Saying Goodbye

We have some sad news to report from the Cummings-Chappell estate, one of our beloved fishies, Grommie, passed away on Valentine's Day, 2013.

Grommie, who got his name from me because he was a Gourami fish, actually pre-dated me in John's life. Thus, up to now, Grommie has been a constant in my life and relationship with John. He was a quiet, peaceful fellow always just hanging around in the aquarium. He watched many other fish come and go and was a nice, predictable constant in my life.

When we moved from San Diego to North Dakota, I convinced John that Grommie should come along. I don't quite know what John thought we would do with him if we didn't bring him along, but I didn't want to think about it. We bought a small 10 gallon "travel" aquarium and so Grommie sloshed around in the back of the Camry for 2000 miles. Every night on our roadtrip, John would have to carry the aquarium into our hotel room so that we could fill his tank with more water and then plug in his air filter/pump so that we could give him some more air.

Recently, Grommie hadn't been doing well. He had been resting a lot on the bottom of the tank, often not moving very well - some days it almost looked like he was paralyzed on one side. I am glad to say that I did not find him, John did. It's always a sad day to have to fish out your dead fish from the tank. Currently, Grommie is resting in a plastic baggie in a box in our freezer. When it is warm and the soil thaws, we're going to bury him next to some of our purple irises.

 Photo credits: http://www.aquariumfish.net