Letters to Peter. Donald E. Mayer
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of Service for Peter Karl Mayer, April 11, 1998
Hillsdale Community United Church of Christ, Portland, Oregon
Peter Karl Mayer was born to Donald and Lynnea Mayer on May 15, 1960, in Mexico, Missouri. He attended elementary school and three years of high school in St. Louis, where he played percussion with his brother Tim, pianist, in the high school jazz band. He graduated from high school and from Northern Illinois University in Dekalb, Illinois where he led the University Marching Drummers.
Beginning in high school, Peter worked for the First National Bank in Dekalb until moving to Portland, Oregon, in 1985, to continue his career in banking. Peter’s brother Tim, and Tim’s wife, Susan, had already moved to Portland. His sister Sarah followed after graduating from Iowa State University.
With their three offspring in Portland, Don and Lynnea answered a call to Eagle Harbor Church, Bainbridge Island, Washington, joining their children in the Northwest.
Peter met Linda Lacey while she and Peter worked in the same building. They were married April 30, 1988, at First Congregational United Church of Christ in Portland, with Peter’s father presiding. Their daughter, Chelsey, was born January 9, 1993.
While working consecutively with the Oregon Bank, the Bank of America, and Pacific One Bank, Peter with Linda was involved with many volunteer services. Peter served on the Board of Habitat for Humanity in Portland.
At the time of his death, Peter was beginning a new position as Senior Vice President with the Compass Bank in Birmingham, Alabama.
Boating, skiing, volleyball, golf, and fine woodworking projects were among Pete’s many enthusiasms. Above all, Peter was enthusiastic about people and life.
Peter was killed in a one-car accident Sunday evening, April 5, in Birmingham, at the age of thirty-seven.
Peter’s brother Tim played three pieces during the service: Summertime, St. Louis Blues, and Margaritaville. His sister, Sarah Skutt, read three scriptures: Psalm 23, Isaiah 61:1–4, and Romans 8:31–39. The Reverend Jim Halfaker, a long-time friend and colleague of Don and Lynnea, presided at the service, and read this letter from Don addressed to Peter.
Dear Peter,
I am writing this on Wednesday afternoon, April 8, as a draft for something which might be read at your Memorial Service. I do not want to be doing this. I have always liked writing about you. I’ve had nearly forty years of writing for memorial services and I’m good at it. But, as Jim Halfaker said to me a couple of days ago, “Its just for the wrong person, isn’t it.”
He’s right: fine memorial service but for the wrong person.
Tim gave us the news, you know. I fumbled for the phone in the dark bedroom, snorting about middle of the night wrong numbers, but then Tim got right to it, with wordsounds forever chiseled deep into my soul:
“. . . very, very bad news. Peter was killed tonight . . .”
When we stopped for gas about 3 a.m. on the way from Bainbridge Island to your place in Portland, I doubled over with the convulsive sobs which go on and on whenever the reality of your death penetrates my protective denial. Your Mom held me with I suppose the same comforting tenderness with which she held you when you were little and frightened. My vocalized sobs were saying, “I don’t want, I don’t want, I don’t want . . .” The little child in me as well as the mature adult does not want your death, Peter.
Dammit Peter, why didn’t you wear that seat belt?!
You know, of course, that ever since the news got around we’ve had practically a continuous party at your house. It is odd to call it a party because whenever somebody arrives we are convulsed with sobs all over again. But then we start talking about you, and pretty soon, we are convulsed with laughter. Same stomach muscles involved, I’ve noticed. And we are going to party again right after this service and again for you and Linda’s 10th anniversary and again for your 38th B.D. I am telling you this because I know how much you love parties and you are going to miss all this. Serves you right. But we’ve got to party because you are missing, and we need to throw all the bright resources we can martial against the dark powers of death to which your death has left us so vulnerable.
Earlier today, mom and I saw your body. It was the first time we’d seen your body since that wonderful family weekend you arranged for us at Sun River. My favorite image of your body from that weekend is of you and Chelsey coming down the slope at Mt. Bachelor, you holding your ski pole out as a tow bar for Chelsey. It never entered my mind that I would ever see your body when you were not in it. Your body looks pretty good, considering. Mom remarked that you had become more bald than we had previously noticed. I thought you looked a little older. But it was unquestionably your body because it had your particular smile, that smile you always had when you knew something. Naturally, there are all kinds of opinions going around about why you are smiling, some of which are crude, rude, and even lewd. But as soon as I got back to your house I knew why you were smiling: there was your brother Tim, shirt off, sweating profusely, worn out with mowing your lawn.
Until then, of course, given my clergy background, I had a more theological reason for your smile.
For example, I could imagine you saying, “Dad, you remember how often you pointed out that some people criticized Jesus for being such a party-giver? And that time when the wine ran out at the wedding party and Jesus changed the bath water into the best wine ever? Well, Dad, wait till you see what a party Jesus throws here for us newcomers!”
From my Christian faith perspective, I am assuming that you are aware of all that is going on with us, Peter. I figure I’d best make all the use of the faith that I can. So I suspend all my disbelief, and assume that you are present with all of us with your characteristic warm, gentle, robust love. But dammit, Peter, you are such an absent presence.
You absence is an awful black hole which keeps sucking at your presence in our lives, so that we must keep talking about you, and holding to each other.
I never realized before this week how much you and Tim and Sarah are virtual Siamese triplets joined hip and shoulder, and now you are torn out of the middle. Dammit Peter, we had three children, and we loved it that way. And you and Linda having become one, and Chelsey—God, Peter, what gaping emptiness you’ve left all over the place.
So in your absence, we keep telling stories about your presence. Mom was just remembering the time in St. Louis, that Sunday morning, when I was already at church, and as usual Mom was going through the hectic work of getting you three out the door and you saw the cat about to escape and you helpfully slammed the door, unfortunately not quite quickly enough to avoid nearly amputating his tail. And I got this frantic phone call from Mom describing our bloody Siamese cat orbiting our living room at somewhere near the ceiling level and could I manage to come home and do something about it?
And I remember that weekend in the Ozarks, when you were about 12, just around this time of the year, the warm night air perfumed with spring, frogs croaking down at the creek, campfire glowing near our tent, and I will never forget the way you said, “Wow, Dad, this is really neat!” smiling with surprised delight at how unimaginably good the time was. It is like the smile which your body is wearing now, Peter, perhaps because you have once again discovered an unimaginably good time.
I’ve said it thousands of times, but this time I’m asking it for us: “Now to the One who by his power at work among us is able to do far more than we ever dare to ask, or even imagine . . .” We are daring to ask God for all the love God can pour out for us. We need it. And we need each other so much. Of course, we believe that you are okay now. But we worry about the rest of us—because we loved you so much. You loved us greatly too, in ways which were only yours Peter. There was no love like it ever before nor will there ever be another love like it, because nobody else will ever be you among us.
Fortunately, we believe that God knows what it feels like for us to lose you, God knows how much we disbelieve that we can get through it all without you. We trust that God understands how it is with us. God went through his own holy week once and surely God hurts for our hurt. But after the horror of good