Yesterday one of our family pets passed away.
"Admiral Bubbles" - who I'm told was a girl fish (a girl and an Admiral! Marlo Thomas would be SO proud of my mad feminist mothering skillz with my equal opportunity kiddos). Evidently playing Free to Be You and Me in the minivan over and over again has made a difference.
So anyway - the Admiral has passed on after a long and much - er - decorated career as a fish. Literally decorated - that fish tank was very pretty, stickers, coloured pebbles, shells, a shark decoration that declared "bite me" and even a cloth fish painstakingly cut out of a remnant of material and taped to the lid "so she could see another fish and wouldn't be lonely".
Interestingly, we didn't have a fishy funeral. I always thought that a fish funeral or two would be an expected part of this parenting gig. I could picture the whole family clustered awkwardly around the toilet bowl while a tearful child delivers a eulogy to a beloved former pet (adorable video) and then a burial at sea. It seemed like a universal rite of passage.
In reality the burial at sea was performed by M while the kids were at school. M offered a funeral service to my bereaved son, but the response was that he "didn't want to be there for that."
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