Goodbye, Bluey

Animals can be unwitting receptacles of our thoughts and emotions.  We animate them in this way and if they are intelligent enough, they receive and reflect it back to us.  In the case of our fish, Bluey, he was incapable of such a feat in such a small bowl and with such restricted facial features, but there it is.  

He died last night and after almost five years of daily care my children flushed him down the toilet for a Midwestern burial at sea.  They insisted to depress the toilet handle together and at the same time in order to share in the momentous occasion.  I cleaned the fish bowl and stored it in the basement.  

How strange to have not had to ask Elias last night "have you fed your fish?" though the words sat on my tongue and had to be swallowed back down.  There is something sad about saying words nightly for years as part of a routine and to hear Anya's occasional declaration that there are "six people in our family" and listen to her rattle off our names to include our dog and then, rather dramatically, our fish and know that that is gone now.