Son’s Death--a Special Anguish : Bicycling: Ten years after Olympic aspirant Peter Jensen died in a motorcycle accident, his family remembers--and grieves.

The couple had spent a day mingling with friends from another time, and bittersweet memories had flooded their minds. Now, they drove wearily homeward out of Camarillo and turned onto winding Moorpark Road.

They were returning last weekend from a cycling event, the Peter Jensen Memorial Race, named after former state cycling champion Niels Peter Jensen III of Simi Valley, who was killed 10 years ago at the age of 20 when his motorcycle collided with a truck.

Several miles up Moorpark Road, amid the wildflowers and sagebrush and the bit of solitude that the area still offers, the couple were struck by the realization of exactly where they were. For the first time since the day that a world of unspeakable misery came crashing down on them, Niels and Jean Jensen were driving along the road where Peter--their athletic, laughing, curly-haired son--had died in one flashing instant.

“Neither of us realized where we were until we had traveled a few miles on that road,” Niels Jensen said. “Then it hit us. It was pretty spooky.”

Peter Jensen excelled on a bicycle. He won dozens of races, including a state sprint championship in 1978, and was thought by some to have world-class potential. He turned down an invitation to race at the Olympic Training Center in Colorado Springs because he felt he wasn’t ready. But he had, without much notice or fanfare, set a gigantic goal for himself: He would compete in the 1984 Olympics.

Instead, when the best cyclists in the world gathered in Los Angeles in that summer of 1984, dozens of them rode in a warmup race, the first Peter Jensen Memorial Race.

“He wanted so badly to be with the Olympians that summer,” said his father. “In a way, he was.”

Jensen brought a solid sense of humor into his world. Jean Jensen, sitting in the living room of the couple’s home in Valencia, recalled the time a friend visiting from New Jersey insisted on seeing the graves of the Hollywood stars at Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Glendale, then was shocked at how close the graves were. Peter had an explanation:

“There’s so many people here and things are so crowded and there’s so little room left,” he explained with much seriousness, “that they bury people upright, standing up. Saves space.”

The friend momentarily believed the young man’s story, causing howling laughter moments later when she realized she had been fooled.

The Jensens’ younger daughter, Nancy, two years older than Peter, will always remember that sense of humor. Even when it was directed at her, she said, it was impossible not to laugh.

“Peter always said I had fat feet,” Nancy Jensen said. “He used to say to me, ‘Why don’t you just forget the shoes and wear the boxes they came in?’ ”

An older sister, Diane, said simply: “Peter spent a lot of time laughing.”

When a job beckoned Niels Jensen to North Carolina in 1979, his 19-year-old son opted to remain in Simi Valley where he would continue to race and train for a possible shot at the Olympic team.

He visited his parents in Gastonia, N. C., early in 1980, staying for nearly a month. Then one night he hugged his parents and departed, heading west across the country in his car.

When Jean Jensen returned home from work on July 8, a policeman was waiting at the door. Peter had been in an accident, he told her, handing her a Los Angeles telephone number to get more information.

Jean Jensen bolted into the house and dialed the number, wondering how badly her son was hurt, wondering what had happened, wondering what hospital she was calling . . .

“County morgue,” said the voice on the other end.

“I remember waking up that day,” recalled Nancy Jensen, “and thinking, ‘This is not going to be a good day.’ I remember how strongly I felt it. It turned out to be worse than I ever could have imagined.”

Peter was headed to work that morning on his motorcycle. He was going to tell his boss that he was quitting, having accepted a job at a cycling store in Simi Valley. Halfway down Moorpark Road, he veered across the center stripe and slammed into an oncoming truck.

“He died instantly,” Jean Jensen said, an overpowering sadness in her voice.

One month before his 21st birthday.

Some heartbreakers can be overcome as the years wash away the sadness. Divorce is usually in that category. Also the deaths of grandparents, after the realization that they had lived long and full lives.

But for a parent, the death of a child has its own category. You don’t come all the way back from that. Not in 10 years.

Not ever.

The Jensens have a close friend in New Jersey--where they are from and where Peter was born--who studies the world of psychics and spiritual mediums. Shortly after Peter’s death, Jean Jensen got a call from the woman who said she received a message that day.

The message, the woman said, was from Peter. And it was this: “Tell my mom I’m sorry. I was careless and I made a mistake. But I had a really good life. And tell her that I’m OK.”

“This was something I never would have looked for, a message like this,” said Jean. “It’s just not me. But I know in my heart it was real. I know if there was any way Peter could have let us know that he is OK, he would do it. He was that kind of a kid.”

Ten years.

“You forget a lot,” Jean said. “And the pain does get easier to bear. At first the grief is crushing and overwhelming. Then, it changes. It won’t ever go away. It changes.

“What I remember Peter for mostly was his thoughtfulness and his caring.”

In the days following his death, a friend wrote to the Jensens expressing her sorrow. In the letter she wrote this: “Peter had a gentle heart.”

A decade later, in the New Jersey cemetery where Peter Jensen is buried, a headstone with a picture of a bicycle racer chiseled in granite sits atop his grave. Below the picture are those same words: Peter had a gentle heart.

Niels Jensen keeps the sorrow inside mostly. He smiles when he talks of his only son, of the boy he would pick up after school for a late round of golf, of the boy he spent countless hours with in greasy garages, fixing motorcycles and bicycles. Of the boy he gave his name to.

But when he talks of the cemetery, the grief surfaces.

“The first time I went to the cemetery after the funeral, I saw the two headstones side by side,” Niels Jensen said slowly. “Both of them said Niels Peter Jensen.

“My father and my son.”