Kait’s Eulogy for Peter
How to sum up a big brother like Peter? Not possible really, but I’ll try. So many memories.
As a really little kid, I remember making silly faces with Peter, that was our thing. And all the singing of Beatles, Grateful Dead and the like …
A little older, 12 or so, I remember Peter teaching me “The Pretzel” dance move. I tried to explain it to my boyfriend at the time (shared boyfriend, but that’s another story), which led to my first slow dance with a boy! I was so proud and excited, even though he has a lovely husband now, and I have my wonderful wife.
I also remember not too long after that, Peter going on a walk with Rachel and me to make sure we knew about “the birds and the bees” and what could happen. Rachel insisted she would only have sex once, at age 38, just to have a baby. I don’t remember what my response was. Both Rachel and I had seen all sorts of terrifying educational films at school about horrible sexually transmitted diseases, so neither of us were eager to try sex in the least.
Always the consummate historian, Peter gave the book “Oliver Wiswell” to read when I was in junior high, a book from the perspective of a British loyalist.
I remember him visiting Rachel and me at Camp Nawaka, and some girls coming up to us once he left saying, “Who was that dreamboat walking around with you?” to our utter astonishment. I mean, he was our big brother!
Peter was always ready to help people. He let me live in the basement apartment at 19 Magazine St., and before that rented it out to a friend and for a short time girlfriend of mine. When Ailsa and I visited Paris, he set up our temporary cellphone. He also drove me to and from various procedures in the hospital, went on walks with us, shared so many wonderful meals and gatherings with me and Ailsa, and always had a pun at the ready. Numerous times he invited Ailsa’s brother Leejay to join the family for Xmas, Thanksgiving and the like and it was Leejay’s misfortune to have never taken him up on it.
So how to sum him up? A person who lived life to the fullest and welcomed music, food, travel, art, humor and especially people into his life as well.
