Fish Heaven

After I butchered the cleaning the fish tank job, 2 of the 5 fish started having problems. They did some creative swimming but ended up sinking to the bottom of the tank where they remained motionless. As fish go, these guys were very small, only slightly larger than a grain of cooked rice. The 3 orange fish seemed to survive fine but the two stripped fished called “Stripy” and his brother needed to be fished out of the tank with a net 30 minutes after the cleaning.

I informed the kids that Stripy and his brother had died and we needed to have a funeral for them. So we all went upstairs to the main washroom and I said a few words of “prayer”. I said something like…”Stripy and his brother were good fish (actually Stripy was evil, he always chased the other fish in the tank and tried to bite them, that’s why he’s the only fish with a name) and that it was a sad thing that they were now dead but now they’re swimming in fish heaven (at least Stripy’s brother is…). Then we flushed them away.

Juliette and Sophie took the funeral rather well but Nicholas started to tear up. When Juliette called him on it, he laughed at himself for being so silly (i.e. crying at a fish funeral) and kind of hid his face. Let’s face it; Nicholas is a sensitive kid that will cry easily. One day he’ll grow out of it but until then he can take solace that this trait, along with his frequently bleeding nose, he inherited directly from his old man.