"A Blue Heron ate our goldfish"

This is a story about a heron and goldfish, but also a story about the loss of control, deep grief and clinging onto hope.

My husband comes into my office with a face radiant and full of joy. "There is a huge Blue Heron on the roof!". He has always seen the Heron as a symbol of good to come, a symbol of hope, anticipation that something magnificent is going to happen. In the last almost 20 years, it has been that symbol and many good things have happened to us.

An hour later, my two youngest children storm into my office crying hysterically. I calm them down just enough to get pieces of the story. "The He-he-he-ron ate our beau-beau-beauti-ful fish". "The on-e I looked after for tw-o years" And they really did look after the fish very well and it had names and they spoke to it. They cared for and nurtured the fish in an endearing way. The goldfish are gone. They have been eaten by the magnificent, magical blue Heron.

I held them as they cried.

I thought of things that I can distract them with. What they can be grateful for. Just to get the crying to stop.

I said: "Maybe the Heron was incredibly hungry". That made it worse.

I held them as they cried and I knew this was a loss, but it was more than the cruel thought of a Heron violently eating a goldfish that have been loved deeply for the last two years.

No guilt trip about privilege, or an instant gratitude practice was going to shove this grief down. It's grief about the loss of connection, uncertainty about parents and grandparents contracting the virus and dying. It is fear of being abandonned and disconnected from community. My kids were grieving the losses I have not acknowldged at all because I am just too busy shoving my own grief so deep down that it may die in the darkness of denial.

I do this work, I know what happens with repressed feelings. I just don't want to deal with this.

But my kids don't have a choice. The flood gates were opened. They feel deep loss over the fish, yes, but over so many other aspects of their lives that have been disrupted. Despite the access to technology, and the amazing skills they have had to learn to manage their own academic world on zoom, youtube, google slides and that they are nothing short of fantastic movie makers, they are grieving a life that was pretty good for them.

I have been angry a lot and lately, and the anger morfhed into anxiousness now. I squeezed shit into diamonds and the diamonds are shining , but my hand and my head and heart hurts. I am tired. An the next person who tells me "only 194 people died in the last day" will be assualted.... ONLY... imagine 194 people lying dead in one place, that is 194 people too much. And the people at the butcher shop, refuse to wear their masks because it will spoil their make-up. I get really, really angry at the people who jeapordise everyone's safety. But this post was about fish dying, not my anger at people. But many more fish will die unless people stop being dumb-asses.

We fixed the fish pond and covered it with mesh so that the remaining small fish will have a chance.

The Heron will go hungry.

My mom died in a car accident 4 years ago. I did not know how to deal with the loss. I followed every piece of advice about loss. It did not help. It was a long process and I miss her now.

We lost an illusion of safety, responsibility, community. We lost it forever and I don't know how to mourn that.

I wiped the tears off my kid's faces and say "there now, there now" But I know jack-shit about how to deal with their grief, my grief the grief I see around me.

"There now, there now"