Randy the goldfish defied death at least three times in his eight years of life.

Once was a result of his first and only escape attempt. He flipped out of his tank in front of our then-3-year-old Archie, who felt the best course of action was to cover him with a pillow. There’s no telling how long he was ensconced in microfiber, but apparently not long enough to do him in.

The second was after a long weekend a few years later, where an accidentally-opened window dropped the temperature in the house down to 50 degrees and rendered Randy pretty dead-looking. Kyle closed the window, turned up the heat, and went to take care of our dearly departed fish, only to find him swimming happily amongst the bubbles.

The third was last year. Randy had built up a longtime habit of swimming wildly when Kyle or I walked by, indicating that he hadn’t yet been fed. It wasn’t until he developed a usually-fatal disease that we realized that he had been tricking us into feeding him twice a meal. The Internet told us to prepare for his imminent demise; three weeks later he was back to his old self.

Randy came into our family as a guilt present after Archie got tubes in his ears. He outlived four fishy roommates, and grew so dramatically from his little guppie state that we upgraded his tank twice. He never once played with the gazillions of toys that we got him.

He was our constant companion on countless nights, swimming back and forth, back and forth, waiting as we did for the boys to finally fall asleep.

There’s a chance that he’ll make a miraculous recovery as a type this. There’s a chance he will reanimate as a zombie fish. There’s also a chance he will come back as a blue whale, swimming in endless seas, eating as much as he can hold – content in the knowledge that in this life, he was a very good goldfish.