So today I have to bury a fish. Bury a fish you say? Well, this is not a fish from the grocery that I'm burying to improve my garden, or in hopes of bringing luck or love. It is our goldfish, whose name is long forgotten. He (?) was named either Rusty or Goldy - we started with two - by my son when he was in kindergarten. He wanted a pet of his own. How many parents have heard that one before? So we went to the pet store where I successfully steered him toward the goldfish tank. I was a little confused by the label that read "Feeders" on the tank. I figured that one out at a later date! We carefully chose two goldfish who, after some frantic chasing on the part of the pet store employee, were deposited into a plastic bag for the quick drive to their new two-gallon home. Rusty and Goldy had a beautiful bowl with black rocks on the bottom, a fine selection of plastic plants, and a red rock with a hole in the middle large enough to swim through. What fish could be happier? Especially when I realized what the occupants of the Feeder tank were destined for. And so they seemed. Happy. Until one of them died. We couldn't remember even at that point if it was Rusty or Goldy. But I re-assured my son, suddenly remembered it was a new Goldy we needed, and off to the pet store we went. The next fish that died I think was Rusty. No matter - thank goodness those feeder fish are cheap! We kept the same names, not that it mattered much, because by now, my son wanted a furry pet he could hold, Mom was feeding Goldy and Rusty and stressing about how green the surface of the bowl kept becoming! I was so relieved when another mom told me that she'd found out that the fish didn't mind the green on the sides of the bowl at all - in fact, they seemed to like it just fine, and it didn't affect their health. Hallelujah! Talk about a load off my mind! Seriuosly! I had a tropical fish tank for a while in college, and I would literally have bad dreams about what was growing and mutating in that green tank.

Now my son is almost twenty-two. We've been through the hamster stage (another story for another time) and been adopted by two stray cats in succession. Some time ago, we lost Rusty II (or Goldy II) and figured the other was not far behind, so we didn't get a replacement. That could have been eight or ten years ago. But this remaining fish soldiered on, getting a few flakes of fish food morning and night, still able to fit through the hole in the red rock despite some deformity that left him bent. Last night my son noticed the fish wasn't moving. "Oh, he does that sometimes," I said, " I've thought he was dead several times, but then he'll start moving around." We both peered into the bowl. Nope. No movement, not of fins or gills. "hmm, maybe he is dead. Hard to believe - he must be about sixteen years old!" "Do you think he was in pain?" Oh! There's my boy!

I asked my son if he wanted to help me bury the fish today. Somehow pouring it down the toilet seems disrespectful. "No", he said. So I guess it's Mom who gets to do this last bit of pet care, by herself. Oh great - I just noticed it's starting to rain.