Handling Grief

This morning my suspicions were confirmed... our dear little Cal (our "Calico" fish) swam his last. He had been acting strangely, and late in the morning Karis came upstairs to inform me that he was still in that same spot in the tank. I came downstairs to see he was truly dead.

Now comes the interesting part...

We were discussing what we needed to do with poor Cal. I said we should flush him down the toilet. Karis thought we should bury him outside, and I told her that if we did that, the cats and animals would surely find him and dig him up and it would be a mess. I said most people flush their deceased goldfishes down the toilet.

So, with the "burial" confirmed, I netted lifeless Cal from the tank and we proceeded to the bathroom. I plunked him inside the bowl, then flushed him down. So here's the interesting part.... as he was swirling around (like you really want to know the details, I know), the boys were all, "Wow - how cool!" "Look at him!" "Neat!!", all the while Karis was standing behind us sobbing. Poor thing.

She really had a hard go with the whole Cal events of the morning. Many tears and sobbing, and hugs from mom, and even tears from mom as I watched my little girl try to process her first "death" experience. She came up with an idea to make a sign for Cal, which I thought was a fabulous idea - so she wrote his name, drew a picture of him, then taped it to a bamboo skewer to stake outside - in "remembrance of Cal". We looked at the pictures of him (see post below), and she remembered him as being "fun". (To which I quietly chuckled.)

During our errands to Walmart this afternoon, we had to stop by the fish display (per the kids' insistence). For Karis, there was some remembrance, but no tears this time. Now, tonight, life has pretty much resumed to normal. I think the healing has begun. :)