Grief and loss

I don't know if it's an Asperger's thing or just a quirk of the boy child's personality, but he doesn't seem to form emotional attachments in quite the same way that other kids do, nor does he express strong emotions (other than frustration) very often. As far as I know, he didn't cry when his grandfather died last summer, nor when our old dog, which had become my parents' dog several years ago, died last spring.

Yesterday, the boy child's pet betta fish died. This was the only pet he's ever had that was really 100% his. And while he didn't cry, I could tell that he was sad. At first he put on his objective/scientific "everything dies" face, but the more he talked about it, the more his voice began to waver and crack.

I asked him whether he wanted to bury the fish (as opposed to giving it a "burial at sea", if you know what I mean) and he said he did, so we put it in a ziploc bag and stuffed that into a Blue's Clues bandaid box, and we went out to the backyard to dig a hole. We chose a spot near the back fence, under some trees, and went to work. After we had covered the box with dirt and tamped it down so the neighborhood critters wouldn't disturb it, the boy found a rock to put on the grave for a marker. He didn't want to forget where his fish was buried. I walked back to the garage to put away the hand shovels, but the boy lingered behind, talking to his fish and trying to memorize where the grave was located. I told the boy he could come out there and talk to his old fish whenever he wanted.

Then we came back inside, and I asked the boy child if he wanted to save the little plastic plant from his fish's bowl, to remember him by. He said he did. So I washed it off and we wrote the fish's name and "2004-2005" on the base in black marker.

The boy child was decidedly sad now, though still not weepy. We started talking about buying another fish. I told the boy we could get one "this summer". The boy deduced that, since Wednesday is the last day of school, that meant we would be getting a fish this week, and he was sad about having to wait even that long. So then I told him that Monday is a free day (meaning we don't have any after-school activities) so we could go then. And then he said, with his little voice cracking, "How about tomorrow?" And so I said, "How about today?" And so off we went.

The old fish had been red, and at first the boy said he wanted another red fish, but when we got to the store he changed his mind and decided he wanted something bright and blue with no traces of red whatsoever. After maybe 10 minutes of examining the dozens of fish on the betta shelf at the store, he chose one that's sort of a vibrant turquoise. On the way home, I told the boy it was okay to still be sad about the old fish even though he has a new one now. And he agreed that the old fish would "always be part of our family".

So we brought the new fish home, got him settled in his bowl (we threw out the old one and bought a new one, just in case), gave him a little food, and then the boy child pulled up a chair and sat talking to his new fish for quite some time. At one point I heard him telling the new fish all about the old fish and how he had died and we had buried him in the backyard. Before he went to bed last night, the boy child said goodnight to his new fish several times.

This morning the boy went out back to the old fish's grave and sang him a song he had made up, entitled "Our Fishy Family". Then he came in and fed his new fish.