She was too young to know what it meant, but old enough to know that it wasn't good--her fish kept slamming head-first into the bottom of his bowl, then rolling over and drifting, then spazzing again.
Later on, a friend of mine told me that it was probably a stroke. I did not know that fish could have strokes. At least not fish that small.
Dennis was obviously in deep trouble. My daughter turned to me: what were we going to do?
So that was the first lesson. "Honey, I'm sorry," I said. "There's nothing we *can* do."
It was Dennis's fate to go through several more iterations of spazz-and-drift before he drifted for good.
Now came the second lesson. I had to look at my three-year-old and say "Dennis died."
Then I had to explain what that meant. I've always thought it was a design flaw that we're not born knowing. We have to be told, and it's always a nasty shock.
"Mommy," she interrupted, "that's not going to happen to *us*, is it?"
"Yes, honey. Someday it will."
She held my hand, wide-eyed, and contemplated the end of her world.
She turned to me. "Can we be buried together?"
That was all she wanted.
"Yes," I said. "We can."
