R.I.P. Soosy

It's a sad day in the Maple house. Our little red beta fish, Soosy, passed away some time last night. Soosy was Joshua's "very own pet" that he got for his 4th birthday. Betas have a life span of only about a year, and seeing how Soosy was already fully grown when we got him, and Joshua's birthday is in a few weeks, I'd say Soosy lived a long life, and that fish was loved. Although Joshua didn't always remember to feed him, he was pretty responsible about it as 4 year olds go, and he thanked God for Soosy in his bedtime prayers every night.

We had known for a little while that Soosy was probably living on borrowed time and that the end was probably near, so every time I would pass his bowl I would check to make sure he was still alive. A lot of times he would be resting in the bottom of the bowl wrapped up in his little plant.

This morning Joshua looked in Soosy's bowl and said "I think Soosy is resting." Uh-oh. But when I looked over at the bowl, I thought I saw Soosy in his plant, so I said that he likes to rest in his plant. But then Joshua said "He's not in his plant. He's at the top." Double uh-oh. Sure enough, Soosy was gone. So here we go explaining death to a 4 year old. But Joshua wasn't too broken up about it. When I told his Soosy had gone to heaven, he said "that's okay, we can just go get another fish at Pest-Mart." How soon we move on! We spent much of the rest of the morning talking about Soosy, and what we'll miss about him. R.I.P Soosy. You were a great fish!