Saturday, February 26, 2011

saying goodbye

so there i was eating my morning granola, and megan gasps, her face going green with her hand over her mouth and those "i'm gonna puke" cheeks, you know the ones. she was just staring me, and after a few long seconds she motioned with her head, mouth still covered, toward a box of cereal. "yes, i am eating granola and that, unlike other foods i have eaten, should not make you wanna hurl" i thought to myself. but after more prompting I get up and look behind the box and there it was, a dead gold fish.

our almost 4 year anniversary gold fish has died. we received the fish as a souvenir from our wedding reception (they were the center pieces for the tables). our first 'real' introduction to the fish was when we arrived in our new apartment after the honeymoon. he or she (is this even possible to determine on fish?) was chasing the other two fish in the bowl and nipping at their fins. and we, oh so creatively, named it 'chaser'. there were 4 but one had an unfortunate run-in with a sink and garbage disposal with ensuing hysteria by the women in the room (that part was pretty funny). chaser quickly killed the other two fish in the bowl, and frankly i thought that was kinda fishy... but he was our fish.

the next 3.8 years chaser had his ups and downs, like the time we forgot to rinse the glass pebbles at the bottom of the bowl after washing them with soap and we found him swimming on his side.

somewhat sarcastically i often told megan that the fish could hang around until the fish food ran out. we only had one container of fish food, purchased with all the fish for our reception, and he has been surviving on that all this while. as fate would have it, the night before we found him, i had dumped the last few flakes into his bowl.

On a similar note, we had fish growing up in a octagon shaped standing tank. i don't remember the fish dying or there being a big announcement that we no longer have fish, they just went away... kinda like how our dog kodiak mysteriously stopped coming around and about a month later, maybe longer, katie asked "where's kodiak?" "oh he died..." replied my mom. those were simpler times. oh ya and we had cats too... who knows what happened to them.

7 comments:

#A5 said...

first off, this is your sister katie. ignore the A5. that's chip's fault. (helpful hint: secret to a strong marriage is to blame your spouse in a public forum as often as possible. 10 years and counting, you can trust me on this one).

second. this post made me laugh.

also. regarding kodiak's death/murder. in my defense for not noticing he was gone- he was killed and buried while i was at girls camp. it was a few days after coming home that i asked mom (not a month.. please don't let me be wrong with this one).. but it is good to know i wasn't the only one kept in the dark about his demise.

weirdly, i don't remember any fish deaths either. there were a lot of fish and i remember having to replace the neon tetras and i remember a few angel fish being in really really bad shape from the beta attacks..

but remember the gray cat, billow? and the black and white one, donde? i would see them occassionally at the bottom of our property for years after they wandered off. i always figured they missed me and wanted to see me one more time. they were probably actually trying to plan ways to make us pay for killing the dog.

megan and her love for your dog and fish- condolences- is redeeming all of us. especially mom.

(this is a long comment..)

xo!
k

Frankman's said...

TRAGIC. I can't believe chaser died!!!

Merissa said...

I hope this isn't a bad omen for your marriage, like when the chicken used during Jason's marriage proposal died the day before our wedding. But just think of all the time you've freed up for yourself now that you don't have to feed a fish, swim the fish, play with the fish, and love the fish. Whatever will you do??

The Meesh said...

I am sorry for your loss. And thrilled I never have to fish sit again. One fish down the garbage disposal was enough for me.

RIP Chaser.

Annalisa said...

at first i thought you were saying goodbye to blogging and i got choked up. then i read more about the goldfish and 4 years is AWESOME...ours have only ever lastest 4 days at best.

Lora said...

Poor Chaser. All good fish go to heaven (I think). But was it very nice of Chaser to kill his two bowl-mates?

jeanie said...

ok, so i remember the fish tank, not so much the fish, just the nasty green sludge mess that came before we gave up on it... I also knew about Kodiak, but I honestly didn't remember the cats until Kate mentioned their names, which sound vaguely familiar....???
I just got a big 25 gallon fish tank for Valentines Day!! (my suggestion) Wish us good luck and many happy fish!