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 you too, Pete.
Seeing evidence of your last moments may help me once again to touch and hold for a while the permanent reality of your crazy, instant, deadness.
Alive. Snap. Dead.
Love, Dad
Lots of Memos, but Never Again Close
Thursday, April 23,in flight, Portland to Seattle
Dear Peter,
So here I am on an AirWest express flying through the rain from Portland to Seattle. From there I’ll catch the flight to Cleveland for the meeting of the United Church Board for Homeland Ministries. Of course I had planned to begin the flight in Seattle. But we’ve still been in Portland dealing with the aftermath of your death. This little extra leg is one of a million things we never expected to be doing, Pete. Because we never expected you to be dead.
It’s raining and we just climbed above a cloud layer. Once upon a century this would have been the realm where we would have expected to encounter you. Our picture of the cosmos is not so simple now. So where are you, Peter?
You have been dead now for eighteen days. For the first time this morning I counted the days. Only eighteen. My God it seems like months. Except often it doesn’t seem at all like you could possibly be dead already. Yesterday was my 66th birthday, as you know. Often in years past, I recognized that when they hit their seventh decade, our friends begin to die more frequently. I don’t need to tell you, Pete, that I never expected you would be dead before me.
My birthday celebration was shadowed as is everything else. The little ones—Hannah, Miles, and usually Chelsey—escape the shadow. Miles had wrapped a present for me, announcing with proud anticipation as he offered it, “It’s a joke, Grandpa!” It was. After two years of my laying teasing claim to it, he presented me with his blanket. When he saw how funny that was for everybody, he immediately took the box back and presented one at a time another half dozen presents, each of which fit his new category of “joke.”
Hannah also presented me with a gift: a card with a noble photo of a bald eagle and a caption reading, “With the recipient’s capacity for vision, fortitude, and character, who needs hair?” Well said, right Pete?
I recalled and then Sarah remembered the joke of our Indian Guide names. Remember, you were Flying Eagle and I, naturally, was Bald Eagle. We made a drum, remember, Pete? Out of a wooden nail keg covered with inner tube rubber on top, with a neat eagle painted on the side. We were both pretty proud of it.
Sarah and Jim gave me a couple of Segovia CDs, because they had played one the other night and we enjoyed it so much. And Mom remembered how we’d once heard Segovia in concert at the University of Missouri while Mom was expecting you.
That’s the way it is, Pete. Reminders of you all over the place. Even National Public Radio last Saturday featured a guy from Todd, NC, talking about Bone Sucking Sauce, the great stuff we brought you from that old general store. You loved it and we loved the way you loved it.
This morning is one of those times when I am really sad. Missing you. Saddened that the promise of your life with us was so abruptly canceled.
I seem to be more sad about you when I am alone. Two rows in front of me are three guys in business suits talking enthusiastically about some venture in fifty million dollar increments. It is so easy for me to see the trio become a quartet with your presence. From the back, one of the guys even looks like you. But from the front, you’ll be glad to know that I think you were a lot better looking. I probably would never have said