The One with the Death in the Family

Boomer died. He's our Beta Fish, which was acquired soon after Speedy had died while we were on vacation. I noticed that he was very still (but still alive) yesterday, and he hadn't been eating. We changed his water, and then went down to the beach for the afternoon.
When we got home, it was bedtime and I skooched the boys up to bed. Boomer was vertical in the water, but still alive. Although I'm no fish expert, I do recognize that swimming vertically with his mouth right at the surface just isn't healthy.

Little Man was quite sad this morning, there were tears, and quite a few of them. I tried to make him feel better by fixing pancakes and letting him flip them. Not sure how we'll address the "can I have another fish". We already have 4 cats, and 2 dogs, so not having another pet certainly doesn't make things simple, but it doesn't add complications on the matter. Our housesitter received 4 pages of typed instructions when we went on vacation in July....one less pet to give instructions on could cut out at least 1 paragraph.