Last week was a tough one for my 6 year old son. He is learning and growing and recently picked up some pretty big life lessons about some of the more fleeting parts of life. I suppose you could say the lesson was about life and death and love and loss. That sounds dramatic, and for a relatively cushy living six year old, it probably really was.
The first thing that happened was what I can only describe as a mass death event.
If you remember back several months, probably last summer, I wrote a column about my son getting fish. When we moved into our new house, he received a fish tank for his birthday, and Jackson and my husband soon went fish shopping. They came home with several tropical fish, which I thought was more than necessary and honestly a bit of a gamble since we did not even have a heater in the tank.
But lo and behold, those fish did not just survive, they thrived. Jackson did a surprisingly good job caring for them. He fed them every morning before school and reminded us if we forgot. He helped with tank cleanings and took real ownership. He loved showing visitors his fish and had names for every single one.
That tank did get dirty quickly, though, which led to the next series of events.
My husband had wanted to add a cleaner fish for a while, and a couple weeks ago it finally happened. He and Jackson brought home the new addition, and everything seemed fine. Since the tank was pretty dirty, they did what they had done many times before, a full cleaning. Rocks out, decorations out, everything scrubbed.
This time, however, they added new rocks from the fish store. My husband knows a thing or two about fish tanks. He was a fisheries grad student at SDSU for a while, so I do not think this was simple carelessness. Still, something went wrong. Our best guess is the rocks had chemicals on them and we did not rinse them well enough.
The next night, as I was putting Jackson to bed, I noticed a couple of the little tetra fish stuck to the filter, not moving. That sight felt very familiar from my own childhood fish owning days. A closer look confirmed it. All four of that particular kind were gone.
We told Jackson and fished them out. At first, I do not think he fully understood. It was bedtime, so the fish funeral was brief, meaning a quick flush down the toilet. But then it started to click for my sensitive kiddo, and the tears came.
He was truly distraught. He said goodbye to the fish while his four year old sister giggled and made jokes about Jackson’s tears falling in the toilet. He cried himself to sleep saying that he loved those fish and how sad it was because they were a family. He kept repeating that word, family.
And yes, I cried too.
The next morning, another fish had died, one that honestly had not looked great the night before. By then, five of the eight fish were gone, and there were more tears before school. I briefly suggested to my husband that maybe we should just buy replacement fish and sneak them in. Tom pointed out that this was simply something kids have to learn. We cannot replace every hard thing.
He was right.
Jackson stayed sad for a few days. By the end of the week, he had developed his own explanation. The biggest fish had overeaten, stolen all the food, and caused the downfall of the others, and eventually himself. It was not scientifically accurate, but it made sense to him.
The theme of loss continued later in the week when Jackson announced that one of his classmates was moving away. The child is a genuine friend of his, and once again, Jackson was heartbroken. I tried reassuring him that his friend might visit or even move back someday, but it was still hard.
And again, I cried.
I realized Jackson would not have reacted this strongly even a year ago. His sadness showed something new, empathy, connection, understanding that people and even little fish matter. As hard as it was to watch, it also made me proud. He is growing into someone who cares deeply, and that is worth a few tears.
We will get new fish eventually, and hopefully his friend will visit again. But at the same time, I have learned that my job is not to shield my child from sadness or rush him past it. My job is to sit with him in those feelings and let them be real.
As I tried to explain, borrowing wisdom from the children’s show Bluey, sometimes special people come into our lives, stay for a bit, and then they have to go. That is sad. But the part where they were here was happy. And that part stays.
