Letters to Peter. Donald E. Mayer
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in time, with the comfort of God’s compassionate, life-giving spirit, we will come to know about Easter more fully than ever before.
We trust you already know about Easter, Peter, more fully, personally, and wonderfully than you had ever imagined. And maybe that is another reason for your smile.
Unbelievable Absence
April 16, morning
Dear Peter,
As I write the words “Dear Peter” I find myself shaking my head. I discover myself doing that a lot, while I’m sitting, walking, and driving, quite without being aware of it at the time. I suppose that means that I still can’t believe that you are gone, forever, irrevocably out of our lives, and that you have been out, gone, for eleven days. I can’t take it in. I suppose I shake my head because I don’t want to take it in.
When we drove away from the church Saturday morning, having brought pictures of you and the stone oil lamp and the candle, I saw the hearse bringing your body up Capitol Highway. It was quite a jolt. Later, I thought your body looked less like you than it did when Mom and I saw it on Wednesday. But it certainly looked enough like you to set Chelsey and all the rest of us into long, heavy, wailing sobs.
Today, it seems unreal all over again. Less real than last week. Perhaps that’s why the sobs which convulse me have not happened for a while. This is now more of a shadowed time, a time when we experience everything from the shadow of your death.
But not all the time, Pete. Sometimes we just seem to forget that your death has happened. The world goes on doing its daily stuff and we go on doing it with the world which does not seem to know that the world has been irrevocably changed. Better to say, the world ended just after ll p.m., April 5 and a new world began so quickly that a lot of the world never noticed. But there are some in that world who notice. A letter came today addressed to “the estate of Peter Mayer.”
All of us wish the change were revocable, that the world had not ended. It was a much happier world with you in it, Pete. How often in our fantasies we wish you had had your seatbelt buckled and airbag deployed, allowing you miraculously to escape death.
Chelsey’s wish is expressed differently: “Isn’t God strong enough to bring my daddy back to life?” It’s a question which is far more significant and logical for the season than questions about the Easter bunny. God brought Jesus back, why not Daddy?
The shadow of your death, Peter, falls on everything and often we are angry about it. Sarah sheds tears of rage about the now shadowed joy in the birth of little Peter, because you are not here to hold your namesake.
And what a party we planned to have at Sarah and Jim’s new house, celebrating the new place for them plus your move to your new home in Birmingham. You know, not one of us wanted you to go in the first place, but you converted us all with your excitement about it. We will still celebrate at Sarah and Jim’s new place but it will be a shadowed celebration.
We all went with Tim and Sue on Easter Sunday afternoon to see the new bed and bath addition to their house. Tim expressed the mood for all of us: “Now we really feel the anger—all the parties are over.” Right. And we are left with your deadness, Peter.
Having said that, it was an unbelievable party after your memorial service. You really missed a good one, Pete! It was wonderful for Mom and me to meet and talk with a multitude of your friends. People came down from Bainbridge Island. And two of your best friends from your high school days traveled way across the country—how wonderful to see Kathy and Lisa again!
You must have been a great encourager, Peter. We keep hearing personal testimonies about that. “I’d never be doing such and such if Pete had not got me going with it.” We love it that you were so loved. Because you had a love affair going with the world, there is no sting in your death, no venom. That’s not to say we are not angry about you leaving us the way you did. There is a sting in your abrupt forever gone-ness.
Since the big party, it’s been getting more and more quiet. Few visits, calls. People leaving one by one. I don’t feel it so much now as at some other times, but God, I already miss you Peter. Even if I can’t believe you are forever gone.
Love, Dad
Auto Reliquary
April 16, later in the day
Dear Peter,
The auto insurance agent in Birmingham called this morning. Paperwork is slow there because they are loaded with claims from the tornadoes. But they will send your stuff back, and the police report. With pictures, I think he said.
He said you had a lot of stuff in your car. Golf clubs, etc. It’s odd: it did not occur to me that you would have a lot of stuff with you in the car that they would send back. It’s like your stuff survived but you didn’t.
As I said before, Pete, each of us at different times gets pretty steamed about your carelessness. We sometimes felt anyway that you didn’t pay enough attention to family stuff.
As Tim said you’d go out of your way to help any family person or friend in need—as long as we were up on your screen. But if we dropped off . . . (I think he was remembering the time you were supposed to pick up Miles for the weekend and completely forgot.) So sometimes we thought your peripheral vision was 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