Bye Bye Bowser

My son Liam, who is six-and-a-half-years-old, lost his fish on Sunday, July 14. He died. 

I knew the fish was dead when Liam opened the tank, sprinkled the pellets of food and waited. “Where is Bowser?” He asked.

Hmmm… I thought. That fish always comes up for food; I scanned the tank. There he was, floating on the bottom near the back of the tank, a grayish-purple color and stiff like a stick.

“I think Bowser (the fish) is sleeping,” Liam said. He was clearly oblivious to my facial expressions, and just kept on sprinkling pellets into the water.

I ran into the bedroom and whispered in Paul’s ear, “umm, the fish is dead. I think you need to take care of it. Liam thinks he is sleeping. Oh, wait...on second thought,” I added, “maybe we should just tell Liam the truth and have a little funeral for Bowser.”

So I proceeded to tell Liam that his fish was not sleeping and that Bowser was no longer with us. I told him that Bowser had died sometime during the night when we were all sleeping (who knows, but it sounded good).

He started to cry. He cried the type of tears that are infectious. He put his head in his hands and started to sob. “He was a good fish,” he said. “I loved Bowser and I hope that he knew that.”

He did Liam. He knew. You fed him; you talked to him; Daddy changed his water and we kept it clean. I was sobbing too. Not for Bowser (although he was a good fish and required little of my attention, so what is not to love). But, because Liam was so visibly upset by this experience. 

We were going to have a little funeral service yesterday, but Liam asked to keep him around until today. He had all sorts of smart rational statements from a six-year-old that actually seemed to made sense (albeit gross that this dead disintegrating fish is still dead in its tank today). His thinking was that if we take him out of the tank, and bury him, that we will never see him again.

There are many horrible things about death. But, yes, that is one of them; that we never see the person, animal, fish, what ever it is…. again. They are gone. We have pictures, memories and feelings that are left behind. But, we strain to hear a voice that has been gone for a long time, or struggle to remember the soft fur of a cat or dog that has died.

“It is true,” I said to Liam. "You won’t ever see Bowser again after we bury him." It is his first lesson in loss. He was crushed by Bowser’s unexpected departure. Unfortunately, this won’t be his last lesson in death and loss. That thought, breaks my heart. 

PS: Yesterday, Liam wrote a little good-bye letter to his friend Bowser, and we did have a little reading for him and sing some songs. It was nice. 

PPS: We have still not done away with Bowser. He is sitting in the fish tank and I am going to bribe Paul tonight to just flush him down the toilet. Tomorrow, he will be a science project, a skeleton. I am sad for Liam, but he has got to go!