This is a lovely essay by Annie Louise Twitchell
The bee is grounded on the hot asphalt in the grocery store parking lot. She’s taking a few slow steps but she won’t fly and it will take her far too long to find safety.
I crouch and pick her up. She wanders the unfamiliar landscape of my hand but she seems to like the warmth.
The flower planter is across the driveway and I take her over and slide her off onto a flower but she turns quickly and climbs back into my hand. She refuses to leave so I take her back and look closer; that’s when I see the injury, a long slash across her thorax. She sits still on my hand and I realize she hasn’t moved her wings the entire time.
I think she is dying.
I ask her again to sit among the flowers but she clings now to my fingers and I give up. I go back to the car, buckle one-handed, drive home one-handed. She rests in my open palm, soaking in the warmth from my skin.
There are no flowers at home, this late in the season, so I go to my aunt’s house to the flower garden there. I sit in the long grass next to the rows of flowers and I listen to the other bees working and I just hold my bee.
It is almost an hour before her movements become uncoordinated and confused. She lurches around on my hand and then slowly she stops moving.
I wait, forgetting to breathe, watching her. How do you know when a bee is dead? I don’t know. So I wait a little more, then I carefully slide her off my hand into the flower bed. I leave her there, hidden under the blossoms, and I stand up.
This is the first lesson.
Three years later I come home from class. We have learned how to try to stop someone from dying, how to negotiate with death, how to bargain for a little more life. It is late when I get home.
I walk into the kitchen and my rabbit B is standing up, leaning out the open door of her house, waiting for me. Her ears are tinged blue and her mouth is open as she gasps for air and I know, all at once, that she is dying. And I know that unlike most rabbits she is waiting for me.
I sit down on the floor and B flings herself out of her house into my lap. I lift her into my arms and all she wants to do is lean into my warm body. I have known her since the hour she was born and she has never asked to be held except for this moment, now, at the end of her life, but for such a silent creature her request echoes through the house.
I remember the bee.
I hold her, adjusting her position so she can breathe a little easier. She pushes her head under my hand, burrowing in for safety, and I let her.
I hold her. What else can I do? What can anyone do? I want to ease her suffering but she is already very close to the end. So I hold her, for a few minutes more, until I let her go.
This is the second lesson.
I have never seen an animal so distraught. My dog lunges at the dead rabbit in my arms, pushing at her head and mouth, whining and crying. She knows something is wrong: she wants B to breathe.
I hold her now, too, a dead rabbit in one arm and a frantic dog in the other. After a while I rest B in a box for the night and I take my pup upstairs, shut her in my room to sleep. For days she is listless and depressed, constantly sniffing B’s house, checking to see if she’s come back. I bribe her to eat with a bagel and cream cheese from the Cafe. I coax her out on walks. I ask her what she needs and when she does not know I do my best to figure it out.
This is the third lesson. I think this is the hardest.
Lesson One: Be there. Be open. Be willing to walk this road even if it might hurt.
Lesson Two: Know when to let her go. Know when to step back. Know when to say goodbye.
Lesson Three: The ones left behind need more care then the ones who died. Let the dead rest and let the others grieve.
Janathan Grace Reflections 
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