What an orange goldfish taught me

By Lisa A. Eramo

It began with a bright orange goldfish.

I'm not talking about my affinity for fish, nor am I talking about my affinity for the color orange. No, this fish was much more important than that. It was my first pet, and it taught me a very important lesson.

Picture this: I'm 7 years old, fish in hand, ready to conquer the world. I was thrilled--this beat taking care of any stuffed animal or toy doll. I placed the fish in our living room on a small table with a bright orange table cloth that matched its shining scales and fluttery fins. It swam around in its bowl, wriggled its tail when I fed it, and it seemed to exist for me and only me. I was the proud owner of a beautiful goldfish. I faithfully changed its water, fed it like a good mother would, and gave it lots of love and attention.

And as quickly as I had gotten used to the idea of being its most important companion, my fish friend was gone. In the middle of the night, it had jumped out of the bowl seeming to say, 'Hey, I'm too big for this bowl and there's more out there for me.'I was as devastated as a 7-year-old kid who just lost a fish could be. But at least the fish got a proper burial out under a big tree in our yard.

Losing a fish at the age of 7 in no way compares to the losses I've felt since then, but yet I still keep going back to that day--to the sheer confusion and sadness that I felt at that moment. The idea that I could cherish something with my entire being and lose it in a matter of moments was more than I could comprehend. The fish had been mine, and there was a part of me that felt responsible for its strange death. But then again, maybe it really was moving on to bigger and better things.

When you're young, you create stories to make sense of the world. I still do this. My paternal grandfather still visits me in my dreams now that he has passed away. I know that my maternal grandparents slow dance in heaven every night. One of my great-grandmothers who passed away at the age of 99 still writes in her journal every day. My most beloved teacher still teaches calculus in heaven to those who will listen. And my aunt, well, she watches it all as a quiet observer, smiling from the most beautiful cloud in the sky.

The reality is that people and things come and go. Relationships begin and end. It's the rhythm of life, and oh what an incessant rhythm it is. But even when you've got rhythm, there's always a bar or two that will throw you off. You're singing along to a familiar tune, and suddenly you've forgotten the words. You've plotted out how your journey will go, and suddenly you've lost the map.

This is why at the age of 29--after experiencing grief and loss of every possible magnitude and depth--I don't understand this emotion any more than I did as a kid. People like to use the cliche, "when one door closes, another one opens." I tend to think that these people are just trying to justify a loss that they don't understand. But the beauty of thinking positively is that after a while, you really do start to believe it, and next thing you know, a door does open. You walk through it, and low and behold, there are new roads on which to walk and new connections to make. Suddenly, your life is punctuated by deeper and more thoughtful relationships than you could have ever imagined.