A recent e-mail response I sent to an inquiring friend: “Yes, everything’s going well, except for the dead goldfish in my freezer. My husband tried to save it this morning by placing it in fresh water in MY FANCY TRIFLE BOWL (can you say bleach?), but it didn’t work. We thought we’d let Ladybug have a funeral for it, so my husband put it in a large matchbox in a baggie and then placed it in the freezer. As a nice touch, he placed a small piece of red velvet over its body.”
So my husband did the aforementioned covering of the gold fish in a red velvet blanket of sorts and placing it inside one of those large matchboxes (Goldy was no small goldfish). Then he placed the matchbox in a baggie and the whole shebang into the freezer for future burial proceedings.
When it got close to 3 and pick-up time, I prepared to tell Ladybug that Goldy had died while she was at school and explain how people often bury their pets and have funerals for them. But after we got home, she went to a neighbor’s house to play instead of coming into the house. I was relieved. I hadn’t been sure how I’d sneak him out of the freezer without her seeing.
After letting her play a while, I grabbed the box out of the freezer and stuck it outside the back door. I located a shovel, then went up to retrieve Ladybug and tell her the sad news. I wanted to tell her sooner rather than later. I knew at bedtime she would definitely notice that only one goldfish remained in the 10-gallon tank. She goes to sleep watching them swim contentedly.
After I’d covered Goldy back up and placed the box in the hole, Ladybug and her dad watched me cover it with dirt. Then we bowed our head and our little girl prayed for God to take care of Goldy up there in heaven, because he had been a faithful fish for a long time. She said she knew God would play with him and make sure he had enough food. She sounded very sure of this.
We each kept our head bowed for a little while after the prayer had ended, thinking about Heaven and what it might be like there. “He was a good fish,” my husband finally said, ending our reverie. “He was,” Ladybug agreed solemnly, picking up a rock engraved with the words “Spring” and adding it to the top.