We lost our fish, Speck, a few hours ago. We held a short fish funeral in our backyard, where she was laid to rest near her former tankmates. I know it’s weird to write about a fish in a book blog, but she was a part of our life for the majority of my kids’ childhood. She was 6 1/2 years old, and 4 inches long.
We got her, along with three other fish, Billy, Josh, and Minnow, on October 31, 2013. My kids won them at a carnival. My boy was six years old (almost 7) and my daughter was 11. They’re 13 and 17 now.
Minnow didn’t last long, and when we moved from Arizona to Colorado, we packed the fish up in a cooler and drove them to their new home, setting up our old tank in the new state. We moved across town, and the fish moved in the same cooler to our new home.
My daughter probably is one of the few people in history who could honestly say “the fish ate her homework.” Once, our old fish tank started leaking–all over my daughter’s homework. That’s when we ended up buying the 36 gallon tank we have now.
Billy died (in our current home, before the fish ate my daughter’s homework) and then Josh. We went and got friends for Speck, because goldfish like to have friends. One of Speck’s friends, Dusk, is still with us, and seemed to comfort Speck in her last couple of days on earth, while she was struggling to swim. Dusk and Speck hung out together a lot.
We’ll miss Speck, along with the three other fish my kids picked up at the same carnival that left before her. We also have a cat, but we didn’t get her till our daughter was a teenager. The fish were with us through our kids’ childhoods, and they’ll always live in our hearts.