Leif at the beach in Puerto Rico

Leif loved the beach all his life, though without a companion here in Florida he rarely went. When he was with us, we had a beach vacation every year but for three years we lived in Hawaii and went to the beach often, and for two years we lived in Puerto Rico and went to the beach now and then, especially when Leif and Peter W. were SCUBA diving.

This photo was taken on the beach in Puerto Rico, probably Luquillo Beach, in February 1991. We had been in Puerto Rico for six months and Leif was 16 years old.

I look at these photos and I'm so grateful I have them, so glad to have a record of his life. The last couple of days I've been in a kind of funk of sadness on and off. The questions I had put out of my mind for a time came back to haunt me, and I am acutely aware that we are coming to the third anniversary of his death in April. For some reason having another year pass is very hard. The knowledge reinforces the finality of his death.

Peter W. is again talking about how Leif had so many things that should have given him a good life . . . good looks, height, a strong and happy family background, brilliant intelligence . . . and he asks how this could have happened. I reply that with all Leif's gifts, he was somehow cursed with the same misery that took my father's life, and my father's aunt's life. I find that some days it hits me and I can't get past it. He was and is so much a part of our lives that I don't think we will ever really be over it.