Until the end. 

My husband again initiated contact with Peter.  This time it wasn’t about me.  This time it was about our schizophrenic son Richard. Our apathetic son who was a couch potato deluxe.  Could Peter help us get Richard out of the house?  Could he help get Richard back into once was one of his favorite sports?  Could he help us get Richard up a climb? 

And so he did.

And we spent a marvelous summer together, the four of us, testing ourselves against short easy to get to climbs in Eldorado Canyon and on Flagstaff Mountain. And there were even moments when Richard came alive.  When Richard would break through his brooding apathetic attitude and show some feisty determination for the climb. 

And Peter was there for it.  He put up with Richard's resistance, my husband's disabilities, my ultra positive tour guide bravura and hung around us anyway. 

And one day, one very precious day, Richard shook his hand and thanked him. 

It was a blistering hot day on Flagstaff.  We got there in the late afternoon hoping to be spared some of the heat.  The climb was more difficult than we had expected.  Both my husband and I whined all the way to the top.  Richard, however, quickly powered his way through the few hard moves, and amazed us all. 

Then all hell broke loose.  Our hot and sunny day turned cloudy and blustery.  In less than five minutes we were deluged with lightening and rain and then hail.  It was like a bucket had been overturned on our heads.  Quarter sized hail pelted down on exposed flesh.  Peter took shelter under a rock.  All the rest of us could do was huddle piteously under our packs, helplessly waiting to get hit by lightening or bonked seriously on our heads by the hail. 

When the storm finally abated we slugged through six inches of muddy hail to the car.  We were soaked form head to toe and shivering uncontrollably.  And that was when Richard reached out to Peter, shook his hand and thanked him.  And I got a brief and tiny glimpse of the old Richard.  The Richard that loved the rock and anything associated with it.  That loved to climb, the harder the route the better.  The Richard who loved grand adventures.

And Peter had made that moment possible.  And for that I am very grateful.

Peter ended up succumbing to his demons.  The inner ones talked him out of recovery and kept his pride intact, his righteous indignation high and his delusions firmly in place.  The outer ones ended up killing him on his living room floor on February 8, 2007.  His system was so weak from his chronic abuse of alcohol that a blood vessel had burst in his abdomen and he bled to death quickly and quietly and painlessly.  He was 54 years old.  There was no one around, and nothing anybody could have done anyway.