Dealing with grief: Loss of fish, lots of loss coming out

Our son's fish died yesterday. He's 13 yo, we adopted him two years ago, he's experienced a great deal of loss and trauma in his life. This is his first major loss since he's been with us (three years).He cried, and sobbed, and laid down on the floor, and threw up four times. We also have a dog and a cat, and he pet-sits. Animals are huge for him. I was so, so sad for him. It was hard to help him manage it. It occurs to me this morning that he's experienced lots of loss in his life, and maybe this is the first time he's "contained" (if that makes sense, in a family with parents).My husband dug a hole in our yard. I found a pretty box, and partly to distract him, asked my son to choose three beautiful rocks from his collection to put in the box with the fish. He chose carefully, one from me, one from my husband, and one from him. Then, he poured a huge layer of fish food into the box (like Egyptian burials??)I picked up the fish out of the aquarium, and God help me, my stomach turned over. The fish was grey and his tail fell off in my hand. The things we do for the great love of our children. I laid him gently on the fish food.We buried him, and I said a liturgy. My son fretted off and on throughout the night. Again, I think it's not just the fish that he's mourning. This morning, lots of questions about heaven, about whether the fish was in pain, about if the fish's soul can see him from heaven and follow him (like _Coco_ or _Book of Life_).One of the crazy/beautiful things about parenting is that you never know when these huge and hard moments will blow up a weekend and require attention, care, thoughtfulness, energy...and willingness to pick up a dead fish. via /r/Parenting https://ift.tt/2ZtFcaT