"What's the matter with you?" the Godfather yelled at his godson Johnny Fontane, who whimpered about his inability to get a part in a movie. "Is this how you turned out? A Hollywood finocchio that cries like a woman?"

The character Marlon Brando played in "The Godfather" is the quintessential man: He's tough, he's strong . . . and he would never, ever cry if he lost a pet.

Last week, while we were on vacation, my in-laws called with a Sicilian message. They said my 5-year-old son's pet fish, Fish E. Fish (a.k.a. Tiny Fish), sleeps with Luca Brasi. In other words, Fish died.

My son wasn't shaken at all.

"He's a man," I told my wife when she asked why our boy wasn't so sad.

"But Fish is never going to come back," my wife told our boy, trying to get him to break. "He's gone forever. Don't you feel any sadness?"

"The kid's fine," I said. "Why do you want him to be a baby?"

"It's okay, Mommy," our son said. "I'm not sad."

Ah, some day my son will take over the family business.

I gave Fish a proper burial. I packed his body into a small jewelry box and buried it in our backyard planter. My son said a few kind words about his former pet, and that was that.

"Is Fish up in Heaven now?" the boy asked as we went inside. "Or do you think he's stuck in traffic?"

"No, he's in Heaven," my wife said. "But he's never coming back. You understand that, right? He's never ever ever ever coming back. Ever."

My son thought about all those "evers."

"Are you sad now?" my wife asked him.

Our son burst into tears.

"Now why did you do that?" I asked my wife. "How's he ever gonna be a man?"

"He's not a baby just because he's sad that his pet died," my wife said. "It's okay to be sad and have feelings."

"But he was fine before," I said. "It's like you wanted him to feel bad."

"No, I just don't want him to think he has to hold back his feelings," she said.

I thought about what my wife said, and I tried to find the logic in a growing boy crying about a dead fish. Maybe it was okay that—

"No, it's not okay," I said. "What's the matter with you? Do you want our son to be a Hollywood finocchio that cries like a woman?"

Of everyone in my family, I should've been the most emotional. I took care of Fish. I fed him most of the time; I cleaned his tank; I changed the light in his tank when it went out; I gave him medicine when he was ill . . .

Just because I'm not wallowing in grief doesn't mean I don't have feelings for Fish. I have lots of fond memories of him, like when we first brought him home from the pet store and I took pictures of the two of us together for my wallet, or like when I used to try to communicate with him every morning by tapping Morse code on the aquarium glass. Fish and I even joked around with my wife and son when I cleaned the tank. I'd move him to another bowl and pretend he went missing.

Yep, Fish and I had some really great times. Sniff sniff. And I'm sure gonna miss him. Sniff sniff. And there's no way I can bring him back ever ever ever again. WAAAAH!

There's a scene in "The Godfather" where Don Vito Corleone is in an undertaker's place looking over his son's bullet-riddled body. The Don becomes very emotional. Remember? He said, "Look how they massacred my boy." The Godfather practically bawled all over the corpse.

And that's how I justify my tears for Fish.

E-mail Michael Picarella at michael.picarella@gmail.com. To read more of his stories, go to www.michaelpicarellacolumn .blogspot.com.