Poor Heiki!

This week we experience the passing of our little fish Heiki 2.0.  This was our second beta fish that we had for the kids, he didn't do much except swim expectantly when you passed by his tank and decorate our kitchen counter but he was part of the family.  Heiki actually died on Wednesday, I came home from work and noticed he was not swimming and that in fact he had sunken to the bottom of the tank.  We were not surprised by this as he had been sick for a week or so before that.  Connor was asleep on the couch when I removed Heiki from the tank flushed him down the toilet.  Last night Connor realized he was missing.  He went over to the tank to turn the light on and when I told Connor Heiki was not in there anymore he said through tears "oh, Heiki died? That makes me so sad".  I did not think I would be sad over a fish but seeing the tears in Connor's eyes was too much for me.  I looked over at Terence and said "this one is all yours Daddy".  Terence did a great job explaining that Heiki was sick and that he was not happy in his tank anymore.  He also told him that Heiki had gone to live with Heavenly Father and Jesus and that he was not sick anymore.  This seemed to be a reasonable explanation for Connor and he repeated it back to Terence for confirmation.  Then Terence gave him a hug and told him that we could go get a new fish today.  They got online and started looking at pictures of new fish. 
Honestly I was surprised that my three year old had such a strong reaction to the news that his fish had died.  It just goes to show you they are so much smarter and understand so much more then we think.