Is There A Heaven For Goldfish?

The Peanut has a pair of ever-increasingly ginormous fantail goldfish.  It used to be three, but one took a ride on the porcelain expressway to heaven over a year ago after it passed away quietly in the night, leaving just the pair.

And now?  One of the remaining fish is ill.

As in gasping on the bottom of the tank, laying still and not able to really even move its fins or do much of anything besides look pitiful ill.

As in mom is going to have to dispatch the fish because she cannot stand to see it suffering any longer, but hasn't yet had the guts to say it out loud even though she knows it has to be soon and it will be awful for everyone when she does it.

I fear that today, we will be having a mercy ride on the porcelain expressway to save the other fish from catching whatever nasty ick this is.

And I am dreading it.

The Peanut has stood by watching as I've spent the last couple of days tweaking the tank water.  She's been carefully observing the fish and giving me up to the minute reports, and having the sniffles over whether or not there is a heaven for fishies, too. 

We've decided there is one, and that it has a mommy who is more obsessed with cleaning the fish tank.

Why, yes, I am feeling a little guilty about having put that off last week because I was busy with other things, why do you ask?


And now I'm going to have to take the net out and retrieve the gasping fish, and then have a burial ceremony with my sobbing child.  Maybe we'll give it an extra flush salute out of respect, but there really is no easing the fact that we are about to euthanize Patches the goldfish.

And I will be a fish killer.  (YouTube)  Fish killer!!!  Fish killer!!!

Ugh.

Being a parent is hard. 

I feel a spate of movies coming on later today while we snuggle under a blanket together for comfort, and perhaps a talk about how "all drains lead to the ocean" to make this easier.  (Thank you Pixar people and whomever wrote that line in Finding Nemo. Parental genius, that one.)

Think good thoughts, people.  It's another snow day here, and it may be a very long day indeed.  


(Photo via a_trotskyite.)