A Friend and A Fish

I

“Mommy, what happened?”

“It’s ok Will. Everything’s okay sweetheart.”

“But mommy, you’re crying.”

“Will, it’s okay sweetie. Go to your room and we’ll talk in a bit, okay?”

Will walked up the stairs, mopey and upset. Why wouldn’t momma just tell him what was happening? Climbing the stairs was a pretty hard job for a six-year-old. Every step was a full body workout, pulling yourself up the step that was almost as tall as you.

Finally making it to his room, Will sat down at his desk in his room and started coloring. Every color came to life as he scratched the white piece of paper with several crayons. At the end of an hour, he had carefully and wonderfully constructed a rainbow that stretched across a blue sky sitting above his house. It all looked so pretty and surely momma would love what he had done. He was really good with rainbows.

He had sketched a rainbow that panned across several pages. He didn’t just use one page, he used three and connected each one together with a thin line of glue. He had learned the colors that belonged in a rainbow and the order in which they went in school, the day before. He brought it down from his desk and showed it to both momma and dad, they both said that it looked like a real rainbow. It was the best rainbow he had made, and it made momma so happy.

Today though, momma was crying. She had tears streaming down her cheeks, maybe a rainbow would make her stop crying. Maybe his picture could make her happy.

Knock, knock, knock. Will put down his crayons to see Momma and Daddy standing at his door. Momma walked over to him,

“Hey Will, honey, what are you doing?”

“Look! Look what I made! I thought that if you liked it, then maybe you wouldn’t cry. Sometimes, when I get sad, making rainbows helps me be happy again.”

Momma looked at the picture and picked it up as Daddy walked over and sat down on the floor by Will, his eyes level with Will’s.

“Hey Dad!”

“Hey kiddo. Hey, we have something that we do need to talk about, ok buddy?”

“Alright, is it why Momma was crying?”

“Yeah buddy. It’s why she was crying. Do you remember that talk we had a few weeks ago? About what can happen to people?”

“Yeah! Sometimes people die and then we can’t be with them anymore and can’t talk to them anymore. Sometimes it’s old people and sometimes it’s not. Right?”

“Yeah buddy. You got it. Well, you know Jackson, at school?”

“Yeah Dad. We played outside yesterday. But he wasn’t at school today.”

“Kiddo. Jackson died this morning. He was on his way home from school with his momma when she had to take him to the doctor, he got really sick and he died, hon. He won’t be at school anymore and we wanted to tell you why. But if you have any questions or want to talk about anything, you can come talk to us anytime, ok?”

Will sat there quietly for a bit. “I think I’m okay right now Dad. I think I’m gonna color more and I’ll feed my fish too. I need to think of a name still.”

“Come downstairs for dinner soon, ok?”

“Alright dad. Okay.”

Momma and Daddy left the room and Will looked at his rainbow. Until dinner time, he moved a red crayon across the white paper, what once was white was now stained red.

II

Jackson had a fish. It was the best thing ever for Will. He had gone to play at Jackson’s house but had stayed in front of the fish tank for what seemed like hours and turned out to actually be hours. Back and forth, it swam and swam across the tank. There was only a glass wall separating him and this creature swimming back and forth, breathing under water.

And now he had his own fish. Sitting in his room, on a wooden countertop, his own aquarium filled the space within the corner of his small bedroom.

It was sad. He still hadn’t figured out a name for his own fish. Jackson’s fish had been named Timmy. Jackson seemed liked a good name, now, for his own fish. And so, Will spoke quietly to his fish, “I am going to name you Jackson, okay?”

In Will’s mind, the fish seemed to swim in circles as a sort of answering in agreement to his name now being Jackson.

“Hey Jackson, what do you think it means to die? Do we just go away?”

The tank bubbled. Jackson swam in circles and silence reverberated throughout the room.

“Jackson, why do people have to go away? Like Gramma, she just went away one day, Daddy said that she died, but I didn’t see her again.”

“Will, honey, come downstairs for dinner!”

Momma had called from downstairs. Will exited his room and began the workout that spanned the space from the top of the stairs to the bottom.

“Are you hungry hon?”

“Momma, I’m hungry, but what happens if we don’t eat? Do we die? Is that why Jackson is away now? Maybe he didn’t eat?”

“Well, Will, hon, Jackson was sick, that’s why he went away. But if you don’t eat, it’s not healthy.”

Will sat at the table and drove his fork into the mashed potatoes spread across his plate. He noticed his parents making eye contact, glancing between him and each other throughout the meal.

Being tucked into bed for the night, his dad sat by his bed and asked, “You ok buddy? Ready to sleep? Feed your fish?”

Knowing that every answer he would give to that series of questions wouldn’t be true, Will summarized all three answers into one and replied, “Yeah Dad!”

Closing his eyes and allowing his dreams to take over, Will fell asleep watching Jackson swim back and forth across the glass wall.

III

Will woke and prepped for school. The next few days would involve the same routine of waking, arriving at school, coming home and coloring, going to bed.

The reality of what had happened with Jackson started to set in, school was not the same. His main playmate and learning buddy had disappeared. And he felt bad. It felt bad.

Jackson had often brought a sandwich and a bag of chips in his lunchbox, with a candy bar for dessert. Will’s parents had always packed a chocolate pudding alongside his peanut butter and jelly sandwich. The boys had traded to get the best of both worlds, Jackson would give up part of his candy bar for pudding, and Will would donate some pudding for a candy bar.

Will sat at school at an empty table for lunch. All the other boys and girls sat nearby, but there was no one to trade lunches with.

At home, Will would watch the glass wall separating him and his fish for the remainder of the afternoons. Coloring would only take so long, which left plenty of time for him to play and talk to Jackson.

“I’m sorry Jackson.”

Will only received a silent reply.

Dinner was prepared and Will made his way downstairs. Dinner was routine as his parents asked him about his day and he answered. Mom made him eat his vegetables and Dad and Mom had conversations about their own days which didn’t really make much sense to Will.

They both agreed to take Will to his room for bed.

“Will, honey, what happened to your fish? Didn’t you feed him?”

His Mom’s question seemed to bounce off the walls of his bedroom as Will lay in his bed. His Dad sat at the end of his bed.

“What’s wrong?” Dad asked.

Mom’s reply was filled with a sort of sadness, “It’s dead hon. What happened Will?”

“Well, I didn’t feed him,” said Will softly.

“Did you forget?” his dad asked again.

“Well, no.” Will again said softly, prompting his mom to sit by him on his bed and ask almost as softly as he had spoken,

“What do you mean?”

“Well, I did the same thing to Jackson at school, it was my fault. And I didn’t think that my fish would die. I just didn’t want anything to happen because of me and it did happen again.”

Mom and Dad sat there stunned in disbelief as Mom again found words, “It wasn’t your fault honey, what do you mean?”

“I was sick that day. I was coughing and I didn’t say anything because I like being at school. It was my fault Jackson got sick.”

“Buddy, listen, it wasn’t your fault. Jackson had immune system issues; anything could have been an issue for him-”

His Mom interrupted Dad and whispered to him sharply, “He’s too young to know what that means.” Speaking up where Will could hear better, she said, “Hon, it’s not your fault. Jackson got sick very easily. What you do matters, but this wasn’t your fault. You still have to be helpful and do things like take care of your fish, now get some sleep, ok?”

Will had one more reply before going to sleep for the night,

“I thought that if I did something, it would be bad. Like going to school that day, it made things worse because now Jackson can’t come to school ever again. But now you say that I should still do stuff, I should try to help. But I don’t think anything I do matters.”