Last week was a bit traumatic for my kids. Not only did we have our 1st ER trip with our infant’s newfound peanut reaction, but we suffered our first pet death.
We knew this day would come for this $2 pet we bought a long time ago. It lived twice as long as they told us it would. This betta fish lived 2 1/2 years before taking that great journey to the sea.
Having a fish was not exactly “rewarding” in the same way that having a dog would be. Most of the time I don’t think any of us remembered our fish was there. It did provide some educational moments where our kids learned to be responsible and in different ways “take care of” the fish by feeding it. But in the aftermath of her death, Parade the fish, ended up giving our family a great gift.
She gave the gift of grieving.
Parade gave my oldest kids their first experience to grief and provided us as parents the opportunity to walk our kids through the experience well, modeling an important life skill.
I would not have guessed my kids would have had so much feeling about this betta fish which they usually just ignore. But this was a BIG deal and there was many tears and questions. So it was clear we needed to have a memorial service. So I conducted my first funeral – and it was for a betta fish.
We had our kids draw a picture of parade and have that kind of space to do something where they felt like they were contributing to saying Good-bye (see picture above). Perhaps there was a bit of “art therapy” to that 🙂 But we found that having that kind of direction gave them some focus and helped them to feel better about saying good-bye. They liked drawing pictures of parade and it was significant for them as we watched.
We had a little service where each person shared a memory of parade and something they appreciated about them. It was CRAZY what our kids remembered and some of the moments that they connected with this fish. Morgan remembers when we bought parade – which was just after she turned 4. But there were vivid memories. The sharing of those took this journey from a “kid crisis” to a family experience or family moment. It was quite powerful actually to hear my small kids honoring a fish out of their connection to it and not because they know “what grieving is supposed to look like.”
We had a little prayer for the fish where everyone prayed and there were genuine prayers by our 6 and 4 year olds. But that brought some deep crying where at one point we were in definite wailing territory.
But then it was time to say good-bye. Parade was flushed to the great beyond. That sparked hysteria for a time, but they regrouped. In retrospect we might have buried the fish instead, because the kids boycotted using that bathroom for a while 🙂
When we were done, it was clear that what could have easily been dismissed quickly by quickly replacing the fish or blowing off its impact on our kids turned into a significant family moment and a formational experience for my kids. We want them to learn to be sad, to deal with loss with honesty and courage as opposed to how so many seek to avoid feeling loss. There was a purging of pain that night from little souls, but it helped them.
The arena of grieving and loss in children is routinely minimized and overlooked by adults and we’re thankful that this is a benign experience that provided some opportunities for modeling.
So parade was well worth the $2 for all of what she offered my kids and our family.
But it should be noted for posterity – Parade was a boy. It’s appropriate to confess that we got the boy fish because they look prettier than girl betta fishes and our daughter thought it was a girl. So perhaps in return for the gift Parade gave to us, we scarred it by naming it and treating it like a girl. There – I feel released from the deception 🙂
