When my wife told me 10 days ago that the goldfish had died, things went much differently than the other times we had to deal with this situation. She broke the news to me almost as an afterthought.
“Oh, do you want to tell Dad about the fish?” she said to Bridget one night after dinner.
“No, thanks.” Even in her grief, our little girl never forgot her manners.
Actually, there was no grief this time. The demise of Lightswitch – this was about the fifth fish with that name, although Bridget never knew that three of them died – didn’t bring about crying or carrying on.
In fact, a little lesson came with this passing. Bridget finally learned about flushing dead fish down the toilet. Don’t blame me that it took a dozen or so fish for us to teach this fact of life.
First of all, she wouldn’t let us flush the fish. When her first fish died – the much beloved Freddy – we tried to tell her that was the way fish went to heaven. She strongly disagreed.
Apparently, fish heaven is a place that you reach by car. When we tried to give Freddy a proper “burial at sea,” Bridget said that Maria had to drive Freddy to fish heaven. Apparently, it was right next to horse heaven.
While I got her into the car to go get a new fish, my wife, ever the good sport, pretended to get in her car for a trip to fish heaven. I think we only had to pull off that routine once.
Which brings me to the second reason why flushing is a new concept. We hid most of the deaths from her because we didn’t have too much luck when we first started getting fish for her. We didn’t get a filtered tank right of the bat and some little buggers just didn’t make it.
So I had to develop an elaborate routine that involved distracting my daughter and making a quick run out to the store for a new fish. Luckily, she hadn’t developed the keenest eye and never noticed my scam. Or the fact that I had to use the bathroom right after getting back from the store without telling her what I had bought.
After many false starts, we got the fourth incarnation of Lightswitch. This bigger lived for more than a year. I thought I was going to have to build an addition on the fish tank for him. He practically came out of the water to get the food out of the little jar by himself.
He died a few months ago, and we replaced him – with Bridget’s knowledge – with yet another Lightswitch. That little guy bit the dust last week.
Which brings us to the burial. Maria felt brave enough to float the idea of flushing, and Bridget bought it. In fact, she liked it so much that she insisted that she flush the toilet, not her mother. She really got a kick out of the whole thing.
I just wish she had wanted to help so badly with all those other fish. My arm was getting tired.