(b. 06-25-1977-d. 06-19-2013)-Given at Forest Hill Church, Presbyterian, Cleveland Heights OH 44118, July 27, 2013
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| Peter in high school |
We received Peter from God at four months already a hefty chunk, cuddly, smiling, a good sleeper. At five years we discovered he had a kind of hole in his heart neither surgery nor medication could mend. He became unchildly morose following my father’s death. Thus began the many treks to social workers, psychologists, psychiatrists for answers and healing he never found.
Our happy infant became a troubled child. Playful enthusiasm turned into impetuous daring. Cheerful playmate morphed into threatening sibling. Even his compliance bore an edgy potential for imminent violence. His misbehavior in school graduated to defiance and he easily turned to the adolescent fast lane of drugs and theft.
Conceiving or adopting a child is not a rational choice. It is a crazy notion of the heart to commit a lifetime of love to a path which could lead to joy, tragedy, maybe both. Trusting in God to see us through our family project, Jean and I knowingly chose those risks four times.
We had grand hopes that Peter’s delight in life and love of the social were harbingers of a successful career in sales or politics. But as his obstacles multiplied those hopes dimmed exponentially. We often ended the day praying for mere survival--ours as much as his.
Please understand not every day was so dire or so grim as to preclude laughter and lighter emotions. Following each of his prison terms, Peter adapted to everyday life. He swam with the high school swim team. He played softball with the church. He held jobs. Customers praised his courtesy. He made friends. He helped.
Despite those adaptations he repeatedly attempted suicide--four times that I knew of and I suspect a skiing accident years ago at Lake Tahoe was a fifth.
I will not lightly excuse his manipulation, intimidation, or criminality. But I ask you now to set all that aside to let me recount two childhood incidents which reveal a playful innocence I hoped still lived deep within the mysterious Peter Manista.
The six of us were camping around Lake Superior and we stopped in Thunder Bay to visit the rebuilt Fort William, long ago a center for Canada’s trapping industry. Beaver pelts for high fashion hats were very profitable but it was difficult to get them to market in sufficient quantity. Once sheared, the pelts were placed by the hundreds in a device like a wine press which squeezed them into heavy packs for burly woodsmen to portage to Montreal.
We watched the display and moved on but soon noticed Peter missing. Rushing back we found him, his head stuck sideways in the pelt press. Fort staff had already slathered his face and hair with hand lotion as they tried to wrest him from the trap of his own making. As his head popped free Jean tried to salvage our family’s dignity with the comment, “I bet a lot of kids get their heads stuck like that.” The fort manager replied, “Madam, in my seventeen years here your child’s the first.”
We were about to leave for another vacation when a report shouted in, “Daddy, the upstairs toilet is overflowing.” I cleaned up the mess and vowed to fix it first thing we got back.
Sometimes it flushed and sometimes it didn’t. When I upended the bowl I saw a lime green tennis ball lodged in the flush tunnel. It was staring at me mischievously like an evil eye laughing. This had all the marks of Petruscan experiment but I withheld judgment and confronted all four of them at lunch. In sibling solidarity each poker face chimed in turn, “Not me.” Frustrated I angrily inquired, “Then which one of you ate it and passed it?
Such fearful and fond memories crowded my thoughts as I beheld Peter’s body on a gurney at the Lake Tahoe mortuary. The white shroud over his body was drawn up around his neck to shield the bruises from view. His face a tad swarthy, his hairline had receded a little at the temples. He always looked good in white and here again he was as handsome in death as in life. In that austere and sterile silence I finally whispered to his remains both to grant and to obtain forgiveness. Then I wept openly and fiercely.
Quickly would I trade this eulogy for him instead for him to eulogize me as he did his mom twelve years ago in eloquent and heartfelt devotion. This turnabout of son preceding father is not fair play.
We prayed always that he might one day slay his dragons, prosper, marry, and present us with happy grandchildren to dandle on our knees. As his long suffering parents we would of course inwardly wish that his no doubt stunning progeny would bedevil him at least half as much as he did us. That glorious fantasy can no longer be.
Bewildered still, but accepting, we now return Peter to God, whose love and whose purposes outrageously exceed our understanding, grateful for the gift Peter was to us all so briefly.
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