Good-bye Robin

"To live is so startling it leaves little time for anything else."
-- Emily Dickinson

A few weeks ago I stood in the foyer at College Place Presbyterian Church on Easter morning, reading a letter my mom wrote over a decade ago to our pastor and his wife, Robin & Kriss Peterson.  "They thought we should have this," Mel said, handing the envelope to me.  "Do you want to read it?"  Mom's handwriting spread across the paper expressing her gratitude for Robin & Kriss's kindness and care, how she felt about her upcoming treatment process, her resonance with him as the two of them moved through cancer diagnoses together.  Several months later he & Doug Barram together led my family down the aisle at her memorial service.

I handed the card back to my sister, thinking about him.  Mom was not alone...there are thousands of people whose lives are peppered with these kinds of stories, who Robin walked with in their life and whose casket he stood by in their death...many kinds of aisles people do not want to walk alone...the moments that mean "to live."

Robin Peterson died yesterday.

Walking will continue but it does feel like the earth takes a brief pause to re-adjust itself when people die.  The very lilt of a day is altered by breath, our own and others'.

I am grateful to have known this man who lived the kind of startle that is awakening...who tended hearts and animals with equal passion...who cared for his land and prayed for his community...who saw and who was with and who recalled...who spoke the language of the soul...who sang joy and whispered peace...who rained kindness and lived generously...who was honest about himself and grieved his losses...who understood and entered the story...who pursued love.

Thankful tears fall for you.
Good-bye, Robin.