Ruker, the family goldfish, does backflips now.

The internet’s FishMD says he most likely has a swim bladder problem brought on by poor water quality, or maybe from taking in too much air when he goes to the top of the tank to eat his food. This makes him a negatively buoyant fish. His shiny white body twists around, his mouth sucking at water until he’s got enough momentum to reach the thin colored flakes floating above him. Otherwise, he just hovers at the bottom of the tank.

“If he goes, it’s not your fault,” my dad says.

“He’s long outlived my expectations,” my mom says.

Outlived. As if the little fish had some predetermined timer attached to his existence here. Except that imaginary timer is still totally and completely reliant on how proximal I am to Ruker’s suffering, and my willingness or unwillingness to bend my own comfort to meet his need for my generosity. I know the bible verses about our numbered days here. I know the ones about how each day is ordained and written in a book.

Does that count for fish, too?

I’m more willing to believe Ruker and I both have imaginary dollar signs hanging above our heads—are we cost effective, are we worth fixing, are we worth the investment to keep alive? The pet clinics around me don’t even have veterinarians on staff that work with fish—I looked and then immediately felt ridiculous for thinking about purchasing a sixty dollar X-ray for something that wouldn’t have been more than three dollars at Meijer.

I hate that monetary number being synonymous with a creature God loves, probably spent millions of years crafting as it adapted and adapted and adapted. We saw those beautiful, iridescent scales, delicate fins, and intricate inner workings and said eh, it’s worth a dollar. Just flush it down the toilet.

I look at Ruker as he fights the negative buoyancy inside of him and think about grace. Grace to live at all, despite all of the negative buoyancy inside of us. None of us did anything to deserve it—all this living. I see all of that overwhelming grace of living around me in the spring and it makes me want to step in front of it all, waving my hands as if to say stop, stop, stop! Slow down on the living! It ends so soon! Slow down!

My sister and brother are graduating this year—one from college, and one from high school. I dread every life event like this. I am full of negative buoyancy. I know it’s all just signaling moving forward, adapting and adapting and adapting. Yesterday, I watched my beautiful, talented, loving sister walk down and take her diploma in her hands and it took everything in me not to grieve. Of course it is a day for celebrating—there are students walking down that stage, accepting that diploma, who have long outlived their own expectations. Of course it is a day for celebrating—in the eyes of world governments, they’ve increased that monetary number floating above their heads.

But how can you resist the urge to say slow down?

Once, I learned that there were cultures around the world that had women who worked full-time as grievers. I pictured these women coming to ancient funerals as a pack, sitting throughout the crowds, and crying loudly to mask the quiet tears of the family. They probably carried handbags that were just tissue boxes in disguise. I figured since I always felt on the verge of embarrassing tears, I would be a good potential applicant. My resume would say “can cry at the mention of any form of loss or change.”

Instagram makes me physically sick, watching children in Palestine go on two months without Israel letting any aid into their starving, hurting communities. I listen to audiobooks on international health crises as I walk outside and am grateful to blame the wind for the blurry vision and tears. I’ve yet to move out of my old closet at home, because then I’ll have to mourn my sister moving out all over again. Stop, stop, stop!

I never understood it. The people around me seemed to believe they should be happy, and that their grief was just a temporary state they just have to outlast. The pain comes and goes. It will scab over if you put enough Vaseline and prayer on it. And then you’re supposed to go back to that natural, content state. You’re not supposed to just sit at the bottom of the tank forever.

Negative buoyancy.

I’ll be embarrassed when I inevitably cry over Ruker. I will do most things to try and avoid the inevitable grief, and then dread the grief while I’m waiting.

But I don’t think it’s a good thing that we’re used to goldfish deaths. The animals treated as less than conscious by the human race die most often not because of their poor choices, their genetics, or their inability to adapt. They die because they are treated as less than fully conscious by the human race. When we see one another as creations that deserve to live here together, creations better together, then and only then do we protect each other. It ends so soon—too soon for us to not cheer for those that graduate and swim upward, buy X-rays for the suffering that society could fix but won’t because of cost-effectiveness, and cry out against injustices like unclean water, lack of access to food, and people’s unwillingness to empathize.

And then suddenly, I’m not talking about just goldfish anymore.

Gabrielle Eisma

Gabrielle Eisma graduated Calvin with a BFA in studio art and writing in 2022. She’s from Grand Rapids, Michigan, where she now works as a writer and illustrator for books for (mostly) children and middle grade readers.