“I’m standing in the shadows of love,” I heard Bob singing in the back yard at dawn. “Gettin’ ready for the heartache to come.”

I put on my bathrobe and ran outside. “What’s the matter?” I asked. He was standing over our fish pond, well, what used to be our fish pond. Now, it was just a huge dug-out area that once was a pond about the size of a 7-Eleven.

He slowly turned to me and wailed, “So take a good look at my face. You’ll see my smile seems out of place. If you look closer it’s easy to trace - - the tracks of my tears.”

“What’s with the Motown shtick?”

He continued to cry. “I can’t help myself.”

He turned to me and continued his relentless melodramatics. “It’s just a hole. An empty hole filled with yesterday’s promise and tomorrow’s sorrow. A room of gloom. Maybe this is all a dream. Somebody shake me. Wake me, when it’s over.”

I took the terry cloth belt of my robe and dabbed his tears. “I know, sweetheart. I know. In time, you’ll get over losing the fish. But the Temptations bit has got to go right now.”

And so, the end of summer is nigh. Each year, Bob begins closing up the yard about now. He digs the gardens under and stacks firewood. And this year, he also closed up our 10 year old fish pond.

I’m not suggesting that back yard fish ponds are a bad idea. Everybody loves them, and we loved having ours for a very long time. But when we started this hobby, materials weren’t as advanced as they are now. The last 2 years have been nothing but emergency maintenance for continuously occurring fast moving leaks.

Bob and I made the decision after careful thought about the upkeep of the pond versus the joy we were getting out of it. It was hard to make the final choice. I left it up to Bob, since the pond has always been his hobby. That’s another way of saying that I refused to have anything to do with it. Words cannot tell you how very much I hated the fish pond.

We had many long nights of back-and-forth sensitive talks. Bob has been quite attached to the fish, but the problems have just been so overwhelming. I mean, when there’s a rapid leak something has to be done right away. And that means spending every waking hour trying to find the leak and then repairing it. I tried to be as lovingly understanding of Bob’s feelings as I could.

“I’ve known these fish for 10 years,” he said, shaking his head, and wiping his wet eyes.

“I don’t care.”

“And Mister Greenie, the bullfrog. He won’t have a home anymore.”

“Ditto on the no-care issue.”

So Bob put an ad in the paper saying that we had free fish that needed a good home.

A couple came over to be interviewed. They sat on the couch and looked around nervously as Bob took out his clipboard and his pen.

“Can we see the fish?” the woman said.

“All in good time,” Bob said, then whispered to me, “A little too eager, don’t you think?” I whispered back, “Bob, you’re a jackass.”

He looked at the questionnaire on his clipboard and said, “Have you ever raised fish before?”

“Well, no,” the husband said.

“So you don’t know anything about what they need, do you? Do you even know if they have ears?”

The couple slowly stood up then ran like hell out of the house.

“What are you doing?” I said. “You’re never going to get anybody to take the stupid fish if you put them through the third degree.”

The second contestant arrived a half hour later. It was a fellow who looked to be in his early eighties.

Bob motioned for him to sit on the couch then took out his clipboard. He filled in the man’s name and address then looked across at him and said, “What provisions will you have for the fish for when you die? That could be next week, you know.”

“Bob!” I grabbed the clipboard and bonked him on the head with it. “Please excuse my husband,” I said to the man. “He’s a  . . .  he’s a  . . .  a jackass.”

I left the room after telling Bob that if he was going to continue to behave this way, he was on his own.

I’ll never forget the day we brought the little scaled bundles of joy home. We started with 6 fish, each only an inch long. We were so excited as we put them in the pond. Bob took pictures every four hours so he’d have a snapshot of them at each stage of growth.

I remember his face as he showed me the first set of photos he had developed. “Look at all these of Sugar Pie and Honey Bunch.” He gazed tenderly at the photos. “And Bernadette,” he said. “We captured every one of her adorable expressions perfectly.”

I took the pictures and began going through them.

“Bernadette has your eyes,” I said.

“You think so?” he took the photo and looked closely.

“Oh definitely,” I nodded.

And so after three days, Bernadette and one other fish were still alive. They liked to frolic under the summer sun in the sprinkles of the fountain as they voraciously ripped each others fins off.

Bernadette laid a billion eggs, which turned into a billion fish. They enjoyed war games involving eating each others eyes and then leaving enough open wounds on their scales so that whoever was “it” would be torn apart by the rest.

But that was then, this is now. And Bob finally found a suitable couple to take the fish.

That fateful day, a nice young man named Jim and his girlfriend Gwen followed Bob and me to the back yard.

Bob was weeping as he put on his waders so he could get in the pond to net the fish. He bravely and carefully climbed into the water. He put the net in and stood, standing still in the scoop position.

“Here Bernadette,” he called to the big orange fish. The fish swam away. “You have a new daddy now,” he called out. Then he started sobbing.

“Oh geez, Bob,” I said. “Just net the fish. We’re talking a fish here for heaven’s sake!”

He stopped looking at Bernadette and looked at me. “I hate you.”

I smiled uncomfortably at Jim and Gwen then turned back to Bob. “Now honey. We already agreed that we’d give up the fish. You know how every day for the whole summer, we’ve been in here repairing leaks and spending a fortune.”

Bob slowly began to step backwards, out of the pond.

“Don’t do that, Bob,” I said. “First of all, we promised these good people we’d give them our fish and second of all, if you don’t net them, I will pour ammonia into the water and we won’t have any fish to worry about anymore ever again – forever and ever. Do you fully get my drift, sweetheart?”

Finally, Bob netted the fish and put them in the coolers that Jim and Gwen had brought with them. And sadly, that was that.

Soon after, Bob finished his first 6 pack of beer. He then went into his typical major grief response. He started wailing so loud in the back yard the neighbor called. I was compassionate.

“Is something wrong?” my neighbor asked.

“Yes. I married a jackass. He’ll quiet down by morning.”

If you decide to have a backyard fish pond, please understand that it will provide you with years of joy and raccoons. I mean years of joy and serenity. You will love sitting by the pond, staring at the fish swimming in circles around the water lilies. You’ll look in astonishment as you watch your dog burying something colorful in the ground and then you’ll realize in a startled state of “OH NO!” what they never tell you in fish pond manuals. Fish jump.

And so, if you run into Bob, please be kind and offer your condolences. He’s having a tough time and it would be good if he could meet up with someone nice to him rather than someone who’s ready to dunk his head in the bottom gunky stuff that’s still in the pond hole where it is now collecting beautiful mosquitoes. Be encouraging to Bob. Tell him, “It’ll get better. You can make it if you try.”

My parting words are to Jim and Gwen: If either of you are reading this article and something disastrous has happened to Bernadette, don’t feel you need to share this information with us. I’m begging you. And I ain’t too proud to beg.