Judy, that is a great goldfish story ! ! How amazing for the fish to live so long, and then die after he finally had someone who was truly taking good caree of the poor fish. Maybe there was something bad in the water that she put in his tank ??
When I was growing up in north Idaho, we always had goldfish at the carnivals that went through. I loved looking at them swimming around in their little bowls. That must have been a hard life for the little guys, because those bowls were not very big, and if no one got a dime into the bowl, they just kept being transported from one town to the next along with the carnival, and then put back out in the little bowls while the carnival was running.
I imagine they had to replace a lot of the goldfish; but that never occurred to me when I was a little girl at the carnival with my mom. She was pretty good at pitching the dimes into the fish bowl to win me a goldfish, too.