Leif and USF - Fall 2007

All of Leif's adult life he was in financial difficulty, sometimes due to circumstances beyond his control, but often due to his spending on many things he couldn't really afford, from fancy cell phones to computers, from motorcycles to guns, or even a car that got poor mileage resulting in high gas bills. When he got money, such as a tax refund, he either had to pay bills he was behind on, or he would spend it on new gadgets. He seemed incapable of saving money.

The summer of 2007 when he broke up with Donna, he was in worse difficulty because he no longer had her contributing to the household income and he wanted a way to supplement his Humana salary. He decided that the best way to do that was to go back to school and use his remaining GI Bill benefits. I thought this a constructive and creative way to do it, but I was also concerned that he would spend the money, not save any, and get used to the extra income and have even greater difficulties when it ran out. My fears proved to be true.

Leif got admitted to USF for the fall 2007 semester, which started while he was still healing from his motorcycle accident on July 12th and his operation on July 27th. He determined to major in philosophy, a subject he had very much enjoyed as a student at KSU, and enrolled in two courses. He had to enroll in classes that met in the morning, because at the time he was working the afternoon-evening shift at Humana until 11:00 p.m. He felt he would be able to study some during the evening because while they were mandated to be open for calls, few came in during the later hours. He found this to be generally true.

He seemed to be enjoying being on campus and in his classes, and would send me text messages about them during the evening sometimes. One of the classes apparently had a profound impact on him, or at least his thinking about the subject matter did, as he sent his final paper to me and some others and it was the thing he left on his computer the night he died.

Leif was always a procrastinator and enrolling in school was no exception. I well remember that I was chatting (through Yahoo Instant Messenger) with him late one evening in January and asked him what classes he was taking second semester. He said he hadn't enrolled yet. I told him that he'd better get it done or he wouldn't even find any open classes during the hours he could attend. So, he got online right then and found out the deadline was midnight that night . . . about 15 minutes away. He chose two classes he thought would be interesting and that seemed to him to fulfill degree requirements. One feature of the GI Bill is that students must be enrolled in classes that lead to a degree.

He hadn't had an advising appointment and thought he knew what classes would be acceptable. He hadn't had one the fall semester, either, after convincing his adviser in email that after being a student at KSU he knew what to do.

He paid his tuition and got his books, and took classes for a month and then was shocked to get a notice that the classes he was taking were NOT approved for his degree program. He didn't tell us about this until after it occurred or we might have been able to help him fight the decision, since Peter W. had had a similar experience when he was taking classes at KSU and using his GI BIll benefits and had appealed the decision and won. However, Leif didn't get anywhere with the officials at USF and got mad and discouraged and withdrew from school, losing his tuition. His last GI Bill benefit was paid, I believe, on March 1st, although it's possible it was on February 1st.

If this wasn't the last straw for Leif, it was certainly close to it. He had been managing with the extra money during the fall semester, but also spending whatever he didn't need. Again, no savings. So, when they pulled the rug out from under him and he lost the monthly stipend, he had no savings to see him through and pay his bills. By that time, he had run up large credit card debts, too, which we didn't know about. He had paid his previous ones off and had no outstanding credit card debt when he moved out of our house in February 2006. In just two years he had amassed $12,000 of credit card debt, added to his car loan, and his longstanding previous debts to us for bailing him out twice before and buying the car he wrecked. He tried applying for personal loans but he didn't get them because of his terrible credit to debt ratio. He received the loan rejection letters just days before he killed himself, as they were dated March 23. He could have come to us, but that would have been a bitter pill to swallow, both because of his pride and because he knew we would be very dismayed at what he had done. He had not admitted to us that he had run up such debts, even when we had asked him how he was doing financially and whether he needed help.

I often wonder if just one thing had gone right for Leif if he would still be here; if he had continued to get the GI Bill; if he had gotten one of the promotions he was interviewed for; if he had found the right woman; if he had been able to control his spending; if he had seen an advisor about what classes to take.

We will never know, but we do know that the sudden withdrawal of the GI Bill stipend probably had a big impact on his decision to end his life. It may not have been the precipitating factor in the wee hours of April 9, 2008, but it was one of the factors that set it in motion. How sad that his quest for money and intellectual stimulation ended that way.
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The photo is of Leif's USF ID card, fall 2007.

The Day Leif Died - April 9, 2008

The day Leif died, April 9, 2008, we had no idea anything was wrong until just after 1:00 p.m. I got call from Rodney, his supervisor at Humana where Leif worked. He said Leif hadn't showed up for work that morning and he was unable to reach him by phone or text message. He was worried, he said, because Leif was always reliable and always called in if he was sick. He knew Leif rode a motorcycle and knew of his accident the previous July. He wondered if something had happened to him.

I was concerned, but not scared at that point. I told Rodney I would try to find Leif and would ask Leif to call him, or I would. I was startled to get his call, though, because never in all the years Leif worked had I ever had a call from a supervisor of his, or anyone at the places he worked, saying he hadn't shown up. I was the emergency contact in Leif's record and that's why Rodney called me, a good supervisor trying to find out if his team member was safe, not just be mad at him for not showing up.

I then started calling Leif, over and over, on all three of his phones and sending text messages to the cell phones as well. He preferred text messaging and we did a lot of that. Here are the messages I sent to his iPhone:

"Are you ok? Your supervisor just called. Said you are several hours late for work and has heard nothing from you. Rodney XXXXXX. XXX-XXX-XXX. Call me. I am worried!" (Xed out phone number and last name for this blog.)
1:01:27 PM

"Where are you?"
1:07:17 PM

"Called Rodney back and said i couldn't get in touch with you. He said he was worried because you ride the bike on days like this. Hope you are ok and aren't jeopardizing your job. Worried!"
1:14:52 PM

"More and more worried! Where are you? Asleep? Wrecked? Hurt? Drunk? Run away?"
1:36:55 PM

"Hard to believe you would still be asleep on a workday even if you missed your alarm. My anxiety level is rising rapidly. Call. Text. Something!"
2:20:47 PM

"Wilson said he would let me know if he heard from you and he hasn't called so I guess you still haven't made it to work or called him. It's almost 3 pm."
2:56:07 PM

"Wondering if I should call your apt manager to check on you or drive there. But don't know how I could get in."
2:56:10 PM

"Please, son, let me know you are ok."
3:34:20 PM

"You in a coma? Know what day it is? Time?"
3:51:30 PM

"My imagination isn't doing me any favors. Please let me know what's up!"
4:24:41 PM

"Going to work out and swim. Taking this phone. Wonder if i should be driving there instead. I hope there is some good explanation for this that doesn't involve injury or worse."
4:28:43 PM

"In my overwrought imagination, I can only think of 4 reasons you can't reply with a txt msg. Lost both phones. Badly injured. In jail. Dead. Unless of course you are so pissed off at me you want me to worry like this, but I can't figure out any reason for that to be so. Gad, it's been over 4 hours since your boss called. Nothing. I'm scared."
5:07:22 PM

"Do I need to start calling hospitals? Would they even tell me if you were there with our privacy laws?"
5:44:28 PM

"Hell, I don't know where you are, can't even get into your apt to check on you. I'm going to start calling hospitals and the police if I don't hear from you by 9 pm."
8:20:53 PM

"If you are there and able to respond, please do. Talked to Michael. He said he was with you drinking til 3 am but left you ok. He hasn't gotten an answer from you, either. He is going to send someone from Tally Ho over to see if your car and bike are there. If they are and you don't answer the door, Michael wants them to call 911 and break in."
11:46:59 PM

I stayed in contact with Michael until after 1:00 a.m. He tried calling Leif numerous times. He was in Atlanta for a trade show, had gone there that day. He was frantic, too. We both were waiting for someone from Tally Ho, the pub across the street, to go check, and someone there said they would, but they never did. At that point I went to bed, resolved that if I hadn't heard from Leif or found out what was happening, I would drive to his apartment and figure out some way to get in if both vehicles were there. I don't know what I would have done if only one were there. That would have meant he had gone somewhere with the other one.

I've asked myself a thousand times why I didn't go to his apartment that afternoon and the answer is always the same. I thought that either he was not there, or if he was, he was deliberately not communicating (which had happened before), in which case he would not like or welcome the melodrama of his mother driving 30 miles to check up on him, or if he couldn't communicate, it was likely too late. Neither Peter W. nor I wanted to really contemplate whether Leif could be dead at home. It made no sense. After 5 p.m. no one was in the apartment management offices. I tried to call that evening and couldn't reach anyone.

I did call hospitals that night. None of them had him listed as a patient. I called the sheriff's office thinking there might have been an accident report, or that he might have been arrested for something. I even called the sheriff's offices in the counties between here and where D., the one he had just fallen in love with, lived, in case something had happened to him on the way there or back.

I had thought he might go to visit her on his day off and even stay overnight. I know he had wanted to do that. Maybe he had been too tired to drive back, was asleep with his phones turned off. Maybe he thought he had gotten Wednesday off, too, and had his schedule mixed up and was spending time with her.

I was hoping that one of these things was true, but my mind was telling me that something was terribly wrong. I envisioned him off the road somewhere after a cycle accident, not found yet. I envisioned him very ill with some awful asthma attack. I even envisioned him in a drunken stupor, but I never imagined that he had shot himself in his apartment, not during that day. I began to fear his death by the time I went to bed but I tried to keep hoping I would hear from him and he was all right.

As it turns out, it wouldn't have made any difference if I had gone to Tampa and gotten into his apartment somehow, because he was already dead long before Rodney tried to contact him about missing his shift.

Sometime between 3 a.m. when Michael and Jaime left and 8 a.m. when he was due at work, he loaded the new Springfield XD pistol and shot himself in the head in the kitchen of his apartment. We were told he died instantly. I hope that is true.
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The eerie photo above was one or a series Leif made of himself with a gun using the PhotoBooth program on his iMac. He experimented with the sepia and negative effects. This one is just how he made it except that I deleted the apartment background. Somehow it seems appropriate, ghostly, for remembering the day of his death. He actually made the photo on 11-22-07 at a time when he was depressed and felt his life had no purpose.

An Overwhelming Load - Leif - Sun City Center, Florida - May 13, 2007 - Age 32

Leif's adult life was strewn with disappointments and stresses, beginning with the financial problems he had in college, the health problems and misery he experienced because of them in the army, the loss of his marriage, and the resulting depression. There was a brief respite and happiness during the time following his college graduation in May 2003 when he was working and met J. and was in love. Then he plunged into the depths of depression again when she left him in March 2004. He continued to work in Manhattan, Kansas but was dying on the vine and wanted so badly to move away to Florida.

We moved him there in March 2005. He found a job with Amscot which he thought would lead to a good career with a good salary. He was doing well and had become an assistant manager until a jealous colleague made problems for him and his hopes ended. He went to work for Alltel, which gave him a bit of longevity because Alltel purchased Western Wireless where he had worked in Kansas. It was call center work again, which he was good at but it wasn't good for him because it tied him to a cubicle on the phone for eight hours a day. He gained weight from being sedentary. His shifts were often afternoon and evening shifts which meant it was late when he got off work and not a good time to get any exercise. Then he would stay up even later gaming.

Later, Alltel changed their pay policies so that his pay fell by 19% and he looked for another job. He found one in the same complex working at the Humana call center as a customer service representative for Medicare clients. He learned a lot about the American health system and it incensed him. He became truly angry at the lack of care for people without insurance and the denial of services to some that did, the cost shares and deductibles that made it hard for even those with health insurance to afford care. He was an advocate for a national health insurance system.

Meanwhile, life in Florida was not what he had dreamed of. In addition to the everyday need to work and take care of the mundane business of life which makes life even in a place like Florida pretty much like elsewhere, his asthma continued to cause him problems, and love continued to elude him.

Sometime in 2005, he had the minor accident with his prized new Suzuki and scraped it all up. (He replaced all parts to pristine new condition.)

December 23, 2005, Leif called me (I was still in Kansas) to tell me he had been in a car accident in Tampa. His black Dodge Stratus Coupe had been totaled. Luckily, he was not seriously injured, but the accident did damage his neck and he had to use a traction device. It caused him pain from then on.

In July 2006, his apartment in Tampa was broken into, the locked door to his bedroom kicked in, and most of his valuables were stolen, including cell phones, computer, and guns. He and Donna lived on the first floor and the thieves had come into the place through a sliding glass patio door in broad daylight in the afternoon. Supposedly no one saw them. The place was a wreck. Donna was scared out of her wits, with strangers out there who could get in at will having guns they could easily use on them.

The apartment complex didn't fix the broken lock on the patio door or provide any security, nor did they repair the broken bedroom door and left exposed nails sticking out of the door frame, for 90 days. At that point, Leif had enough and decided to take his insurance money and break his lease, thinking he could do so because the premises were literally not safely inhabitable. If I had been in his shoes, I would have been both frightened and extremely upset. The apartment management continued to hound him for the next year and half, claiming he had no deposit (we had proof he did), that he had caused damage he didn't cause (he had proof in the form of photos he took when he moved in of the damage they said he caused).

Leif moved to a different apartment complex to a nicer apartment but even there, he was not immune to thieves. On May 4, 2007, at 12:36 PM, Leif Garretson sent this text message to me, "When it rains, it pours. Motorcycle got stolen last night." That was the end of the speedy yellow Suzuki.

Then in July 2007, he broke up with Donna and had the more serious motorcycle accident with the Honda cycle, and the collarbone surgery.

He went back to school (continuing to work full time) in the fall of 2007 at USF in Tampa, which wasn't far from his apartment. He wanted to major in philosophy, and wanted to use the rest of his GI Bill benefits, partly for the education and partly to help out his finances. He enjoyed being on campus again but it was hard to juggle the classes with his work schedule, especially when the work schedule would change abruptly. By November, he was becoming very lonely and depressed, without purpose, as he wrote in the email to me that I posted yesterday.

At work, he had been interviewed for promotions several times. Each time he would get his hopes up that he would get a supervisory position, and each time he was not selected. He had a lot of good ideas and leadership ability and wanted a chance to put those skills to use, but each time his hopes were dashed and he remained tethered to the phone in a cubicle.

I had been trying to get Leif to look for a different kind of job but because he lacked focus and didn't know what he wanted to to with his life (other than things that were out of his reach like being a race car driver or pilot), and because he was depressed, he didn't have the drive or ambition to work on seeking other jobs. He did finally apply for a call center position with USAA, a company he would very much have liked to work for, and was interviewed. However, when the told him the salary range, he told them he'd have to have the top of the range because otherwise it would be a lower salary than he was getting at Humana. He was not offered the job, and that was another disappointment.

Then, in February 2008, after he had already paid the tuition and could no longer get it back, USF pulled his GI Bill stipend and he fell into a financial hole he couldn't fill. He never told us about the condition of his finances, just that he was "broke," but Leif was ALWAYS "broke" so we didn't know it was really far worse. We had helped him out several times before and would have done it again, even though he owed us a lot of money he couldn't pay back, but I don't think his pride would let him tell us or ask for money, since he had insisted all fall that he was doing fine. I had worried about the way he was spending money and he said he had sold some belongings and was using insurance money for other purchases. Little did we know what was really happening.

Then in March 2008, a month before he died, he tried to get personal loans to cover his debts, and couldn't get them. He tried to get his credit limit on his credit cards raised and couldn't. He had run out of financial options. The only ones he had left were to declare bankruptcy or to come to us or a friend for money, and I don't think he was willing to do either.

Leif was a proud man, a man who believed he should show no weakness, a man who always put forth an image of a guy with the cool car and the cool bike and the cool gadgets. I don't think he wanted to give up that image.

So he came to April 2008, when he was again in love, with D., but didn't know how he was going to pay his phone bills, his credit cards, his car and insurance payments, his rent, his internet service, or how he would pay for gas to go see her. He was going to work to support his debts and his car and his apartment, without even money for good food. He must have felt it was not worth going on.

Leif had pulled his life out of a tailspin before, not once, but several times, and he believed he was strong and could handle anything. On July 5, 2006, the day of the apartment robbery, he sent this text message to me:

July 5, 2006 at 11:29 p.m. Leif Garretson wrote, "I am OK. You know me. I am the rock. Also the good thing about my life of having once been so dark as to make me want to end it, in overcoming it means there is nothing I can't handle. After that everything else is just a new adventure or challenge. I am so much stronger now. This did not even raise my pulse. Just a speed bump. The car is still running great. I see it almost as a good thing, it will allow me to move out of here."

It was that email and that he told me that he hadn't killed himself at Fort Drum because he knew what it would do to me that gave me hope that he would pull out of his depression, because he had before, because he was "the rock." I hoped he was. I wanted to believe that, even as I worried that he was more vulnerable than he admitted.

That was the way he portrayed himself. Strong. Could handle anything. Maybe at that moment he could. When did he pass that point?

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This photo was taken May 13, 2007, Mothers Day, the last time I saw him on a Mother's Day, at our home.