I Want My Fish Back!

We stared at the mess on Anna’s floor, mouths agape. Anna had slept in our bed the night before (something we’re STILL working on, but I’ll save that for another day) and we just woke up. Sleepy-headed, we left our room, directly across from Anna’s, but quickly stopped in our tracks, facing her doorway.

Gravel. Water. Fish Bowl. The mess was all over Anna’s bedroom floor.  My tired eyes tried to process the carnage before me.

“Where my fish go?” asked Anna, confused.  “Umm….I don’t know, honey,” I replied. I guessed that our cat (the presumed culprit) had made a meal of him in the middle of the night.  My eyes scanned the carpet….and, to my surprise, came to rest on a shriveled, black thing that must have been our late betta fish, Nemo. (Guess who named him!)

“Let’s go get the broom,” I said, leading Anna down the hall with me. I wanted to whisk him away before she saw him. Moving quickly, and blocking Anna’s view with my back, I swept up the many, MANY tiny purple rocks that were all over the floor, and Nemo with them.  I promptly dumped them in the trash, along with our dear departed friend.

"Nemo", before the "disaster"

When I was younger and had fish who died, my dad chose that time-honored rite, burial “at sea.”  However, I thought our toddler was a little too young for that. I had been in middle school when I suffered my first aquarium fish fatality and the subsequent toilet funeral.

I hadn’t envisioned beginning this lazy Sunday morning with a conversation about death. I didn’t want to get so serious that it went over her head, but I didn’t want to lie to Anna either. I scratched my head. How, exactly, should I explain what became of Nemo?

Strangely enough, this wasn’t our first brush with the topic.  A few months before, Anna pointed to a framed photo of my best friend and me, smiling and holding tropical beverages.  That photo predated Anna’s existence.  She said, “You and Ken. Fruity drinks.”  I replied, “Yes, that was Ken and me.”  Anna then stated, “I want to visit him! Can we, can we?” 

Me, with Ken

Then I had to explain to her why we couldn’t do that.

I hadn’t been prepared for this.  Ken was only a few years older than me when he lost his 2-year battle with cancer in 2010, which was devastating for me. Fortunately, he had met Anna when she was about 3 months old, and saw her again at about 10 months old, but she obviously has no recollection of those meetings.  She knew he was special to me, so it made sense that, like we did with Uncle Keith, we could just hop in the car and go see him.

I would’ve loved that. Ken would have been a doting surrogate uncle too.

I can’t remember my exact words, but I explained that he didn’t live here anymore, and that after you live here on Earth, you go to heaven with God.  Of course, we hadn’t really had occasion to discuss God either, but I was doing the best I could on the fly with a subject that was highly emotional for me.

“But I want to go see him!!”

This was hard. I said that people we loved who die, who stop living in this world, can become our guardian angels that watch out for us – we can’t see them, but we know they’re there. She seemed to like the idea that he was watching us. 

Of course, I knew Anna wouldn’t really be able to comprehend the significance of this. But I was glad we’d had that conversation as I struggled to wake up that morning. “Honey, I think Tika (the cat) knocked over the fish bowl by accident.  When that happened, the water spilled out and so did your fish. Fish have to be in water to live. So Nemo died.  He’s gone to fish heaven. Like Ken died and went to heaven.”

That was giving a lot of credit to Tika, who thwarted my efforts to prevent this very tragedy by placing Nemo’s bowl on a shelf attached to Anna’s bedroom wall, not on any furniture, and high up enough that I thought he’d be safe. Oops. Maybe it was just clumsiness – after all, she didn’t eat him – but I was still suspicious.

Amazingly enough, Anna took this in stride. She seemed fine, ate breakfast and started watching Toy Story 3 with me for the hundredth time.  Suddenly, she looked at me with sad eyes and said, “I want my fish back.”

“I know, honey. I’m sorry.” Boy, did I ever know.

This is a common dilemma for parents – you want to protect your child’s feelings, but you want to be honest too. Had we not discovered Nemo’s demise in this way, I might have considered purchasing a replacement at the pet store.

 

But I didn’t have that choice. And I’m kind of glad – with the exception of time-honored childhood fantasies like Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny, I think it’s crucial to be honest with kids.  The challenge is figuring out how to keep it as “on their level” as possible. I don’t know that I got it right, but I tried.

That’s all we can do, right?