Life Lessons from Nemo

This morning I found poor little Flurry afloat. I rushed to tell Joe and we started to devise a plan. To tell her or not, that was the question. Since it is so close to Christmas and Hana even picked out a present for Flurr that is currently under the tree, our first instinct was to get a new fish and not let her know. But that decision did not sit well with me. Plus, she would know. Have you met this kid? Joe seemed more interested in wondering if we could fool her than anything else. In the end we ended up telling her and it went a little something like this...
JOE: Hana, can you come here for a second?
HANA: What do you want, Daddy?
JOE: Mommy and I have something to tell you. It's some bad news, okay?
HANA: (Looking very concerned)
ME: (Heartbroken at the look on her face and having no idea how this will turn out.) Everything's okay, sweetie.
JOE: Mommy and I are very sad to tell you that Flurry has gone to fishy heaven.
HANA: Why?
ME: (Thinking to myself, 'Well, from the looks of his water, it had been about a month since it was last cleaned...') It was just his time to go.
JOE: (Thinking fast) Well, when mommy bought him, the lady at the store told her that Flurry was really old. So we've actually don't a really good thing by giving him a nice, happy home until he went to fishy heaven.
HANA: (Taking this surprisingly well!) Oh, okay!
ME: So now we have to tell him goodbye. (Anticipating her reaction to flushing him down the toilet) So let's think about this. What do fishies live in?
HANA: Water.
ME: So we want to keep him in water, right?
HANA: Yes.
ME: So what do you think we should do with him? Where should we put him?
HANA: (Quoting Finding Nemo) Well, all drains lead to the ocean! We should flush him down the toilet!

I never in a million gazillion billion trillion years would have thought she would remember that and pull it out for use at such an appropriate time! We all went into the bathroom and said our goodbyes and as the toilet flushed, she again quoted Finding Nemo, "In fishy heaven, the sharks don't have teeth." And then she asked, "Do you think turtles go to fishy heaven?" And then followed with, "Now we can get a new fish and name it Pear!"

All we are is dust in the wind. Or fish down a drain.