I'm a Terrible Mother

I just got back to Vegas from a most wonderful weekend in L.A. - - and I feel like utter crap now...
I opened the door to what has been "my bedroom" in my aunt's home for the last month, and the smell hit me like a brick... and I couldn't hear any running water... and immediately, I looked to the back corner of the room to see my fishtank completely dark, the water cloudy, opaque and rusty in color... And I burst into tears.

Although two days before I'd left town, I had explained to my aunt that the fishtank was THE ONLY THING powered in the room by the light switch, over the past weekend, before she left for Oregon, she must have gone in there for something and flicked the light switch by habit on her way out, closing the door behind her. Even though I had tried to prevent a potential accident-waiting-to-happen, by letting her know about the tank and the light switch, I should have never placed the tank in that corner with the nearest outlet dependent upon the light switch.

I'm absolutely mortified, to think of how the ammonia level must have risen in the tank to a toxic measure, slowly killing my poor pretty Pauline, piggy-boy Moffet, baby Rocky and Stud Jr. They were at least 5 years old - I'd had them for 5 years. I just buried them in the backyard at the base of a rose bush. And bawled the whole time. And then I cleaned out their tank. And bawled the whole time.

I feel terrible.