We are very quick to funnel all of our deeper thoughts on love and loss into a glamorous and socially-poignant muse. Into those close to us. Family. Lovers. Friends. Neighbors. Victims whose plight or triumph is described on a news report. But to limit ourselves to just this is to miss everything. A single cloud in the sky can provide all of the wonder and pain the day needs if viewed correctly.
My favorite fish is dying. He (?) has pretty much lost all strength, and continues to waft towards the filter that sucks away his orange-and-white patterned flesh. It’s six o’clock in the morning, and I can barely keep my eyes open, but I force myself to keep watch, batting at him with the net every time his body gets suctioned in. His bulbous blue eyes look as dumbfounded and tranquil as they always have, but his gills puff at a frantic place as he spends the last few hours of existence at the bottom of the blue pebble floor. I don’t know why I continue to prolong his life. Perhaps I am a benevolent god. Or a selfish one. Perhaps I possess less control than I realize.
How much would I care about this fish if I had more going on in my life? I know that showing people the trick where he follows my finger around the glass or talking about him like he’s my child can be charming at a minimal dosage…but sadly, it’s not really an act. This little oblivious spore, which cost slight less than the Whoppers Seth and I purchased after obtaining him, was the first thing I attended to after returning home from work. Whenever I’d gotten high and misplaced my keys, I routinely checked at the base of the fish tank, where I’d undoubtedly dropped them after greeting him with a roving index finger. Repeatedly scraping his decaying but living body from the filter is a cheaply obvious metaphor for what my daily routine feels like.
It could be Her. Or her. Or a dog. A fish. Tina Fey’s 3o Rock character. Whatever gets you through the night.
A part of me feels as if loving this mindless creature reveals some sort of deeper understanding and empathy. Another part just feels pathetically lonely. But whenever I walked into the apartment, he would always swim to the corner closest to the door. I’d do a figure-eight or two with my finger and sprinkle some food into the tank. And I know there wasn’t much going on upstairs, but he always looked so happy to me.
When his gills finally cease to flap, I will cut out a piece of an old pizza box, draw a crude heart with a red marker, and gently place his slick body on it. I will store him in the freezer until his namesake visits from Columbus, despite the leers of inspecting friends. When that time comes, I will place him in an empty box of Marlboro Lights, using a chopstick and pushpins to construct a suitable casket. We will trudge up the snow-spattered path to the highest point of the bluffs, where a tree hangs loosely from the eroding peak, and break a plastic ice cream scooper attempting to dig into the near-frozen soil to bury him.
It will feel entirely ridiculous and farcical…but so very real and thought-provoking at the same time. The whole ceremony, to me, will be so much more solemn and imperative than the tongue-in-cheek gesture it comes off as. If he were a human, or even a dog, no one would dare roll their eyes at the whole low-rent-ornate affair carried out in his honor. When I need a designated point of solitude, I will visit this place, and wonder if the worms and earth have devoured his remains yet.
