Artist’s Statement
Choosing a story for this assignment
was surprisingly difficult. At first I
thought I could do just about anything.
Then I stopped to think about what I really believe. What experiences or stories could I draw upon
to demonstrate my beliefs? I found it
was actually easier to look at the stories first and then examine them for
meaning. It seemed like a backwards
approach, but it was what worked for me in the end.
The story of the death of Felix the
cat is rather typical. The cat died and
everybody was sad. That’s all,
right? Nothing complicated about it. Well, no.
It is kind of complicated. I have
lost pets before. My family once owned a
llama and I was present in his final hour.
I watched his last breath. That
affected me in a way, but not the same as with Felix. Felix lived in the house. He became a constant part of life. Our family loved him because we got to know
his personality. He both annoyed us and
brought us joy. He was part of the
family. In the first half of my
presentation I showed photos of Felix as I remembered him. He was a normal cat. I talked about his quirks and his personal
connection with the individual members of the family. I wanted the class to know that Felix worked
his way into our hearts, despite most of us being rather anti-cat previous to
owning him.
News of his passing was surprisingly
hard for me to take. I had been on my
mission for over a year and hadn’t cried while reading and email since my first
P-day in Brazil. I didn’t have time to
process it in my head; I just started weeping. This moment, as I reflect on it, was possibly
the most significant to the theme of my presentation. I have often thought of myself as a rather
cold and somewhat emotionally detached person.
On my mission I remember thinking that maybe I should be more happy
about a person getting baptized or more sad about leaving a ward after 4
months. I thought I wasn’t invested
enough in the experience to care. In
some ways it was true. I did the work,
but was not as personable as most Elders.
Therefore I became close with only a few people. How does this relate to Felix? Well, his passing helped me remember that I
have a heart. It reminded me what it
feels like to care deeply about someone.
It was a wake-up call of sorts.
In my presentation I showed photos
taken by my sister the day Felix died.
She provided me with the only visual glimpse I ever had of that
event. Her photos tell the story of the
change of heart experienced by my family.
Dad took the time to build a casket. Jake went out to dig a hole in the frosty
ground while snow was falling. They
bought roses and wrote personal notes on the casket lid. I believe that love is well worth the risk (or
rather, the inevitability) of loss. It
expands your heart and, in the case of my family, links you to each other. We all shared the experience of Felix’s
death, though two of us were abroad on missions. The feeling was the same. Together we had grown to love the cat, and
our love and understanding for each other was increased in the process, though
we may not have realized it until the day of his passing.