An Emotional Farewell to a Beta Fish

Helping a child with the loss of a pet is tough. We lost our beta fish yesterday. He was with us for almost a year and a half. He was purple; Noah’s favorite color. His name was Betals.

My husband scooped the fish out of the bowl with my kitchen tongs. Placed him on a paper towel and asked Noah, who is 12, if he wanted to say a few words. Noah let a few tears trickle down his cheeks, looked at the fish, and at that moment, chose his words carefully. “I don’t know.” He replied.

Our family clustered into the bathroom to bid our beta buddy goodbye. My mate, ever sentimental after I convinced him we shouldn’t bury him in the garden, played ‘Taps’ through his pursed lips. I hid my laughter behind the bathroom door, but wiped the tear from my eye as I watched Noah fight back his own. Christian, my teenager, stood looking at all of us, his expression of absolute embarrassment – perhaps thinking that he couldn’t possibly be related to any of us.

Noah, startled out of his mournful trance by the flush of the toilet, found his words and said, “Can I have a gold fish now?”

My response, “Can you at least wait until he passes safely to the septic tank?”

I, then, marched into the kitchen to sanitize the tongs with scalding, hot water and antibacterial dish soap. Knowing these tongs had recently touched raw hamburger and dead shrimp; I ceased my compulsive scouring as I realized this wasn’t any worse than ground meat and it was just another dead, sea creature.

I did however, with the same neurotic behavior, return to the bathroom with the Ty-D-Bol cleaner and an obligation with the toilet brush to continue my irrational scrubbing; pushing away any new realizations with the task at hand.

While Betals was Noah’s pet, he never cleaned the fish bowl or remembered to feed him. He did however enjoy all the good moments one can have with a fish, while I took on the duties of its care. This now leaves me to wonder if I, the responsible party, forgot to feed it, maybe fed it too much, failed to oxygenate the water properly, thus causing its demise.

I’d rather Noah think I was neglectful than he be tormented with any blame of his own. Which, of course, he isn’t feeling guilty in the least. He’s already picking out names for the gold fish we haven’t gotten yet…he also wants a puppy.