16-year-old Peter Plax was killed: Father Dmitri on grief

The father of teenager Peter Plax killed by grief

Of: Britt peruzzi

Published: September 26, 2020 kl. 12.44

It has been just over a year since 16-year-old Peter Plax was killed by a friend during a bicycle trip.
Now the father tells in a book about the son and the future dreams he had, and about the endless pain.
– Time has begun to behave differently. Everything happens very slow and very fast, says Dmitri Plax.

There is so much silence.
Some unusually well-kept potted plants adorn the windowsill and in the sink are two more, one a gift, the other a cactus that you have managed to reproduce in a glass.

– It was Peters. For some reason he liked hairy things, like cacti. For a while he joked that he had a coconut as a pet. This tree in the window was hers too, a mini Christmas tree that has really grown this year, says Dmitri Plax.

Then he is silent again in Danderyd’s orderly kitchen. What was once his and Peter’s house, but now described as dissolved. Like many memories and time itself.

– We can sit here.

The chair they offered me belonged to their son that it is all about: Dmitri’s whole life and now also his newly printed blue and white book “Peter”.

“You let me execute you”

“I have a task. I have to stop time. Every second, hour, week, month takes you away from me. It turns you into a memory. I don’t want it …”

On another page, a line in his native Belarusian language, in a third question without answers:
“What will become of everything that you won’t do? What will happen to all your plans? Emotions? Thoughts? How are those gaps filled?”

Although the large clock in the kitchen, the only wall ornament, continues to tick, time stayed the night of August 3 of last year. The moment two police officers knocked on the front door to inform Dmitri that his son was dead and that there was a suspicion of murder.

“I don’t understand. How could you have been so naive, so unpredictable. You let me execute you. Execute.” writes the parent to a memory fragment.

– Peter trusted his friends. In his world, no one wanted him desperately. He thought I was too overprotective and used to say, “Daddy! This is Danderyd! What could happen? Did someone drive me home in their Bentley?” He had a developed sense of humor.

We are talking about one of the word choices in the book, which Peter “let himself” execute. Dad’s reply comes immediately.

– It was so! The guy was planning to murder another guy who happened to him, but Peter showed up and met him.

The next question does not require reflection either. Dmitri Plax responds briefly if he thinks of him, the perpetrator.
– No. Why should I do that?

“My whole life revolved around Peter”

The past year has been every parent’s nightmare. Empty without contours, meaning or goals, the father tries to describe. And sometimes the most inconceivable thoughts.

– Sometimes I can’t help thinking about what happened. This is actually an important topic, which also has to do with the book. I think it’s important that as many people as possible read it because I don’t want Peter to be associated with the murder, but with the person he was.

The pages are full of joy, everyday life, pain and chaos. Words and questions stacked on top of each other, in Swedish and Belarusian.

– My whole life revolved around Peter. We didn’t even have a real living room, it was a music room where his piano was. It is now sold. I don’t want a Peter museum. Your things must be used.

Already the night after the death notice, Dmitri Plax promised himself that he would write about his son for a time every day. Before his memories became fragments, “a consequence of repression.”
He kept the promise until March 10 of this year, when Peter would have turned 17.

– He was curious, he used to talk a lot about dictatorship versus freedom, he read a lot of philosophy and became liberal thinkers. He was still a child, but he thought a lot.

Perhaps it is not so strange that it has become a book.
– I think about that sometimes. I have nothing to do with Peter’s grave, although I saw him in the coffin. There is nowhere I associate with him, but a book is very much him.

Peter are also friends who joined the memorial service and will continue to play basketball on the now renovated basketball court at Danderyd. Two of the son’s friends have also continued to walk with Dmitri.
– I go out when someone breaks me, he says and smiles briefly.
When he let his old editor read the script, he got the answer that it was a finished book he had written.
– I had two wishes. That everything would be published as it was and that each piece of text would have its own page, as I remembered them.
He did the illustrations for the book himself, but has never read it since its publication.

– I can not stand. It is out of me. But it was widely reviewed and people have heard of it, mainly those I don’t know but who also mourn someone. I do not have much to say. I don’t think there is any help at all.

You have returned to eating regular foods.

Dmitri Plax looks out the kitchen window, over the trees and Stockholm’s new skyscrapers on the horizon.
– But I imagine that people who have experienced something similar but are not capable of formulating themselves, who do recognize themselves. And as a parent, you can recognize. I myself was one who worked a lot, who said “wait” and “later”. I regret that. Although now it does not help.

Almost nothing helps, emphasizes the father. Possibly the book has been a kind of therapy because it has required routines.
– I did not write the book for others, but for myself, but at the same time I am happy that it has left my computer and is now physically as an object here on the table and with which I can relate.

After the 17th birthday closed, new memories of the son have continued to emerge. The strong desire to keep them touches panic. What will you do with the new memories?
– That’s exactly it. For example, Peter’s phone is still there, I keep it charged. He listened to a lot of podcasts and music, he loved his phone like any other teenager. But there are also many images. Should I save them or leave them? Memories are what you remember. If you don’t remember, you don’t remember.

The 50-year-old father is on sick leave from his job as a director at Swedish Radio and regularly sees a psychologist.
– Create some kind of protection. I can’t do without psychotropic drugs and recently started eating some normal food again after taking a meal replacement for a year.

Like time, new everyday life also dissolves, and if an interview can dissolve, it dissolves as well.
We jointly state that some conversations cannot be prepared.

– I don’t know anything about what I should do or what things mean. But Peter was very focused on the future and used to say “Daddy! I will live 100 years, because I eat healthy and exercise. Daddy! Are you sure everything in the future will be much more modern?”

Dmitri Plax looks up and his gaze is focused.
– It must be as it will be in the future.

Published: September 26, 2020 kl. 12.44

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