Her health had been precarious since her arrival in December, and I had started this blog post a few days ago when we still had hope... but the funeral was this morning, 1/28/10.
Silas has long had a passionate interest in the beta fish Oswald and his neon pal Henry that live in a bowl at his school. They often come to stay at our house for vacations. So when Silas's teacher Caitlin rescued a bunch of table-decor goldfish from a fancy dinner she attended, she thought of Silas as a potential fish adopter. Once she had parental approval she presented Silas with his very own fancy goldfish. And oh boy was he excited.
What to name the newest pet? At first Silas was shy about proposing names, so I started rattling off names as they crossed my mind. One of my coworkers, Sylvia, keeps goldfish. Silas met them at her house once, the same day we met her magnificent daughter (tall, gorgeous, intelligent and ...older, a sophomore at Brown). I was rattling off names and said "Sylvia" since she came to mind as a good goldfish keeper, and Silas then interrupted my list and in his shy but firm way he directed me to the name of his new fish, named for Sylvia's memorable daughter "Eliza".
So just when we were becoming attached to this new cutie, she started to do some very scary floating stunts. A little bit of research told us that we were over feeding her, not feeding her enough fiber, and the 1 gallon bowl wasn't gonna cut it for a hungry, pooping goldfish. We started feeding her bits of frozen peas and less of the flake food and we got an entire 10 gallon aquarium set up off of craigslist. Then Kevin discovered the newest use for his PhD (in addition to beer brewing): aquarium water maintenance. After waiting over a month for the "good bacteria" to colonize the tank and get the nitrogen cycle going, we finally found friends with a colonized tank and took a bit of their gravel. 2 days later Eliza moved into her "mansion." At first she seemed to be thriving, and all of her awkward floating issues were gone. She loved the bubbler stone and could be found drifting on the wall of bubbles as if it were a jacuzzi.
But all of a sudden she became lethargic, spending a lot of time resting on the bottom. So we went back into fish rescue mode, scouring the internet for advice, making frequent trips to the fish store. It's all very exciting for Silas - he loves the Albany Aquarium store with all the plants and fish. Somehow it brings out his social side and he starts up conversations with the employees and other costumers, not his usual thing in a new environment. And this has been just another opportunity for him to talk about some of his favorite topics: illness and death. I get it, he likes to explore these complex issues and try to come to some understanding and acceptance (I'm still struggling with these issues).
We play a lot of "Let's pretend" games involving sick animals. He's now repeating lines back to me about "doing your best to help" and "you never can tell if they'll get better" when we play. It has been hard to help him understand the uncertainty and lack of control, and hard to give a balance of hope and acceptance. We have also been spending a lot of time at the Lindsay Wildlife Museum and Hospital, where he sees the living injured animals they could save but not release, and the stuffed animals. It's an amazing place.
In the end Kevin and I discovered the little dead fish. Even we had to stare for a long long time to make sure she was dead, and so we let him do the same. And then he told us the plan: Mommy makes the blanket for her, Daddy digs the hole, Silas helps carry her out. He wanted her buried close to Lucy cat. I'm sure they would have been the greatest of frenemies in life.
