To the editor:

Saturday before Mother’s Day my 19-year-old arrived at our house saying: “Peter’s cross is gone.”

A year ago April, a month short of high school graduation, there was an accident on County Road 458. Peter Swalm’s life was taken and another severely hurt. Peter was our friend. As part of the healing process Peter’s dad made a cross and after receiving permission from the landowner, the water board and the person who farms that land, he placed the cross on the roadside.

On Easter Sunday, Peter’s family and a few friends erected the cross in his memory. “Now each time I drive by this place where my son’s life ended I have a visible reminder that this is also where he met Jesus,” his mother told me. You see, for a Christian, this first century ‘lethal injection’ is not only a symbol of death but also of eternal life.

On the day marking one year after his death, a group of friends assembled at Peter’s cross again to grieve our loss and to also find “solace in God’s Word and courage in the community of believers” (from liturgy). Although this is not his burial sight, we also planted perennials at the foot of the cross, as a sign that we also remember their loss and hurt.

But now my son tells me that the cross is missing! I should have guessed that it would be a hindrance to some. The Word of God tells us that the cross is offensive for those who do not believe but to us who do believe, it is the power of God to LIFE everlasting.

This weekend as the caps were thrown into the air and we celebrated with the 2002 graduates, yet another friend asked me, “What happened to Peter’s cross?”

Linda Pollock,

Lawrence