsing Newport’s Bellevue Avenue shops. As I’m chatting with a local shop owner inside a home goods store, she points at my chest and says, “You have a ladybug on you!” I glance down at and lightly place a finger on my white lace dress; the insect’s bright red exoskeleton flecked with fashionable black polka dots stands out as it crawls onto my fingernail. I say, “I think it’s good luck if you make a wish and blow it away.”

But maybe that’s an old myth about stray eyelashes. I draw in my breath and let out a gust of manmade wind. The ladybug launches its wings off the tip of my finger and takes off into the sky.

It’s my dad’s seventy-eighth birthday. Except he’s not here. I just lost him two weeks earlier on Aug. 3 after a long battle with dementia. I think maybe this is him sending me a sign?

Three hours later, I’m inside the International Tennis Hall of Fame and another ladybug lands on me, this time tangled in my long blonde hair. I notice it, but it flies away before I can make another wish. Now, I know this is real. Two ladybugs in one day! On my dad’s birthday. I spend the day with a smile on my face instead of tears.

A painted ladybug from Jamie’s daughter. Photography courtesy of Jamie Coelho

On my way home, I call my mom and sister and tell them the news about my ladybug encounters. When I get home, I regale my husband and my kids. I text all my friends that my dad is sending me signs from heaven. My friend says I should get a tattoo of the ladybug on the place where it landed. Over the next few weeks, my daughter draws me pictures of ladybugs and makes me little clay ladybug figurines that I keep on my dresser at home. All of a sudden, ladybugs become my thing.

Later that fall, I sit on my deck with my best friend from high school. We’re catching up on life, talking about what we used to get away with as teens. A ladybug lands on my screen door, listening to our secret conversation. A month later, as the autumn chill sets in, I find the red and black beauties nestled in the corners of my house. One night, my daughter yells out in the dark, and says she can’t sleep because there’s a bug flying around her room. I turn on her light, and sure enough, it’s a ladybug. I post a photo of it on Facebook and another friend writes: “That’s not a ladybug, that’s an invasive beetle! Kill it!”

I laugh it off, and still believe.

Christmas Eve comes and I see one crawling on my kitchen floor. It’s Dec. 24! I don’t ever remember seeing ladybugs in my house, never mind on Christmas. I call my sister and tell her, “How weird is this? A ladybug in my house on Christmas Eve.”

At this point, my sister thinks I’m crazy, but she also sounds sad.

“Dad hasn’t sent me any signs,” she says.

I say to her, “He’s probably right there in front of you. You just have to notice it.”

THE WINTER OF 2026 takes hold in New England. I have not seen any ladybugs in quite some time. In February, I drive up north to New Hampshire to go skiing with my sister and her family. We stop in to see my mom on the way in my hometown outside Boston. Every time I see her, she hands over a bag of my dad’s belongings, and I take them home and store them, unsure what else to do. This time it’s a few T-shirts and seven hats, most bearing the orange “S” logo for Syracuse University, my alma mater.

I spend the weekend skiing with my sister and her family for a few necessary unplugged days in the outdoors. We think about dad and how he used to take us skiing. Even in the depths of his dementia, I would entertain him when he couldn’t leave his bed at the assisted living facility. I’d say, “Dad, what do you want to do tomorrow?” And he’d say: “I’m getting the skis ready

to go up north.” I’d live in the moment and tell him how excited I was to ski the fresh pow with him.

The day after we leave the ski resort, my mom calls to say my sister fell on the slopes and broke her leg. She’ll be out of work for three months.

She’s the best skier ever. I’m the one who is hell on skis. I think, “How was it her and not me?”

Now that she’s out of work with a broken leg, I ask how she’ll pass the time. She says she’ll watch Netflix and read books. I check in on her periodically to see how she’s doing. By spring, she’s losing her mind.

“I am very needy now. Not used to being dependent lol,” she texts. She’s a mom of two teenagers, and is used to running them around to cheerleading, track and wrestling practices, meets and matches, and always working double shifts, cooking and cleaning the house. She still cannot drive or work. But she finally has time to put birdseed in the birdfeeder. Sunflower seeds and corn kernels now fill the empty container.

One day, in the early spring, she texts me: “I just saw a ladybug, but when I tried to take a picture, it flew away. Guess dad didn’t want you to know, he visits me too.”

I laugh and text back, “I bet he will appear to you as something different. Probably already is, just need to notice it.”

A moment later, she texts me a photo.

A cardinal spotted in Jamie’s sister’s backyard. Photography courtesy of Jamie Coelho

In it, is a bright red cardinal, staring straight at her.

“See!” I text. “He heard you. They are said to appear when you need a lift.”

“Well, I need a lift,” she texts.

Over the next few days, she looks out her window and sees the cardinal every day. In every picture she sends me, the proud bird is looking straight at her, its beak bright orange with piercing black eyes and a sassy red tuft at the top of its head.

“Haha,” I write. “He’s telling us he’s not playing favorites.”

NOW IT’S EARLY MAY, and I haven’t seen a ladybug since Christmas. Meanwhile, my mom is upset because she hasn’t witnessed a single sign. She sounds forlorn when my sister and I announce our own wildlife observations.

I keep reassuring her dad will appear to her as a hummingbird at our family beach house in York, Maine, where he used to sit on the deck and observe the wildlife around the property. But now it’s June, and swiftly turning into July, and still, there are no reassuring signs for her.

For Christmas, I had bought my mom a stained-glass sculpture of a luna moth to hang at the family beach house. I bought it because I remembered seeing one with my dad on the deck one summer when I was a kid. My mom hung it right in the very spot, underneath the glowing porch light, where I spied the real one when I was nine or ten.

Maybe he will appear to her as a rare luna moth, I think.

NOW IT’S FOURTH OF JULY weekend, and my family — including my mom, my husband and kids, and my sister and brother and their spouses and my nephew — are enjoying a nice dinner of lobsters and steaks on the deck in York Beach, Maine, which was my dad’s favorite thing to do.

We had the best day at the beach and are enjoying spending time together. We all say we wish dad was here to enjoy it, too. I look around for hummingbirds, but unfortunately the red-nectar-filled feeder hangs unvisited, and none of the wildflowers have really bloomed yet around the property. In what used to hold vivid marigolds and pansies, the planters remain empty this year. I vow to bring up some hanging flowering plants on my next visit to brighten up the yard.

Later that night, after watching the fireworks crack downtown, we return to the beach house so my sister, brother-
in-law and nephew can say goodbye to my mom before heading back home. We’re all standing in a circle in front of the doorway inside the kitchen, giving hugs and saying goodbye.

I see a little speck in the corner of my eye. It flies in the middle of us, then lands on the curtain on the back of the door.

“What is that?” I yell out.

I walk over to the door, and sure enough: It’s a little red-and-black insect with spots, crawling up the door.

“I knew it,” I say. “He was here all along.”

And this time, the whole family gasps in awe.

A ladybug (or invasive beetle?) found in the author’s home. Photography courtesy of Jamie Coelho