Goodbye, Goldie

Goldie was Anu’s fish. Orange as a marigold. Round and round she swam, round and round, every single day.

Every morning Anu said, “Good morning, Goldie!”

And Goldie went round and round, which is how fish say it back.

But one morning, Goldie was not swimming. Goldie was very still.

“Ma,” said Anu. “Goldie isn’t going round and round.”

Ma came and looked. Then Ma sat down and put Anu on her lap.

“Anu,” said Ma, soft and true, “Goldie died. That means her body stopped working. She isn’t hungry anymore, and nothing hurts her. But she won’t swim again. And that is very sad.”

“Will she come back?”

“No, my love. Died means she won’t come back. It’s okay to be sad about that. I’m sad too.”

Anu was sad. The sad was in her tummy and in her eyes. Ma held her, pat, pat, pat, and they were sad together for a while, which is the best way to be sad.

Then they did a goodbye. A proper one.

They put Goldie in the garden, under the marigold plant — orange flowers for an orange fish. Anu patted the earth, gentle, gentle.

“Goodbye, Goldie,” said Anu. “Thank you for the round and round.”

Some days after, the sad came back a little, at fish-feeding time. That’s how sad works — it visits, then it goes, then it visits smaller. Ma always had a lap ready.

And whenever they passed the pond in the park, Anu and Ma stopped to watch the big orange fish going round and round, round and round.

“They swim like Goldie,” Anu would say.

“They do,” Ma would say. “And you remember her. That’s the special job of the people who loved someone.”

Round and round. Round and round.

Some fish you keep in a bowl.

And some fish, afterward, you keep in the remembering — where they swim round and round, all soft and orange, forever.