Leif & the 2002 Black Dodge Stratus Coupe - February 2003 to December 2005

While Leif and Nikko were at Fort Drum, they also owned a used white sports car that Nikko drove, and later Leif did manage to find and purchase another used RX-7, which was what he had when he came back from the Army in May 2001. He drove it until it "died." That is, it wasn't drivable and would have required more expensive repairs than were feasible. Leif didn't have the money to either fix it or purchase a new, or even used, car. He was in his senior year at KSU and living on his GI Bill stipend and the small amount he earned as a school crossing guard. He sold the RX-7 to a father and son who were looking for a project car they could work on together. I think he got about $600 for it.

Leif needed a car and would soon need one to get to and from another job. He was looking into trying to get a loan and finance purchasing one. We had inherited some money from Peter W's mother and we decided that rather than have Leif go further into debt (he still owed us a lot of money and was still paying off debts he also incurred while in the army), we would loan him the money to buy a car, with some limitations on what we would be willing to pay for. Leif was very appreciative and went car shopping at all the dealers in Manhattan. When he had some ideas of things he might like, we went to see them with him.

The one we all liked best was a new 2002 black Dodge Stratus Coupe. It was a very stylish car and seemed to fit Leif well. That was when Peter W. went into his best bargaining mode. He was so good at it that he had Leif really fooled that he if he didn't get the price he proposed, he was going to either go elsewhere or get something used and cheaper. However, he managed to get exactly the deal he wanted and we left the lot with the car for $19,999 including taxes and registration. Leif looked great in that car.

While he was proud of having his first new car and liked the looks of it as well as the cushy interior, he said he missed the handling and rear wheel drive of the RX-7 and still vowed that someday he would have an RX-8.

When Leif moved to Florida in March 2005, he drove the Stratus to Florida in a caravan with us and parked it in our garage. He only had the Stratus for less than three years and hadn't really even begun to pay us back much on it when he had an accident on his way to a date in Tampa. He called me from the scene. I was in Kansas at the time and about to get on a plane in a day or two to head for Florida for Christmas. I think the accident was on December 23, 2005. Luckily, he wasn't badly injured, but he did have some whiplash injury from it and his neck continued to bother him the rest of his life.

As I remember, the accident happened because another car swerved into his lane just as he was coming to a traffic light. To avoid getting hit, he hit the accelerator and shot into the intersection, but instead managed to hit another car. Since he had gone through a red light, he got a citation for that and it raised his insurance. He struggled with high insurance rates all of his adult life due to the accidents he had.

I didn't see the damage to the car, but it was totaled. He hadn't even had it long enough to pay for it and it was gone.

The photos of the car were taken by him in 2005 in Florida. The one of him by the car I took of him in front of 210 N. 9th Street in Manhattan, Kansas the spring of 2003. Since we made the loan to him as one of his graduation presents, I've included a photo of him after the Commencement ceremony at KSU on May 18, 2003, with Peter W. and me. The top photo is a self portrait of him in March 2003.

Leif and the Mazda RX-7

When Leif was a senior in high school and trying to decide where to go to college, he wasn't enthused about all the application paperwork and also not very enthused about spending four more years in school, yet he wanted to go to college and knew he needed to get his degree. He didn't know what he wanted to major in, which made picking a school all the more difficult. In the end he decided to apply to only three schools, a university in Maryland he chose because it was near where his high school love from Puerto Rico (K.) was going to school, and the two Kansas flagship universities, Kansas State University and the University of Kansas. We had told both our sons we would provide an in-state university education for them, but if they wanted something more expensive, they would have to figure out how to finance the remainder through scholarships or loans.

Sometime during this process, Leif discovered a used Mazda RX-7 for sale for $5000. He wanted it badly. The car connoisseur had found his dream car . . . at least the one he thought might be within reach. He was fascinated the the rotary Wankel engine and the car was stylish, rear wheel drive, and fast. When he came to us wanting this car, his dad made him a deal that if he lived at home and went to KSU, he would get him the car, since there would be a very substantial savings in having him go to school in Manhattan and live with us over paying for a dorm room, meal plan, and transportation to and from Lawrence. He would need some kind of transportation anyway. Leif agreed readily. He wasn't committed to a particular school or going away to school, and he really wanted that car.

I wasn't enamored of this deal. Although would enjoy having Leif with us longer, I felt that it would be better for his development if he left home for college. Whether that really would have been true, we will never know. We can never go back to find out whether doing something different would have resulted in a better outcome.

I think he got this car before he finished his senior year of high school, and he drove it to school. What an awesome change from the old Maxima station wagon! Leif was tall, slim, and good looking. With his long hair, he looked like a guy who should have been on the cover of romance novels. In those days, he was also a fashionable dresser, and he was fond of wearing his long brown leather coat. He also got his first job at Idleman Telemarketing, and had his own spending money, which he quickly used to get himself a cell phone, long before they were common among adults, let along high school students. He must have seemed like a very cool dude.

Leif had this car for about four and a half years, I think. During that time, he finished high school, completed nearly three years of college, got married, and managed to have an accident with the car. I think the accident happened in the first year he had it. According to him, he was out on Fort Riley Boulevard near what was then the Holiday Inn . At the traffic light there, someone got in his way and he had to swerve, resulting in him smacking the car into the pole that held the traffic light. Luckily for him, he was not hurt and the car was repairable. The insurance paid for it and he had it painted a dark green instead of the dark blue it was when he got it. The paint job was an improvement because the original had some problems on the roof, as I recall.

Leif loved that car, but as he got deeper into debt and wanted to keep the motorcycle he bought (the Yamaha) and the old Ford 150 truck he had purchased, he finally sold the RX-7 to a man who was then his brother-in-law. I don't know whether he ever got the full purchase price from B., since he sold in on a personal contract, but he did get the majority of the money. He vowed that he would have another RX-7 someday, and when the RX-8s came out, he vowed that he would get one of those, and eventually, he did. Of all Leif's cars, I don't know whether this one or the RX-8 was his favorite.

Surprisingly, I haven't found any photos of the RX-7 among our photos or Leif's. I can't imagine that we didn't take any. I managed to come up with a kind of composite photo to give an idea of what it was like, but it's not good.
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The photo above show Leif as he looked in August 1993 just before he started college. It was taken on the Caribbean NCL cruise we took. The car photo is similar to his RX-7.

Two Years Today Since Leif's Motorcycle Accident on July 12, 2007

I've written an account of Leif's motorcycle accident before, on April 2, 2009. If you want to read it, look at the keyword list for "accidents" and click it. You'll find it in the posts that come up. I don't want to repeat all of that now, but I'm thinking about him today, and what happened two years ago, and how looking back on the last year of his life I think that began the downward spiral that resulted in his death. I'm sorry he had to go through so much pain, physical and psychological. I miss him so.

He took the photo of himself in the hospital with his cell phone after he came out of recovery on July 27, 2007.

Leif's Twenty-Fourth and Last Home - Tampa, Florida - June 2007 - April 10, 2008

In June 2008, Leif followed through on his decision to move from the two-bedroom apartment on Del Prado to a one bedroom in the same apartment complex, on Bonita Vista Way. He said it would save him $200 a month. He also cut out cable television (may have done that even earlier) in another attempt to lower his expenses. He was struggling financially and was also trying to make it possible to pay his expenses on his own, as he had decided that although he wanted to remain friends with her, his romance with Donna was not healthy or wise for the two of them. He told me they reinforced each others bad qualities.

I had been concerned about them and thought it was for the best for both of them, and hoped that he would begin a new chapter of his life. He did, but it was not a happy one. Initially, Donna was still living with him and he said I should treat them like good friends who were roommates, but he started dating again and she was hurt and moved out. It wasn't for long, because on July 12, 2007, two years ago today, Leif had a motorcycle accident on his way back to work from a late lunch. He had a badly broken collarbone, scraped up hands and head, and was bruised up. Luckily it wasn't worse. He was released from the emergency room late that night. Donna volunteered to come back to his apartment to help take care of him and he accepted rather than come to stay with us. I thought that was a mistake but neither of them would listen to me. Things did not go well for long and on September 16, 2007, it was over.

He had surgery on July 27, 2007 to repair the collarbone, but was in a lot of pain. I begged him not to ride again, and we had a long text message discussion about it, but he ultimately got his bike back, which hardly had a scratch on it and started riding again.

He decided to try to help out his financial problems by using his GI Bill benefits and going back to school, so while he was laid up for a month and couldn't work (and luckily had short-term disability insurance through his work to support him) he applied to and was admitted to the University of South Florida, which wasn't far from where he lived. He enrolled in the fall semester of 2007 as a philosophy student, taking two evening courses.

I thought he was depressed, but he denied it. I sent him some online tests for depression that fall, but he insisted he passed them with flying colors. Of course, as smart as he was, and having been a psychology student, he knew what answers to give or not give. I think, though, that it was only partly trying to fool me. i think he was also fooling himself.

He began to spend money that fall in large sums, money he claimed he had from his insurance from the accident. When I questioned how he could afford what he was doing, he said it was "wheeling and dealing" and that he had sold some of his belongings, a computer, a gun, a monitor, maybe more but those are the things I remember him talking about.

The thing was, he didn't have all of the medical bills come in for months, and when they did, they piled up on him. Even with two types of health insurance, he still had large amounts of deductibles he was responsible for. But, typical of Leif, he did not volunteer this information to us. He undoubtedly didn't want us to know he was in over his head again, and as usual, thought he could solve his problems himself. Selling things was one way to do it. In addition to the things he sold others, he also sold a computer to us and one to his grandmother.

The closest he ever came to really admitting he was depressed was in November, when he sent that email to me that he was struggling to find meaning and purpose, and that he needed to be needed by someone.

I think things might have limped along and he might have been able to get through the financial crisis if he hadn't waited until the last minute (literally) to sign up for his spring 2008 semester classes at USF. He hadn't gotten an advising appointment, thinking that since he had already been through four years of college and knew how to pick degree requirements, he didn't need help. Leif was always doing things at the last minute. I'm not even sure he would have gotten enrolled for the spring semester if I hadn't asked him what he was taking. When he told me he didn't know, I was razzing him about it and he decided to sign on that night and check. That's when he found out he had barely a half hour, or something like that, to enroll. He chose two classes that he thought were sufficient.

He had attended about six weeks of classes and already paid his tuition and was past the point where he could withdraw and get it back when he got a notice that the GI Bill stipend was going to be discontinued because according to someone at USF the classes he enrolled in did not fulfill degree requirements. He was livid and quit school. He said they would not approve the classes, but he didn't try to appeal the decision. By the time he told us about it, he had already withdrawn from school. He didn't want to continue without the monthly support. His dad had a similar problem when he was using his GI Bill at KSU but he appealed the decision to a higher office and they sided with him. Peter W. told Leif that's what he should have done, but since Leif had already withdrawn, it was too late, and he was too upset and angry to care, or so he said.

However, that was the beginning of the end, I think. This was around the first of March 2008. He had to try to come up with an alternate plan to pay his bills, but he still didn't tell us how desperate he was, or even admit that he needed a lot of money. He would talk about being broke until payday and when I asked him how bad off he was he would say he was "broke but not broke-broke."

Sometime in March he decided to apply for personal loans. Every time in his past that he got into financial difficulties, he had either figured out a way to weather them or we had come to his rescue. I don't think he realized that he had gotten so far in debt that he couldn't get a loan. After all, he had gotten loans for cars and motorcycles before. However, he was turned down for the loans. The rejections letters were dated March 22, and we found them on his desk after he died.

The last time we saw him was March 23, 2008, which was Easter Sunday. I asked him to come to dinner and he said he couldn't afford the gas money. I told him I would give him gas money, and he came. We had a really wonderful visit and evening together. He probably still had some hope then, because he hadn't gotten the loan rejections yet, and had met a woman he had virtually fallen in love with at first sight. He sounded happy and hopeful, and we were so glad for him. We had no idea what his situation really was, and I don't think he did, either. If we had, I would certainly have given him far more than the $15 I gave him for gasoline!

Two and a half weeks later, he was dead, in this apartment, on April 9, 2008. This was the last place he lived.

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The photos are:
1. Leif took this photo of himself with his iPhone on March 7, 2008, almost exactly a month before he died.
2. The building where Leif lived his last ten months of life, on Bonita Vista Way in Tampa.
3. Part of Leif's living room, taken by him with his cell phone, on July 25, 2007.
4. Leif's computer desk, taken by him on November 2, 2007.

Leif was not a good housekeeper. His apartments were usually a cluttered mess. There were a few parts he kept relatively neat. this end of his living room was one, but what you can't see in front of that were the boxes of stuff heaped on the floor, clothing and towels strewn on the couch and floor, the clothes on the floor in the bedroom by the unmade bed, and the cluttered up kitchen. About the only place that he consistently kept pretty neat and nice was his computer desk. He liked to have more than one monitor because he was both an avid online gamer and a multitasker. He liked to have more than one thing going on at a time on different monitors. By the time he died, he had sold some of this equipment.

This was a fairly nice apartment, but one thing about it that I don't think was good for a man who was depressed was that it was dark. It lacked the bright light that might have been better for him. That was made worse by his work schedule which had him working late nights, so that he came home in the dark, stayed up late online, and then slept late with his bedroom window covered up so the sun couldn't shine in a wake him. He spent most of his time indoors in dimly lighted places at home or indoors at work in a call center away from natural light. I don't pretend that more natural and brilliant light would have saved his life, but it would certainly have helped his moods.

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.

Leif - Motorcycle Accident - Tampa, Florida - July 27, 2007

Leif loved riding motorcycles and said that was when he felt best in his life, when he felt alive and free. He rode like a demon and didn't want to admit how fast he went, but he did tell me that he had reached speeds well above 100 miles per hour. He loved speed.

He wanted to get a motorcycle when he was still in high school, and then during his first year of college. We wouldn't agree and told him that if he insisted on having one, he would have to wait until he could pay for it himself, pay for the insurance, and no longer lived at home. At his first opportunity, he purchased his first cycle. He couldn't truly afford it, since we were still providing financial assistance for college and some living expenses, but he was on his own and married to Nikko. He would scrimp on other things to make sure he managed the payments. I'll post photos of this cycles tomorrow.

We worried constantly that he would have a terrible cycle accident and be badly injured or killed, with good reason. One of the reasons I always made sure I had my cell phone with me or beside my bed, was the fear that I would get a call saying he had been in an accident.

He, of course, dismissed our fears as silly. However, he hadn't had the cycle so very long when he did have a minor crash. He was taking a college algebra course offered out at Fort Riley by K-State. One day, coming back to Manhattan, he headed down a long, steep, winding road on the base too fast, hit an area with some sand or gravel on a curve and slid out off the road. He luckily escaped serious injury but he got some nasty "road rash" on his leg. It shredded his jeans on the leg that scraped the pavement. He was pretty shaken up and probably in shock, but managed to ride back home and clean himself up. He didn't go to the doctor because he had no medical insurance and didn't want to pay the bill. He also didn't tell us what happened until a couple of days later. I don't think he wanted us to know, given our fears and disapproval of his fast riding. By that time, his leg looked awful and had some infection. He was fortunate that it cleared up and left no nasty scars. The bike survived with just a few scratches. After that, he put a small round decal on the bike that said, "Crashing sucks."

Leif always contended that most bad cycle accidents happen to new riders in the first six months of riding because they don't know their bike's capabilities well and aren't experienced riders. Statistically that may be true, but there are still too many accidents with cycles and with no protection from much heavier vehicles, and not much protection from the road surfaces, injuries can be terrible.

When we moved him to Florida with us, we also moved that first motorcycle, but he quickly sold it and bought an even faster, more stylish Suzuki. He had one minor incident with that one in a parking lot where he worked. Apparently, a car cut right in front of him so he had to "lay the bike down" to avoid hitting it. He was upset that his brand new cycle had scratches and scrapes on it, and used his insurance to replace everything to pristine condition.

In May 2007, when he was living in an apartment in Tampa, his prized Suzuki crotch rocket was stolen and he purchased a used Honda touring cycle, a much different kind of bike.

Leif had phenomenally bad luck. On July 12, 2007, he was returning to work from his apartment after lunch, a late lunch because he was on a late shift, on 56th Street in Tampa, when a white Cadillac cut in front of him abruptly. Drivers often don't even see cycles. We never knew whether the driver didn't see Leif or just cut him off as some drivers do, but in order to keep from hitting him, Leif had to lay the bike down again. This time he was injured. His collarbone was shattered. He had road rash on his hands because he hadn't worn his cycle gloves and a big scrape on his bald head. He wasn't wearing a helmet. He was fortunate that his head injury wasn't worse.

He was also lucky that in the traffic, someone coming behind him didn't hit him. A young couple stopped and stayed with him, called for help, and used their cell phone to call me. Leif talked with me so that I would know he was "okay," and we headed to the hospital ER to meet him. After hours, they sent him home with instructions to see an orthopedic surgeon who specialized in collarbone surgery.

He had surgery on July 27, 2007. He thought it would be a piece of cake. To him, it sounded like an easy operation on a bone just below the skin. He wouldn't believe me that it would be painful and a painful recovery. He was shocked and depressed to find out that I was right.

I was the one who took him to Tampa General for his surgery and visited him often at his apartment during the month after it. We wanted him to come stay with us while he was recuperating but he didn't want to do that. He wanted to be with his things in his own apartment, though he could have brought his computer with him. He needed help, though, in addition to the nurse and therapist that came to his apartment a couple of times a week in the month following ths surgery, and his ex-girlfriend came back to help him. We all appreciated her helping him, but I was concerned that it wasn't a good situation. Leif had come to the conclusion that they weren't a good match and they had broken up earlier in the summer. He was trying to get over that and get on with his life and having the two of them back together in the apartment meant their status wasn't clear. He saw it as friendship but it's hard for two people who were living together as something more to work it out as just friends and companions, and it wasn't a good situation. It ended in disaster and increased Leif's depression.


When we look back on Leif's life, it's clear that this motorcycle accident was the beginning of a long nine-month slide that ended on April 9, 2008 when he took his life. He had survived so much heartache and bad luck, but the amount of problems and pain he faced between May 2006 an April 2008 was an enormous load. It got significantly worse with this accident. I think it took away some if not most of the joy he got from riding. He wouldn't admit that to me but I can't see how he could have felt the same way about it after going through all the pain. I pleaded with him in his apartment after the surgery to stop riding, and we had "discussions" about it in text messaging, which I may most here. If the accident had been the end of his problems and disappointments, he might have survived, but they just kept coming.

The photo of Leif was taken in the hospital, Tampa General, after his surgery on July 27, 2007, and the x-ray of his collarbone was taken in the surgeon's office on August 7, 2007. Leif used it as the background of his MySpace page and it is still there. It obviously became a significant part of his identity. Leif took photos of himself in the hospital with his cell phone camera, too. He was not a happy man. He was miserable.

Hopes, Dreams - Faults - Accidents - Regrets

On July 5, 2006, Leif sent this to me as a text message, after his apartment was robbed in the afternoon in broad daylight, the thieves making off with $7,000 worth of property including computers, cell phones and guns:

"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."

Leif seemed to absorb the many difficulties he faced with equanimity, and often to turn them into something better. In this case, he moved out of an apartment complex which he had come to hate and see as a den of crime into a better one, replaced his property with newer things, and went on with his life, as if it hadn't affected him, though it had.

He had to break his lease to move out, and although the apartment complex had done nothing to secure his (and his girlfriend's) safety after the break-in, or even repair the damage to the inside of the apartment, they came after him for a lot of money. The complex was owned by one of New York's worst slum landlords, according to newspaper accounts. It took two-and-a-half years of contesting it, but they finally seem to have ceased trying to collect.

At the new place, barely seven months later his beloved Suzuki motorcycle was stolen from the parking lot.

During the same period, he went through job and personal difficulties and faced his continual money problems.

The two self portrait photos above show clearly the decline in his mental and physical health. The earlier one was taken in March 2003, when he was about to graduate from Kansas State University and had finally climbed out of his deep depression after his marriage breakup and his problems with the army and his asthma. This was the picture that he liked enough to make it the profile photo on his MySpace page.

The later photo is another self portrait he took in the parking lot at his work, November 21, 2007, ten days after he sent me this message:

"No things are not bright. Rather dark actually as I struggle to find purpose. ... I miss having a purpose. A reason to keep trudging on despite the fact that each day holds far more difficulties and irritations than it holds joys or pleasures."

It was that message (and the rest of it) that made me so worried about Leif.

At that time his quest for love was failing, no matter how hard to tried to find someone. His quest for a career was not going as he hoped and planned. He was in pain from the motorcycle accident on July 12th that put him in the hospital for the operation that screwed a 9 inch metal plate to his broken collarbone. He was spiraling downhill. I was extremely worried about him.

Then end of hopes and dreams is a terrible thing, a life-killing thing, but he seemed to come out of it. We had good visits with him in January, February and March, but he continued to exhibit one of his faults . . . denial of problems, both financial and emotional.

Leif had many wonderful qualities, a brilliant mind, a great sense of humor, incredible physical strength, but he also, like all of us, had faults. He knew what some of them were, and listed them in the quote I put on yesterday's post, but there were some he denied to himself and others.

Leif could be inconsiderate and uncommunicative, aloof and evasive. As his mother, I had to learn to deal with those qualities without becoming angry and punitive. If Leif didn't want to answer a question, he would simply ignore it or give evasive answers.

When he came back from the army in May 2001, he lived with us briefly over the summer until he got admitted to KSU and found an apartment in August. He was welcome to have dinner with us any day he was there, but all we asked was that he let us know if he was going to be there so we could have enough food and not be waiting for him if he wasn't going to show up. But that was apparently too much to ask. He wouldn't do it, and I had to ask him every day whether he would be there. Sometimes he was willing to commit himself, sometimes not. He didn't want to commit himself in case something better came along, but all we asked was that he let us know two hours before dinner.

That's just a small example of the ways in which Leif could be inconsiderate or rude, and yet when he was there with us, we invariably enjoyed it!

Leif liked to drive fast, very fast. He could ill afford to pay for a speeding ticket, but he said the price was worth it to drive the way he wanted to. He had no regard for speed limits.

He was an excellent driver, and would have liked to be a race car driver, though that wasn't a possibility for him. We worried that he would end up disabled or dead because of an accident in his car or motorcycle.

He actually did have an accident with nearly every vehicle he owned. Although they wre not his fault, there is a good possibility that he could have avoided at least some of them by slower, more defensive driving.

The first car he had was a used Mazda RX-7 that we bought for him when he was in college. He loved that car. At an intersection on the west side of Manhattan, Kansas, another car didn't yield the right of way and to avoid it, Leif slid the RX-7 into a light pole. There was luckily little damage, but the insurance money allowed him to have the car painted.

His first motorcycle was a yellow and maroon Yamaha. He loved tearing around on that, too, but he was coming down a hill on Fort Riley, a winding steep road, and slid out on some sand at the edge of the road. The resulting crash did little damage to the cycle, but the jeans on Leif's leg were scraped right off of him and his leg had a terrible case of "road rash." He didn't have medical insurance and didn't want to pay for a huge hospital or doctor bill, so we went home, nearly in shock, tried to wash out the sand and gravel himself, and hoped it would heal. He didn't tell us about it until days later when it had started to scab over and heal, and although he did have some infection, he luckily got better on his own.

When he graduated from KSU in May 2003, he needed a car. His old one was past repairing except for someone who wanted it as a project car, and he sold it to a man and his son who wanted to work on it together and fix it up with parts from a junk yard. We knew he didn't have the money for a new car, nor a way to pay the payments on one because he didn't have a job yet, so we offered to buy a car for him and he could pay us back once he had a job.

We got him a sleek, black 2002 (new) Dodge Stratus. It was a great-looking car and he enjoyed driving it, though Leif would ALWAYS head to all the dealerships in any town where he lived and try out cars to see what else was there. It was a major pastime with him.

When we moved him to Florida with us in March 2005, we shipped the Yamaha cycle (which he later sold and bought the Suzuki), and he drove the Stratus down. I think it was December 22, 2005 when he called me to tell me he had just been in an accident in Tampa, again at an intersection, and his car was badly damaged and he had a hurt neck. The car turned out to be totaled, and although we had paid cash for it, Leif still owed most of the money to us. His neck continued to cause him pain for the rest of his life.

He got the insurance money, used it to pay off his Suzuki bike loan, which was at a higher interest rate, and promptly found a beautiful used Mazda RX-8, which he got a loan to buy. He had a hard time making those payments after he moved into an apartment in Tampa, the car and insurance payments took about $700 a month out of his pay! He never had an accident with the RX-8, a car he truly loved, but when he died and there was still $16,000 owed on the loan, we had to let the bank repossess it.

In May 2007, after the Suzuki motorcycle was stolen, Leif took the insurance money and purchased his last motorcycle, a 2002 Honda VTX 1800C. It was a completely different style from his two previous "crotch rockets," being a touring bike that was more comfortable to ride. He had it only two months when on July 12, 2007, he was on his way back to work from lunch on 56th Street in Tampa when a white Cadillac cut in front of him. In order to avoid a collision, he "laid the bike down," and him with it. That's when he got the broken collarbone I mentioned earlier, along with nasty road rash on his hands and bald head. He said he would always wear gloves after that, but still resisted wearing a helmet.

Within the space of the three years he lived in Florida, Leif experienced three vehicle accidents, a love affair gone wrong, problems with one job, restructured pay scales at another that made him have to leave for a better paying job, disillusionment at the third one, an apartment robbery, a stolen motorcycle, a motorcycle accident that ended up causing him a lot of pain, and financial problems that finally got out of hand.

yet like most men, Leif denied depression, even when he was clearly depressed. That's why that email admitting that life was "rather dark" concerned me so much.

I can't look at the difference in these photos and not see that he had become depressed. There is hope and even innocence in the earlier photo. There is a kind of grim sadness and disillusionment in the latter.

Leif use to insist to me that he had no regrets. I had a long talk about this with him once before we moved to Florida. I asked him whether that was true even after all he had been through (much of which I haven't written about in this blog) and some of the choices he made, but he insisted that he wouldn't have done anything differently, that he had no regrets.

I don't know whether he still felt that way when he died. I didn't have that kind of conversation with him again, but knowing Leif, he would probably have still insisted that he would not have changed his actions or his choices even after experiencing the outcomes.

But who knows? Was that just a big front, male defensiveness? I don't know. Maybe it's possible, that despite the heartache and physical pain, he would not have been willing to give up the experiences he had.

I wish he had still been as strong as he said he was on July 5, 2006. He would still be here.

Leif - OUCH! - Burned hand just before his first birthday

In recent years, Leif's dad started wondering whether he had been "born under an unlucky star." I don't believe in that kind of bad fate, and yet when I look at Leif's life, it's hard to believe that he had so many bad experiences and so much bad luck. I told Peter never to say that, about the unlucky star, because I didn't want Leif to believe that about himself. Sadly enough, I think he decided that on his own.

The first bad thing that happened to Leif was about a month before his first birthday. His brother, Peter, was being given some tests at a clinic at Fort Riley, Kansas, and the clinic was in an old part of the hospital detached from the main building, and housed in an old WWII barracks type building.

I had to wait in the waiting room with Leif while Peter was with the person doing the tests. It was a small room with chairs, and, as I recall, a sink and mirror, and a coat rack. Leif was a rambunctious little rascal who was always trying to investigate everything, and I had just about exhausted all my tricks to keep him occupied. I picked him up and as I recall, 32 years later, I went over to try to get him interested in his reflection in the mirror.

Going up the wall nearby was a pipe. It was completely unprotected and painted the same color as the wall. There was no indication of any danger.

Suddenly, Leif reached out and grabbed the pipe . . . and screamed in pain. His hand was burned so badly it was covered with blisters. I was terrified. The pipe was a "live" steam pipe that supplied the steam radiator for heat. It's unforgivable that in a hospital clinic where people were in wheelchairs, on crutches, or otherwise injured and unstable, or just plain waiting there like me, a dangerous pipe like that would have not been insulated or otherwise inaccessible.

I rushed Leif to the emergency room, where the poor, terrified child in pain was strapped to a "papoose board" with just his little arm sticking out, so that he was immobilized. He was so strong and so active that they could not even properly examine him without strapping him in like that.

As you can imagine, that terrified him even further. Leif never liked being confined in any way at all.

He had third degree burns on the entire inner part of his hand, palm and fingers, with huge blisters. I was so scared his hand would be damaged for life.

Leif required a month of painful therapy, during which his hand was bandaged and unbandaged, treated, and treated again, every day for a month.

In this photo, he is in the arms of one of the therapists. Am I an odd mother for wanting to take a photo of this? Well, I wanted proof of what happened to him, and I also photographed the pipe and the waiting room. We filed a claim against the government for pain and suffering, primarily to get them to fix the dangerous situation so someone else wouldn't get hurt.

They fought it, but eventually he was awarded $500. Think of it, just $500 for horrible pain, agony, and a month of excruciating therapy. We put that into a savings CD for him, and by the time he was in junior high, it was worth over $1000. He used the money to buy a top-end stereo rack system, which he enjoyed for years. Of course, by then he had forgotten all about the pain.

He got the bandages off a day or so before his first birthday, January 28, 1976. Luckily, his hand recovered completely, without even any scars, and he had full use of it.

Poor little guy, though. On his first birthday, after he blew out the one candle on his cake, he stuck his finger into the hot wax and burned it again. Not badly, but enough to make him cry. I'm sure it brought back memories of the burn a month before, though he could not tell us that.

Throughout his life, Leif experienced other accidents and injuries. More than his share. More than his share of pain, too.