a little limited. We would have loved to have had you and Linda along on Maui last spring. But you’d just changed jobs, and geez, you needed to make your own decisions. Nobody else was in your shoes. But along with all your caring and enthusiasm for people, we wish you could have realized how critical your self-care, self-protection was for all that—so you would have habitually, unthinkingly always fastened your seatbelt. As it is, Linda above all feels cheated out of the future. Helluva deal.
And yet when we saw your body on Saturday Mom and I noticed your smile had faded. I am thinking more and more that you too are grieving for having left us, and feeling guilty about your carelessness—if indeed it was a matter of carelessness, we really don’t know.
I had this vivid image of you the other night, looking so sad.
So we imagine you too being held, hugged, patted, and comforted, Peter, encouraged just as you were such an encourager to everybody.
God shall wipe away all tears. Yours and ours.
Love, Dad
Comforting the Impoverished
April 16, still later
Dear Peter,
Jesus talks about the poor man who after a hard life on earth is comforted in the bosom of Abraham in heaven. You were certainly not having a hard life, Pete. But there can be no greater poverty than yours now, Peter, having lost seemingly forever all family and friends.
Our incredulity about your death has almost been matched by an unbelievable outpouring of comforting love and prayers. I suppose we are now experiencing what Jesus said would be true: the strange unworldly blessedness of those who grieve: a seemingly limitless compassion, a tenderness which seeks to tend to our wounds, a kindness (something like I remember Linda speaking of your kindness so unique in her experience,) a gentleness which patiently continues to soothe and heal.
We love you so much, Peter. We trust that such comforting is for you as well.
Love, Dad
Becoming Acquainted with Deadness
Tuesday, April 21
Dear Peter,
I find myself thinking a lot about your deadness. I guess I have never experienced dead before, at least not like you are dead. I find your sudden deadness prompts expletives from me like “crazy,” “stupid,” “God, so dumb.” One moment you were alive, the next you were dead. Thud. Dead. Bonk. Dead. Like swatting a mosquito. Whine. Slap. Dead. A click of a switch. Light. Dark. Alive. Dead. Crack of a limb. Shatter of glass. There. Gone. Like the snap of a seat belt. Alive. Dead. And none of us were there. We weren’t even close. We didn’t even know. Nobody knew. Alive. Snap. Dead. Just like that.
It is so sudden, Peter, so final, that today I can’t take it in. I hardly feel it at all today.
That is one reason I am writing to you. I am trying to reach down into the elusive reality of your death. It is so hard to catch and hold the permanent presence of your forever absence from us.
You’ve been out of our house anyway for twelve or fifteen years. For ten years you’ve been with Linda. So your absence for me is an absence of your potential presence, your anticipated presence, vacations, visits, email, phone, promised times, assumed times, dreamed of times, times imagined, fantasized. On screen. Delete. Like the picture frame Mom borrowed for the memorial display to hold that candid shot of you when you were about 11—you were in it and now it’s empty again.
But today, forgive me Peter, I don’t feel so much saddened as bewildered, a head shaking don’t get it, can’t get it.
Love, Dad
Shadowed
Tuesday, April 21, later
Dear Pete,
I assume you know that we did gather at Jim and Sarah’s new house Sunday night. Susan, Tim, Miles and Erin, and Linda and Chelsey. The kids had a ball exploring the new territory. We did celebrate my birthday, but it was a shadowed celebration. We all knew we had expected it to be combined b.d., new house, and farewell celebration for you and Linda. We probably would have had some tears about that anticipated absence from Portland, an absence which would have had you wonderfully present in Birmingham, however.
Instead Linda reported she had found an apartment in Lake Oswego, indoor and outdoor pools for Chelsey, great bike riding areas. We rejoiced. And as you know, we cried. Too much, Pete: an apartment for two instead of a spacious new home for three.
Monday we went to the zoo. Mom and I, Linda and Chelsey, Sarah, Hannah, and Peter. We bought grandparent passes. We expect we will be here more often. They are good for all the kids, and at other zoos too. Guess which one tops the list? You got it—Birmingham. Damn.
It was a beautiful day, warmest so far this year. At lunch, Hannah and Chelsey ran barefoot in that expanse of green grass in front of the stage. They were a beautiful sight—did you see them? Splendid as it was, Mom and I held Linda and told her how deeply we’d rather have been at the airport saying good-bye to the three of you, with the beauty of your flying-off day supporting our hope, our appeal for the three of you someday returning to the Northwest.
Linda and Chelsey came out to Sarah and Jim’s for dinner, bringing a ham that one of the comforters had brought. Again it was good to be together. We want so much now to be together. But it was a shadowed time. The always present shadow of your absence, Peter.
Love, Dad
Sudden Accidental Death
April 21,Tuesday, still later
Dear Peter,
Linda showed us a beautiful letter she received from one of the persons who worked for you those two brief months in Birmingham. It contributed to my growing appreciation of your work, Peter. I always knew you did well; I didn’t have much understanding of why. Apparently in addition to your business wisdom, you were a very warm, loving human being to the persons with whom you worked. “Pete was interested in us as persons, not just workers,” the letter said.
It occurs to me that you must have been the very opposite of my stereotyped image of a bottom-line-driven corporate exec. I have always believed that in the corporate world, justice and human concern could never be adequately legislated, but are finally dependent upon the grace of God, and the character—I would say Christian character—of people in policy-making and person-relating positions. It had simply not occurred to me just how much you lived a kind of calling which you may never have verbalized—a calling as a Christian businessman.
I hesitate to use the term “Christian” because for the last couple of decades it has come to be associated with attitudes which are narrow, bigoted, judgmental, and distrustful of the world. You certainly were the opposite of that. Okay, Pete, I promise I will continue to try to reclaim the term for persons such as yourself.
Well, Peter, the report of your accident should be arriving today or tomorrow. I hope it comes before I take off to my meeting in Cleveland. I want to see the photos, and read what the police said about your sudden accidental death. I suspect that deep in me somewhere there is a large lively mass of grief which needs to be expressed. More sobs to come, I think. Some laughs too, I hope. And, I am sure, lots of close tender moments with Chelsey and Linda, and Mom. And your siblings. And, I guess, close to
