So two weeks ago it was my uncle, this weekend it was ghoulish tv specials, now it is Mo Betta. My fish.
This morning I came into the office, opened his bowl, dropped food in, turned my computer, and in the slowest double take ever, finally turned around and threw the lid of his bowl back open and peered in anxiously.
There he was, floating nose up, tail down. A co-worker stopped to see what I was doing as I vigorously shook the bowl. Mo did not move. "Maybe he is just cold," she suggested,"Do fish hibernate?"
When I was young our heat was turned off. In north Idaho. In winter. And my fish bowl froze solid. As my mother defrosted the bowl in the sink and I hid in bed weeping pitifully the fish came back to life.
"Fish can freeze solid and come back, he is not hibernating."
I went to the workroom to get a plastic cup to scoop Mo out of his bowl so as not to clog the burial receptacle with fish rocks.
As I was walking back my co-worker yelped and cried, "He just moved!"
I shook the bowl, and his gills flapped. I was thrilled. My own Halloween Miracle.
And then he kind of slid sideways to the bottom of the bowl.
This is not a miracle. This is a replay of the death of my Great Grandfather. The joy you take from tiny upturns in a fatally ill person's health. The belief that they can pull through that will only result in eventual disappointment.
My fish is 4. Bettas live to two years, absolute tops.
And now I get to watch him suffer and finally die.
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