Customer Story: Bessie C. – “From Heartbreak to Healing – How Koi, and Kodama, Helped Me Rebuild”

Customer Story By: Bessie C

“First, you should not really consider this an entry, as I don’t know what I’d do if I won! I am too much of a beginner to have a koi so valuable. And this is too long anyway.

But, I wanted to let you know the way you and koi have touched my life, even though you do not know me.

My very first koi were many years ago. I was just 18, and working in a pet store, and we got in some tiny, tiny, inch long butterfly koi. I brought two home, and my father promptly named them Tut and Po, from a story, but he never said which story. They were friendlier and smarter than we knew fish could be, and became true pets. Later that year, my father was killed, and my stepmother threw me and my sister out. I asked my stepbrother to find a good home for Tut and Po, and he promised me that if he could not find someone, he would release them in a local lake – which I know now is awful, but at the time it brought me great comfort.

That was almost 30 years ago, and I had kept aquariums over the years, but never koi. This past year, I have been through the worst part of a hard life. And, for some reason, during the darkest part of it, I thought of those long ago koi, and the pleasure they brought to my father and I.

I began to learn about koi, I watched videos, I read websites – that brought me to you! Thank you for all the articles and encouragement and positivity on your site! I signed up to your site and downloaded the poster and watched all your videos to learn as much as I could. I began to think “I have a farm pond, it is deep and clear, maybe I could put some koi in it?” and I researched more.

When I was doing this, I came across the Legend of Dragon’s Gate. It touched me so deeply I found myself crying uncontrollably, all the hardship of these terrible months, it seemed like the story came just to encourage me to survive and fight through it, to not give up. Most versions of this story were like summaries of a longer story, or referred to a longer story, but no matter how hard I looked, I couldn’t find it …so finally, after much research, I wrote it, so I could have a book to share.

This project gave me something to focus on, and hope. An illustrator is working on pictures for it now, and I will attach one of them and the story here for you to enjoy. I negotiating with a printer and I hope to have books to share by the end of July. I am also working with a translator, so it can also be shared in Japanese.

Then, just a few weeks ago, I found out Waterford Garden, in NJ, was having a grand re-opening. It is 4 hours away from me, but I went. I spent the whole day, and the koi were so lovely and serene. It soothed my soul beyond words.

I brought home 4 tiny young koi. One of the first ones I saw when I looked into the pool of smallest koi was the only Ki Utsuri in the pool – my favorite variety, so beautiful. I named her Spot, after a joke of my father’s, who called every animal with stripes, Spot. A Gin Rin Tancho butterfly, who my daughter called the “good luck glitter fish”, so he is Glitter. My son picked out a Karasu, with a very red belly. We call her Ember, because she looks like a live coal. Her color is perhaps not the best, but her structure is very nice, she is growing quickly and will swim into my hand for a treat. We think she will get very large, and we are looking forward to watching her, and all of them, grow. The last is a beautiful, swift, Lemon Hariwake I call Tut, because of his resemblance to that long-ago koi.

We set up a heated mini pond for them, to make sure they were eating well and could transition to our spring water while our pond warmed up (it is spring-fed and colder than they were used to) and already we have grown to love them so much that we don’t want to risk them in the pond, which can be visited by wildlife and gets run-off in a strong rain. I spoil them, I bring them duckweed from the pond and cut up shrimp into tiny pieces for them. They are a source of peace and healing.

So, I have set up an 800 gallon pool with water lilies for them, which is cycling even as I write this. I have a little bit of money from my mother’s death (she was killed in a house fire, just one of the terrible things that happened this year) and I am using that for the book – and I bought lumber, to build a large, above ground pond that will be big enough for my lovely baby koi (and a few more friends) for them when they are as big as they will grow.

So you see, I am not set up to win, but I wanted to share this with you, so you could know how deeply you touched a stranger’s heart. Thank you, and happy anniversary.“

CUSTOMER’S GALLERY : BESSIE C.