I felt bad that I didn’t feel bad when Lucy died. If the truth be told, not only did I not feel bad, but I was actually thrilled that she finally shuffled off this mortal coil… or at least swam off of it.
Lucy, you see, was a goldfish, quite possibly the world’s oldest goldfish. I have never been especially fond of tropical fish, but our Office Manager felt that a fishtank would bring an air of Zen-like calm to our harried office. She finally wore me down and a fish tank was accordingly purchased and stocked.
Interestingly, the goldfish tank did not make our office any more tranquil. Serenity was finally achieved only when our Office Manager quit, at which point I inherited the fish tank. I dutifully scraped and siphoned and cleaned the tank and fed the fish, which, as goldfish do, died off one by one until only Lucy was left. Lucy, clearly thrilled at being the last goldfish left in the world, thrived for far longer than any goldfish could rightly expect. Eventually, I downsized Lucy into a smaller bowl, took her home and put her on the windowsill where the cat would glare at her for hours, never quite figuring out how to actually get to her. Lucy, unconcerned, kept swimming, a veritable Energizer Bunny of goldfish.
Now, you would not think that a single goldfish could be all that labor intensive, bit Lucy demanded more time than you might think, and I kind of resented the time I had to devote to her. Finally, inevitably, one day I got up and Lucy looked sickly and pale. An hour later, she was floating belly up, stiff and cold. Resisting the urge to do cartwheels, I went to get the net to give Lucy a watery burial but when I got back, she was gone. The little corpse was nowhere to be seen, although the cat was licking her chops and purring loudly, with an air of being responsible for a job well done. I shrugged, emptied the bowl and put it on a shelf in the garage.
To say I mourned Lucy would be an overstatement, but I thought of her last weekend when I was at a training meeting in Boston where, at the buffet table, I ran into an acquaintance whom I have known for years. Since I had not seen him for a while I asked where he had been.
“My wife passed away,” he said matter of factly; “we were married 39 years.”
As I murmured my condolences, he waved his hand dismissively. “She had it coming,” he said. This rendered me temporarily speechless; I was puzzled for platitudes. He shook his head. “She let herself get fat and smoked like a chimney. It was only a matter of time.”
“Yes,” I said, casting wildly, “but after 39 years it is still a loss.”
“Thirty-nine years was more than enough for me,” he said, and he helped himself to some shrimp.
As I was digesting this, I ran into another colleague whom I also see only at meetings a couple times a year. As we exchanged pleasantries, I asked about her mom, whom I remembered was elderly and ailing.
“That woman just won’t die,” said my colleague. “She’s 89 with heart failure and emphysema. I swear she’s hanging on just to spite me. I want to get on with my life, but I can’t until she dies.”
She paused and nibbled some sesame chicken. “I swear I’d give her an extra dose of her sleeping pills if I thought I could get away with it.” She sipped her cocktail in an annoyed manner. “How’s your Mom?” she fiinally asked me.
“Fine, thanks!” I said, and fled.
As I wandered away, I thought that even though I wanted Lucy to “go”, I would have felt bad saying it out loud to anyone, and Lucy was just a fish. Personally, I would like to think a wife or mother would be in a different category from a goldfish, although some people are not ones for making fine distinctions.
I shook my head again. “Cold fish,” I thought.