photogrammatical

Last night I attended the opening of A Tribute to the Life & Art of Jerry Burchfield at Biola University. Jerry was a teacher of mine from the very beginning of my interest in photography. He gave me my one and only gallery show. He taught me how to cut mattes and put the frames together for it. Really those are the least of the things he taught me, but I remember them strongest because we did them alone together. He lost his battle with colon cancer on Sept 11. His show, which was planned before his passing, went right ahead and opened as he would have wanted. But it was a somber event without him.

I got the call today. Frank the Fish is dead. At nearly five years old he was the final survivor of the Fishbowl Gang, a motley crew of feeder fish I’d bought in the fall of 2004.

It was the first assignment in a photo class I was taking. Photograph one object 36 different ways. 36, of course, because everyone was still shooting film then. So I went to Walmart, spent under $10 and walked out with a large fishbowl containing five goldfish.

Tara and I were still newly dating. She dutifully held the fishbowl in the passenger seat as I tried unsuccessfully not to slosh the water onto her jeans. We drove all over town looking for places where the light seemed just right. At a park, at a bustop, in the center divider on a busy street. It took several hours, but I was happy with the results.

At the end of the day I suggested that we give the fish to the first kid we saw on the street, or else set them free in a local pond, but Tara would hear none of it. She’d named the two largest fish Frank and Fatty and she was determined to keep them for what we assumed was their short lifespan.

The three smaller fish did die almost immediately, and Fatty passed after several months. But Frank was a fighter. As the years passed his fins grew impossibly long like an old man’s whiskers, and he took to spending his days just sitting on the bottom, watching us.

Several times I mentioned that we could buy Frank a larger tank, perhaps a couple of friends, but Tara seemed to think that Frank was staying alive out of pure spite for his circumstance and that spending any additional money on him might be issuing him a death sentence.

And so Frank lived on in that same bowl, the regal lord of Tara’s parents’ kitchen. Always watching, only bothering to swim at meal times or when his possible demise had come into question.

But alas, old Frank’s number had finally come up.

Tara called this afternoon and said,

“Bad news, I just got to Mom’s house and Frank is dead.”

“Are you sure he’s not just resting?”, I said.

“Sorry honey.”

That was it. The undignified end of what was a remarkably long life for a lowly Walmart feeder fish who rose to prominence in the lives of a lucky few.

Frank will lay in state until tonight, when I can give him a proper burial.

Goodnight sweet prince.