When Is It Time Let Let Things Go?

In April it was fourteen years since Leif's death. We had to clean out his apartment quickly to avoid paying another month's rent, sold his furniture and many of his belongings, gave others away, and brought more home to figure out what to do with them. Over time, we chose a few to keep, some because they were useful, some because we had sentimental reasons, and some because they seemed so personal and part of his identity that it seemed just plain wrong to dispose of them. 

Some of these were his wallet, which until today remains in exactly the same way he left it on his desk the night he died, with the single exception that we returned his retired military ID to the military, as is required. All this other cards remain, and the $12 in cash that was in the wallet. Of course, we reported his death to the accounts for his credit cards, and his licenses have long expired. At first, I just couldn't let go of this because, as totally illogical and foolish as it sounds, even to me, I had some sense in the back of my mind that if he came back, he would want and need it. Of course he was not coming back! We found his body and watched it being taken away in a body bag, but the unconscious part of our human minds are capable of such wishful and crazy thinking, even when our conscious minds know better.

I also kept two of this army uniforms, his "dog tags," and his combat boots. I knew he wasn't going to ever go back into the army, and he also could never have fit into them, but the military was so much of who he was, his identity, that HE had kept them, long after he was medically retired from the army. I knew they meant a lot to him. Those combat boots carried him a long way. I wonder how many miles he walked or jogged in them. After he was medically retired and sent "home" he wore them and still walked miles, miles to the university for classes when he was finishing his degree, and even, one day over ten miles round trip from our house to Tuttle Creek Lake. 

 This photo was taken on a military exercise in 1999. It looks like he's wearing the same boots I saved. The photo below are the ones I've kept for over 14 years. 

Now I am ready to let go of these things, all but the dog tags. I'm keeping those. It should be easy to discard a pair of well-worn combat boots with a hole in one side that no one wants, but it's not. It somehow still seems like a betrayal. There's no logical reason it should feel like that, but it does. 

They will go first. Next will be the wallet. Then, when I have more time and can remove the sewn-on insignia and nametag, the uniforms. I know it's time, but it still hurts. 

Hurt or not, for some reason, after fourteen years, it finally feels like the time has come. The boots aren't going to walk any farther. 

Fourteen Years

There are days in the year that are harder; the day he died, the day we found his body, his birthday,  Mother's Day, Father's Day, Fourth of July (since he loved it so), Veteran's Day, Christmas. But April 9 & 10 are the hardest, with the worst memories. It's still difficult to believe he is really gone, even after fourteen years.

How would he want to be remembered? Today, Peter W. Garretson and I looked at a myriad photos of his life, grateful we have them, grateful for the years we had him. From the baby to the toddler, to the schoolboy to the teen, from the college student to the soldier, from his SCA days to life in Florida. Ever changing, but still the same brilliant mind, the same sense of humor, the introspective frame of mind. To remember the 14th anniversary of his death, I chose one he took of himself in his SCA armor. I think he wanted to see himself as a knight in shining armor, a soldier for right. We will miss him and love him the rest of our lives.

He would be 47 years old on January 28

 

How does one celebrate the birthday of a loved one no longer living? We remember them....from birth to toddlerhood, from child to teen to adult, from soldier to corporate employee. So many years, and yet so few, only 33, and then he was gone. He would be 47 today, if he had lived. What would he have been like? Would he have found love, married, had children? We will never know. I am grateful for the photos and the memories. I am still finding new photos as I scan my mother's slides and negatives. This one I think she took in her house. I do know it was taken in August 1994 when he was nineteen and a student at Kansas State University, still a slim fellow who hadn't yet been required to cut his long hair for his job at Aladdin's Castle video game parlor in the Manhattan Mall. 

What he's wearing has some significance. The t-shirt was a gift from his brother, who had been an Air Force Academy cadet. It's a USAFA Boxing shirt. The necklace is chain mail that Leif made himself. He made a lot of chain mail items, from small things like this necklace and some earrings, to giant projects like the huge chain mail shirt he made that weighed 50 pounds. He learned to make chain mail due to his interesting in medieval armor and participating in the Society for Creative Anachronism. 

We miss him every day of our lives. In April, he will be gone from us fourteen years.