Coping with Life and Death

Two posts in one day?!?!? What is wrong with me?

Well, the last post had to be its own post. It should have been posted last week, but I didn't get around to it.

As for this post...

Shortly after speaking with the old man, and being enlightened to the wonders of life, I had to cope with death.

Before you start asking me who died, I will spoil the ending: two of our fish.

You may be thinking, "Emily, it was just a fish...are you really going to dedicate a post to it?"

Well, sort of.

Lucy, Amanda's silver Molly, had gotten "Broken-Swim-Bladder". Basically, fish have this thing called a swim bladder, when it breaks the fish pretty much becomes paralyzed in its rear half of its body. Also, the swim bladder helps keep the fish from floating. So, Lucy was bent in a ninety degree angle and kept unintentionally floating to the top.

I spent twenty minutes on the phone with PetCo. She said there is no evidence that BSB is painful for the fish. Some die within forty-eight hours some live a much longer time. She told me most people put the fish out of their misery though.

I understood why. Looking at Lucy: Bent, fighting to stay down at the bottom of the tank, swimming sideways with only the use of her front fins. It was devastating.

At the same time, our Pleco, Julius Caesar was having similar problems. He wasn't bent, but was having trouble staying stuck to the sides of the tank.

I offered to scoop and flush the two, because Amanda couldn't bear to watch. I, at the time, was doing alright.

I tried getting them in the net at the same time, but it wasn't working out. I got Caesar first and went and plopped him in the toilet. I didn't flush it, because we wanted them to go down together. So, I went back for Lucy.

Once netted, I headed back to the bathroom. Caesar was gone. He swam down all by himself. I dropped Lucy in and flushed.

We are down to three fish, from six.
I thought I was ok with this.

A little while later I called my mom to have a normal routine conversation. It came up that we had some issues with the fish and it hit me.

All of the sudden I was struck by emotion. Not the fact that our Fish were gone...but the circumstances in which it happened. I had to flush two LIVE fish. Two of God's living creatures. That was one thing to grasp. I realized it was for their own good soon after and that's when the big one hit me.

As I watched her try to swim, try to live, I felt so helpless. A living creature that was dying and there was nothing I could do. It was so devastating, and this all hit me when I was describing what happened to my mom. And then the waterworks started.

Ok, so I can point all the emotional sappy stuff to hormones....if you catch my drift....

But this is the first time I have had to watch something die. First William Sharkspeare and then Caesar and Lucy. All three fought to live and fought to die. And I was witness to all. It may have only been fish, but I watched them all die and could do nothing about it. You would think I could handle the death of a fish, being that I have had to cope with larger issues in life....but this really had an effect on me.

I am no longer as hormonal as I was, which I'm sure contributed to the series of events.

I'm pretty sure all has passed, considering I ate a whole package of Goldfish with no problem....

I am just finding it interesting that I have been paying more attention to the small but significant aspects of life recently. More importantly, not intentionally it's just happening. What is this a sign of? Well, we will just have to see.
Until then,

Bon Appetit