Peter Schmitz Eulogy

Peter Schmitz Eulogy

By Teak Kilmer

December 27, 2004

 

 

Do you hear me weeping, Peter Schmitz?

See me writhing?

Feel my anguish?

Word of your illness had not reached me

Now, they tell me, you are gone from here

 

The shock makes bright and loud my grief

makes memories roll out like carpets

of ways that you have touched me

I honor you with tears and

recollections of your wonder

 

I cannot yet imagine our Seward

without your joy to see me – greeting me

asking how I’m doing

with sincerity so pure

so assuring and so easy

 

You were constant in all the many virtues

that showed up as Peter Schmitz

in wisdom, mystery, vision, intuition, authenticity and

service …  justice, kindness, humor, talent …

in writing and in art but mostly in being fully human

 

Love always preceded you and fulfilled you

You embraced who God made you and

all the courage that that demanded

You determined for your Self what Truth and Spirit are

and stood in that shining light before us, beside us and within us

 

Your, our Journal Group was spun with Peter magic into a web of community exploration, permission, encouragement, compassion, self discovery … and, at last reassurance, comfort and relief

do not in this forsake us, Peter, but

guide us still from over there

 

You were given challenges and met them and

knew thereby and choose therefore

the greatest life – to fellows be in service

Great Spirit in her gratitude, gifting love in kind

has taken you to the bosom early

 

I will never forget you, Peter, not out of obligation

but in that I have no choice; your imprint is the

perfection of pure unconditional love

that, Good Sir, is indelible in this wounded one you

did so much to help make whole

 

Good Bye, my friend … and thanks also for Shakespeare, Beethoven, Shaw and baseball on the cheap

 

Today is March 31^st, 2022, and a framed copy of this poem still hangs in the Seward Café (his favorite hang-out) to this day for all to read and remember Peter by.