Eulogy for Spartacus Jr. (Beloved fish)

We are gathered here today to pay our final respects to Spartacus Jr, a beloved fish taken before his time. We come together in grief and boredom, acknowledging our loss. May God (or should I say Cod) grant us grace, that in pain we may find comfort, in sorrow hope, in death resurrection. Though not too much resurrection because I don’t think I can survive a zombie fish rapture. 

Like Spartacus Senior before him, Spartacus Jr. carried himself with a certain so-fish-tication that is hard to come by. He will always be remembered fondly for his collection of identical blue rocks, the little pineapple that he liked to hide in to avoid the cat, and the way his little eyes bulged out of their sockets due to a life long bacterial infection.  He is survived by his loving owner Mathilda, and his best friend, a ceramic snail. He is also survived by his adoptive brother, nemesis, and eventual murderer, Rorschach, with whom he had a . . .complicated relationship.

We rest easy in the knowledge that he lived well, or at least as well as can be expected. In all honesty he was a miserable bastard who hated being alive and spent his entire year in my possession trying to bash his brains out against the walls of his tank. From the day I rescued him from one of those sad little containers at PetCo to the day he died, Spartacus Jr. was consistently, unwaveringly tired of being alive. As they say, pets grow to resemble their owners. When I found him dead in his tank on Saturday my heart sank, kind of like how he did after the cat decapitated him.

Spartacus was a loving soul, whose myriad health issues are the main reason I have almost an entire drawer in my desk devoted to fish antibiotics.  I will miss his companionship during this difficult time. Without him quarantine will not go nearly as swimmingly.  In these uncertain times it’s easy to feel like a fish out of water. . . though not as much as Spartacus probably does.

So we say goodbye to you Spartacus, a king among fish! We salute you as you make your way to the great big fish-tank in the sky. May you find the peace in the next life that you never found in this one.

I believe that funerals should be a celebration of life, and so I entreat you, do not be sad that he is gone, be happy that he was finally able to leave behind this terrible existence and escape into the damp embrace of death. 

I will now read a section of one of his favorite works of fiction:

“One fish, Two fish, Red fish, Blue fish

Black fish, Blue fish, Old fish , New fish 

This one has a little star 

This one has a little car 

Say! What a lot of fish there are 

Yes. Some are red. And some are blue 

Some are old. And some are new 

Some are sad. And some are glad. 

And some are very, very bad. 

Why are they sad, and glad, and bad. 

I do not know. 

Go ask your dad.” (Dr. Seuss)