When Lily got her fish, she was so excited. Joel took her to the store to pick it out and she came home with a big grin on her face. She loved watching him swim, and really loved feeding him! On more than one occasion she gave him a little more food than he should have had. And whenever it was time to clean his bowl, she always helped daddy get it done.
A few times between Saturday and today, I mentioned to Lily that we needed to either flush him down the toilet or bury him. She wanted to do neither, so I let it go for a little while. But today as I looked at Fred sitting on the bottom of his bowl, his bright blue colors gone, and his tail starting to disintegrate, I decided we finally needed to do something; I told Lily that we needed to flush him.
She did not take the news well. The tears began immediately, but I scooped Fred out of his bowl and put him in a little dish with some water so that Lily could hold him. We went into the bathroom and stood next to the toilet with Lily sobbing. She just stood there, holding the little dish with Fred in it for so long, sobbing. She didn't want let him go. I kept thinking, It's just a fish. There are so many more at the store. I even briefly left the room at one point.
As I sat there, going absolutely crazy, while trying to be calm and patient, the obvious finally dawned on me: this is her first experience with death. She doesn't know what it means, and she doesn't know how to handle it. This is one of those teachable moments in life. I'm realizing that with the busyness we have created in our world and lives, we miss out on these teachable moments. We worry about moving on and getting to the next thing on the to-do list. We are exhausted, yet still have so much more to do before we can rest. We need to take the time to stop and embrace those moments, for some day we will wish we had taught our children when we had the chance. And that is when I thought of this:
Lily may not have been using words, but she was definitely trying to tell me something. I had to listen to what she wasn't saying, wasn't understanding. This was my child's first time ever having to deal with death. To her it didn't matter if it was a person or just a fish. He was her fish and she loved him; that is what she knew. Once I calmed down and sat next to her, she finally starting talking. She expressed her concern of not seeing him again, of his broken tail, and fin on his back, and would Jesus fix him?, and could she get another fish, another blue one? She finally was able to dump him into the toilet, but we continued to sit there while she cried and cried, refusing to flush. We told her that by going down the toilet, that's how fish get to heaven.
Finally, Joel had the brilliant idea of sending some food with Fred on his journey. Lily went and got his food and stood there, next to the toilet, holding onto that little bottle of fish food. It was as if she knew that if she put some food in with him she would really have to say goodbye and it would be over. There must have been something comforting about that fish food though, (we did tell her that he would eat the food when he got to heaven, and Jesus fixed his tail and fin) because she wasn't crying anymore at that point. She eventually gave him one last goodbye and flushed the toilet.
She looked at me with sadness and a little bit of disbelief in her eyes, and I gave her a big hug and told her, "I know that was hard to do, Lily. But I am proud of you. You did a good job; you were very brave," and I just held her while she cried. Most days I am going crazy because she doesn't listen, and can't keep her hands to herself and stay out of other people's space, but my Lily is such a sweet girl with such a big, kind, and warm heart. And it is moments like these that I see her true self; the compassionate little girl that feels other people's pain, and doesn't know what to do with her own.
She went to the window and just stood there looking out as if she was checking to be sure that Fred had made it to his destination. I pointed up to the sky and said, "See the clouds up there? Fred is way up above the clouds in heaven. Jesus has fixed his tail, and he is enjoying the food you gave him." She wanted a pink airplane so that she could go see him, but I picked her up and laid her in bed next to Joel, the bottle of fish food still in her hands.
