Constancy |ˈkänstənsē|

Porgy

the quality of being 

faithful,
dependable,

enduring and
unchanging

Nothing good comes in a week that begins over-hearing information passed from one person to another being about oneself:

"He's an opera singer, that's why he sounds that way. But he's never around…"

Good intentions aside, the quantifier of that sentence is the hardest thing for any singer to weather, especially with a family.

And pets.

Our family feline passed away Saturday. Now I'm not, in principle, a cat person. I grew up on a farm and cats were more practical than played with. Dogs were for playing and petting. Cats were for vermin control. But as a city dweller, they are really the only possible solution for oft-moving singer families. For professional reasons, we have moved 8 or 9 times in the past 18 years, the life span of our cat "Porgy."

We purchased him as a kitten, only a month before our oldest daughter was born. What was a gift for my wife soon became my chore, however. Pregnancy and changing catboxes don't mix. It became easy to hold a grudge on that fact.

I am hard-pressed to find an explanation for why a family pet became such an integral part of the family. But if I had to, I would say he was the measuring stick of the passage of time, of seasons. It is strange to look back over the span of a single full lifespan. It was not a life cut short, but one fully lived, so his death feels less like a tragedy, and more like a season of providence. And at every point in the past 18 years there is a distinct impression one has as to who the cat was in relation to the point of time. He was a tangible point of reference thru the lives of our 3 children.

And now he is gone.

Porgy's consistency is inversely proportional to the time I've spent travelling, away. I tend to beat myself up for being away from home so much. I don't get the opportunities most father's get. And yet… my oldest daughter is the most courageous person I know. My teenaged son, when asked to help out and do a chore jumps up and willingly replies "Sure. No prob." My musically gifted "favorite youngest daughter" comes home from school and can't wait to spend time with me doodling around in Garageband recording an Adele song. Somehow my absence has not dealt our family an insurmountable obstacle of being close.

Which does not lessen the pain I felt reading my son and daughter's Facebook status yesterday. "RIP Porgy. The one constant in my life. We will miss you." It hurts that it it is reference to a cat and not a father.

I was slated to sing the Paul Creston Psalm 23 in church yesterday. I had a feeling Porgy would be passing this week. He had become incontinent, senile, blind, deaf and exceedingly wobbly of limb in the past month. Finally on Friday he no longer rose from his bed and we knew the end was near. The last time I had sung the Creston was at my Gramma's funeral, about 15 years ago. And so the song again was sung in honor of another beloved family member yesterday. Not an easy thing to do, given the emotions of the weekend.

 Creston Psa 23 excerpt by Andrew Richards

I'll spare you the rest as the emotions kinda got away from me…

Consistency has always been a challenge for me. I suffer a bit from "baby out with the bathwater" syndrome. B.O.B.S. for short. And that's basically what I've been reconciling myself to in the "Blame" series of posts: allowing seemingly insignificant portions of my life to factor in. As a B.O.B.'S sufferer, not all of life's challenges need be relegated to factors within our control. Sometimes we fail due to our humanity. But our humanity need not be expunged. I can grow and develop, so long as it's in character to the context of what has come before. The baby is finally safe from being tossed out.

A cat's character taught me that.