Man Diagnosed with Cancer Hosts own Funeral

Pete Peterson has made a lot of friends in his 67 years.

Most he met in the veterans clubs and neighborhood bars of Stanhope and Netcong, NJ — places where good-time buddies buy each other rounds of Budweiser long-necks under the electric glow of neon and beer signs.

So it was fitting that Pete chose the Stanhope American Legion to say good-bye to about 135 of his buddies and family members.

"He’s just going, and he ain’t comin’ back," said his friend Archie White, nodding as he explained the purpose of Saturday’s gathering.

Pete, a retired brick-layer, learned June 17 that he has lung cancer and a tumor behind his esophagus. He has a month left, maybe two.

Until he decided to host his own funeral, Pete had lived a fairly ordinary life — even if there was some wreckage along the way. There was the car accident, a drunken driving arrest here and there, and a failed marriage.

On Saturday, none of that mattered.

His younger sisters, Donna and Barbara, greeted the parade of well-wishers as Pete, wearing a white T-shirt and jeans, moved among the guests, dragging his oxygen canister along behind him.

He looked at old pictures and posed for new ones.

There were hugs and kisses everywhere, and just a few tear-soaked tissues.

"Why wait until I’m dead to have one?" asked Pete, his gray eyebrows merging over a crackled, whiskered face. He was tensing for an argument when asked about the "funeral." He never got that argument, which is fine, because this is how Pete was determined to remember his friends.

"I know they won’t come to see me when it gets close to the end. I wouldn’t go to see them either," he said. "I didn’t go to see my best friend, Bobby, in those last days before he died two years ago.

"People don’t want to see their friends like that, at those last days. They don’t want to remember them like that. I’m still in pretty good shape, so that’s how I want it to go."

Pete said he didn’t really feel sick until a few weeks before he saw the doctor and got the worst news anyone can hear: He was dying and there wasn’t much use trying to do anything about it.

Theodore "Pete" Peterson is tossing a goodbye party. He's got a couple of weeks left to live, and he doesn't want his buddies saying goodbye to him while he's stretched out in a coffin. So, he's having one last bash to say goodbye to them while he can still talk. His party was in Stanhope at the Stanhope American Legion on Saturday July 31, 2010.

Soon, his thoughts turned to the party. The planning and cooking fell to his daughter, Jamie. Pete lives with her in the Cranberry Lake section of Byram Township, and that’s where he plans spend his final moments.

"A lot of people don’t make it to 67. It’s not a bad age to go," Pete said, rubbing his left forearm and a now-fading Indian-head tattoo that was etched while he did a U.S. Army tour in Germany in 1961. "I did a lot of hunting, fishing, and drinking — when I wasn’t laying brick."

Less than two hours into the party Saturday, Pete retired to the bar to share a drink with his ex-wife, Shirley. Pete likes to tell the story of how he gave Shirley away to "husband number two" in 1992.

The old couple looked at a pair of empty cups at one point, pondering where the years had gone.

Shirley and Pete had just finished a vodka.

For most of his life, Pete had been a beer man. As he tells it, "lots of beer." He was never picky about the brand because just about everything went down well with his cigarettes. Now, though, Pete must face the cancer and its inevitable outcome without the cigarettes or beer. They unsettle his stomach.

So Pete is now a "vodka man," and he proved just that on Saturday.

Toward the end of the party, he was asked if he would change anything about his life. Pete paused, but only for a moment. His head popped up and the old bricklayer looked directly into the eyes of the man on the barstool next to him.

"I might had changed how it ends. Something quicker."