For Twenty-three Years We Enjoyed the Car Leif Chose for Us

 

Twenty-three years ago, Leif showed up at our house and told me he had found THE car for me, that it "even has a place for your laptop." He loved car shopping, even when he wasn't in the market to buy. He just loved cars. He wanted to take me to see this one, as a replacement for our aging Maxima. 

When I first got into it, I'd never been in a car that big. I said I'd never be able to drive it, that it was like driving a bus! So, he good-naturedly took me to every car dealership in town to look at cars. We took several test drives, including one in a Mustang, which he decided we should try (even though it wasn't a realistic choice) because it was fun and he knew his dad and I had a Mustang for several years early in our marriage. 

Well, after all that, I had to admit he was right! He HAD found the car for me, so we went back to the Buick dealer and test drove the car. It took a few days but we did purchase it and it served us well for 23 years, almost to the day. Since it could manage 7 passengers, we had many wonderful times in it with Leif's brother and his family, the grandkids, and many others. We went on trips. We hauled things. We moved a carload of stuff to Florida in it. We moved my mother from her condo to a different apartment and then to assisted living. One grandchild even drove it to work for an internship. 

So, today, when we said goodbye to it, we were both very emotional, not only because of all the memories, but more importantly, because it was a connection to Leif. Although it's "just a car," an object, there is so much emotion connected with it, and seeing it drive away was also most having a piece of him taken from us. We have so little left from him, many photos, of course, and memories, but fewer and fewer things that are connected to him, as time goes on. 

I know Leif would find this attachment kind of silly. He was always looking for the next new thing, the next new car, motorcycle, computer, phone, and more. He would said, "Get a new car, Mom!" But we still feel the attachment, and now all I have are photos of what he chose for us. I hope he would like the replacement. We compared the cars we looked at to what we loved about the Rendezvous, including comfort, visibility, size, and chose something we think we will like very much and that he would approve of. I wish he had been here to help us choose it. His brother was, and did, and we are grateful for that. 

Even in Istanbul - Memories of a Young Boy and Cars

If I had taken Leif to Istanbul when he was any age from three to twelve, or any other city in the world, and he had seen this display, we would not have been able to move him from the spot. How he loved little metal car models. He had a HUGE collection of Matchbox cars, which he loved to examine, play with, and compare. As an adult, he still had his metal black Lamborghini model.

I took this picture of the outside display at a store behind the Grand Bazaar in Istanbul. I couldn't help but think of him and wish he'd been there so I could tease him a bit about it . . . and watching him pick up various cars and start his usual long dissertations about their various merits.

I can picture him as a child surrounded on the floor by all his cars . . . and planes . . . and ships . . . and space ships. I remember his Hot Wheels sets and speedways. How that boy loved vehicles of all kinds.

The Everyday Flood of Memories

It seems just about everywhere we turn there are reminders of Leif. He was such a strong presence. Yesterday Peter remarked that he wished Leif were here to help us choose a new car, as he did the Rendezvous which has served us so well.

Then on television, they had a special program on the truly unusual sports cars, like Lamborghini, Leif's favorite, showing how they are made. He would have loved it.

Even driving home from Brandon, the crazy drivers who were driving too fast and weaving in and out of traffic reminded us of him.

No matter where we go, we always think of him, and very often talk of him, too, of his talents and intelligence, of his taste and interests, and yes, of his bad luck and poor choices.

From his childhood through his adulthood, he left a larger-than-life impression on everyone who knew him.

When we were at Universal Islands of Adventure, I had to go back to take this photo of the Truffula trees in Seuss Landing. As soon as I saw them I remembered little two-year-old Leif, who had memorized "The Lorax," sitting on the floor in the living room of the townhouse we were renting in Charlotteville, Virginia, and carefully turning the pages while reciting the entire book perfectly. And I can hear his little boy voice saying,

It's a Truffula Seed.
It's the last one of all!
You're in charge of the last of the Truffula Seeds.
And Truffula Trees are what everyone needs.
Plant a new Truffula. Treat it with care.
Give it clean water. And feed it fresh air.
Grow a forest. Protect it from axes that hack.
Then the Lorax
and all of his friends
may come back.”  - From "The Lorax" by Dr. Seuss

                   
I wish I had a video of him "reading" that book. I wish I could REALLY hear him do it.

All the Reminders in Just One Day

Although we live with reminders and photos of Leif all over our house every day, they are part of the fabric of our lives that we are used to and familiar with, so it's now usually the unexpected or less frequent reminders of him that catch us unawares, and they, too, can be everywhere.

Last Friday we went to Walmart to get my glasses frames replaced after they broke. While I was standing in the optical department waiting, I was looking around at the display of frames and my eye caught a display of high tech, high fashion, expensive sports lenses of the type Leif might have gravitated to and I unexpectedly felt tears come to my eyes.

Even recounting this brings tears to my eyes. Why? I was never there in that store with him. This particular store was built after he died. It was just the remembrance of how he favored "cool" glasses, whether regular daily wear ones, sunglasses, or the kind of sport glasses he wore when riding his motorcycle.

From there we drove in to Tampa, and on the way, we were passed by a motorcyclist going like a house afire. Because Leif rode motorcycles and had accidents, I feel protective of cyclists, but I am also horrified at those that ride like he did, like a demon. There was the second reminder.

As we took the expressway exit off I745, Peter W. was remarking that something had suddenly made him feel sad, that he always thought of Leif when we were driving to Tampa and he couldn't believe it had been almost four years since he died, and I said, "If feels like we should just be able to drive to his apartment and see him." Yes, it still does, and it still feels like a knife in the heart when I realize I can't, that he isn't there and he never will be.

We saw some "cool" cars on the way and remarked how much Leif would have liked them.

When we got to the BX (base exchange, a department store for you non-military types), I saw someone that could have been his brother . . . tall, shaved head, goatee and mustache, about thirty-five, and wearing jeans and designer glasses. This man was probably three inches taller than Leif, but even at that, I had to look again to be sure it wasn't him.

We went into the ITT (Information Tours and Travel) office and they were advertising tickets for concerts by Van Halen and Rammstein. Leif would have loved to go to both of those, though they would have been out of his price range with tickets well over $100 each.

At home I read an article about the Mars opposition (positioning of the planet Mars) and an observatory program about it he would have liked.

By now, on Monday, I'm probably forgetting more things that occurred on Friday to remind us of Leif and make us bounce from everyday routine to sadness to reminiscing to sadness to just being busy. There are so many things we associate with him and always will.

The photo above was taken in Germany in the fall of 1977 when Leif was two-and-a-half years old. My little rascal. I miss him so!

His Lifelong Love of Guns

As I've written before, Leif displayed an amazingly consistent set of interests throughout his life. So many kids go through fads of interest and drop them. He didn't. From a very early age he was captivated by vehicles and speed, all kinds of vehicles. He always loved them. He collected toy cars, boats, planes, rockets. He built models of them. He drew them. And, when he was older, he test drove them and photographed them.

As he got a little older as a child, he became interested in science fiction moves, James Bond movies, and the weaponry that both used. Most little boys who are allowed to have toy guns play with them, and those that aren't allowed to have them often pretend with a "hand" gun or improvised toy guns made of sticks and other materials. Leif had toy guns, but by the time he was in the primary grades he was also making his own, and that's another thing he continued off and on throughout his life. He drew them, and then constructed them out of wood. Sometimes, when he was a kid, his dad helped him.

When we lived in Japan, they sold very realistic "toy" pellet guns. Our boys each had one or two, and they enjoyed pretending they were action heroes. Sometimes they'd get dressed up and pose, and even their dad enjoyed doing that with them. This was much more a pastime of Leif's than his brother's, though.

I think Leif loved both the design and mechanical beauty of guns, not just the power and glamor he saw in them (the glamor coming from the James Bond movies, of course). He must have had fantasies of being the gun-toting hero.

This photo is one of a series that Peter W. took of Leif posing on the lanai of our townhouse in Hawaii. I think it was probably taken in 1984 or 1985. He's holding two "guns." The larger one in his right hand is one of the guns he and his dad made, and the one in his left hand looks like it might have been a pellet gun. He's wearing his beloved black Members Only jacket, black pants, black gloves, and his cool sunglasses.

Leif started wearing "cool" sunglasses at an early age, here about 9 or 10, and graduated to Gargoyles and then Oakleys, which he saved up for and paid for himself. I would never have spent that kind of money on sunglasses! But the cool factor was always important to him, and he would gladly pay for it.

I like his hair the way it is in this picture, but it was combed over and styled like this just for the picture. On a daily basis, he wasn't interested in bothering with that.

It's hard for me to know how to think about Leif's lifelong love affair with guns because he used one to shoot himself, but I know he was passionate about them, enjoyed them, loved shooting them, and was incredibly knowledgeable about them. If I had known what would happen to him, would I have prevented him from having toy guns as a child? I don't know. I doubt that it would have done much good. We never had real guns in our home, and he was brought up with a very strong anti-violence ethic. He never had real guns until he was grown and had left home, and he wasn't irresponsible with them. So many millions of American own guns and don't misuse them. He was passionate about the Second Amendment, too. There was no way to know or predict that he would turn one on himself. Even though we worried so much about him, even though we knew the possibility of suicide with a gun existed, we worried far more about the possibility of a terrible car or motorcycle accident.

I wondered, when he died, whether I would be able to look at these photos and enjoy them, knowing what eventually happened, but I have come to the point where I can remember his posing like this and be glad he enjoyed himself and that he never turned a gun on anyone else.

What Leif Really Wanted to Be

 From the time he was very small, Leif wanted to be a jet pilot. I suppose some of the things that influenced that desire were visiting Air Force bases, traveling on jets when we moved from one continent to another or traveled, seeing movies like "Top Gun," and all the science fiction movies he saw with incredible flying machines. Two more big components would have been his love of speed and the skies. And lastly, the glamor of it, the cool factor, appealed to him.

He wanted so badly to be a pilot. We were the kind of parents who always tried to help our boys learn more about their interests and be supportive of them. When we lived in Hawaii, Peter W. took Leif to the reserve component of Hickam Air Force Base where a pilot gave Leif a tour and took him up into the cockpit of a jet fighter. Leif was in his element. It was a very special day for an 8 or 9 year-old. This would have probably taken place in 1984. Unfortunately, the photos don't have dates on them.

Leif lived his childhood dreaming of this career and planning on it. Although we all knew he could not definitely count on being selected for AF pilot training, he assumed that was what he would be.

I've posted before his high school essay about when he found out his eyes would not pass the flight physical and what a blow it was to him to have to give up this dream. It must have been even harder on him when his brother, who didn't really want to fly, was at the Air Force Academy and was selected for pilot training. Life is full of ironies we cannot foresee.

Leif tried to capture the feeling of speed by driving his cars and motorcycles like a demon, and would have dearly loved to be a race car driver. He would have been a good one, but that career was closed to him, too, due to the financial requirements.

I read a quote, which I can no longer find, that the death of one's dreams is one of the saddest things that can happen to a person, and that unless we replace the dream we've lost with a new one, a new plan or hope for the future, we flounder.

Leif did try to find new dreams or hopes, whether as an Air Force officer (starting with ROTC), or as an army enlistee, whether with love, or with the gaming and gadgetry he enjoyed, but none of those hopes and dreams came true. It was as though the heavens had determined that nothing he tried would work. How thankful I am that I did not have to live through all the disappointments he suffered.

In the past couple of weeks, we have, as always, had so many reminders of Leif. Yesterday I drove past a Japanese restaurant where we took him to dinner one December. We watched the movie, "Thor," and talked about what Leif would have thought of it. We went out to dinner at another Japanese restaurant and parked next to a silver RX-8 like the one he used to drive. Today I used the computer he built to check how something looked and worked on a Windows machine. Every day I use phones he gave us.

When he died, we lost some of our dreams, too, dreams for his future, dreams of how our future might be with him in it. I miss him every day.

I thought yesterday, after watching an episode of House, about all the babies that die before they are even born, the miscarriages that take their tiny lives, often because they are in some way not viable. Then there are the children who never make it to adulthood because of some congenital problem or disease. And then there are those who do make it to adulthood, but are cut down by, again, some congenital problem or disease, and lead short and sometimes problematic lives.

Perhaps Leif fit into that latter category in some way we will never be able to know for certain. Perhaps that genetic heritage of depression doomed our beautiful son in a myriad terrible ways. But that doesn't mean that he wasn't beautiful, brilliant, funny, loving, generous, kind, and loved. That his meteor only burned a short time and was gone doesn't take away from all that 33 year streak brought us . . . the good and the bad, the happiness and the disappointments. The memories are ours, those we treasure and those we wish had never occurred.

We don't get to choose in life just to have the happy moments. We have to take it all, the good and the bad. Life isn't fair, it just is. It certainly wasn't fair to Leif, and it still hurts every day to think about how he reached that point where he decided to put a bullet into his head. But I'm still glad I had the chance to love him. Still glad of all I learned from him. Still glad he was mine.

Leif in my dreams

I wonder how often I dream about Leif. I don't usually remember my dreams, any of them, but most of them that I do remember are not about Leif. Freud said dreams were wish fulfillment, but most of my dreams certainly aren't anything I'd actually wish and often make no sense. However, three days ago, I had a dream about Leif that could be described as wish fulfillment.

Leif was happy! That's the best thing about the dream, that he was vital, alive, happy, and smiling. He was the man in this picture, the hopeful man who graduated from college in 2003, his teasing, humorous self. He was slimmer again, and walked with a spring in his step.

Oddly, he was driving a vehicle that looks almost exactly like the Chevy Flex in the picture, a vehicle I was completely unaware of and I had to go looking on the internet to try to find a picture of what appeared in my dream. (The photo is from the Chevrolet website.) Odder still, he had some kind of contraption inside it that was a barbecue smoker and he was quite proud of that. He took pieces of equipment out to show me. I'm sure they bear no relationship to what would actually be in a smoker. One piece was a long sort of white metal tray. I don't remember the rest.

I do remember that when I awoke I was quite surprised that he would be driving a Flex, since he was always crazy about sports cars and loved his Mazda RX8, but then I remembered that he was also drawn to trucks and once had a big old Ford 150. Maybe he would have seen in the Flex a kind of enclosed truck that looked manly and full of muscle. The Flex he was driving was blue, like this one.

In the dream, he was together with J., the love of his life, and they were loving and affectionate and happy together.

It seems my mind was trying to write a happier ending to Leif's story, one I know he craved and wished for. Someone to love, especially J.

I was so glad to see him happy. I wish he had been. I hope if there is some kind of afterlife, he is happy now.

I Will Remember Him Always

What will I remember about my Leif? Everything.

I will remember the beautiful child that none of us realized was as vulnerable as he was. I will remember the tall, strong boy and his wonderful smile. I will remember how frustrated he could get when he wasn't able to make his hands do what his mind envisioned.

I will remember the brilliant mind and incredible memory my son had, and how we recognized it when he was so young.

I will remember the soccer player who could boot the ball three-fourths of the way down the field.

I will remember the teen who was tall and slim, a black belt in judo, a guitar player, a singer. I will remember his as Kenicke in "Grease," with all the girls screaming for him. I will remember him graduating from high school.

I will remember the handsome young man who married when he was only twenty years old and the devastated man who nearly took his life when his marriage failed.

I will remember the proud, tall soldier who graduated from infantry basic training and who was proud of his ability with a machine gun, and the broken soldier who was medically retired from the army when he was only twenty-six years old.

I will remember the recovering man who graduated from college and was proud of his new car.

I remember how happy he was when he fell in love again, and how utterly devastated he was when she left him, how I was worried he would not survive.

I remember him on his motorcycles, the three different ones he owned in his lifetime, the ones he drove far too fast, and I remember him in the hospital after the accident he had.

I remember how he loved cars and his RX-7s and RX-8, especially the RX-8, how he drove like a race car driver, what he really always wanted to be.

I remember him helping us with the house and yard, helping us move. I remember him helping my mother with her computer.

I remember him playing chess with Madeleine and being silly with Aly.

I remember him being in debt and spending money foolishly.

I remember him being in dark moods and fearing for him.

I remember his guns, his music collection, his passion for technology and science fiction.

I remember his hugs, his smiles.

I remember how desperately he needed and searched for love.

I remember how Leif wanted to be the hero, that he was the gentle giant who would fight to defend his family, his friends, his country. I remember his personal code was to never show weakness, and how he kept his deep and towering emotions inside. I remember how he wanted to be needed, to be respected and loved.

I remember bringing him into the world full of hope for him. It is hard to accept that our dreams for Leif will never be realized, that he will never find his purpose and defeat his demons, that he will never have a family, that he will never be there for a birthday or a Christmas, never be there to teach us about the latest technology and set things up for us, never again tease me about driving like an old lady.

it will always be hard to know and remember that our love was not enough to save him, that no matter what I tried, I could not help him be happy, or take away his pain.

I remember that in many ways, he lived a life rich in experience, and we tried hard to provide some of those riches of experience, but I also remember that his life was drowned in depression and loneliness.In the end, he was overwhelmed.

I remember how he wanted to be a hero, wanted to be needed, wanted to be strong. I rememberhow, through so many disappointments and crises, he held his head high and did not let others see his pain and frustration. Finally, it was too much. I will remember how he bore that burden until the end.

Most of all, I remember how much I loved him. I love him still. I will always love him.
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This photo was taken of Leif on Bellows Beach on the island of Oahu in Hawaii, one of his favorite places. It was in August 1989 when he was fourteen-and-a-half. It was then he was reading Orson Scott Card's "Ender's Game" with such deep and avid interest.

Leif and Motor Trend

Leif was fascinated with all kinds of vehicles from the time he was very small. One of his first words was "truck," and he loved anything that went under its own power. Second, but also loved, were things he could MAKE go, whether Matchbox cars or a Big Wheel. By the time he was in junior high, he began a really serious interest in cars, planes and radio-controlled cars, and subscribed to several magazines about them, which he studied carefully with far more interest than he had in his school work. He could give you endless statistics about the models of cars he found most alluring, particularly sports cars and monster trucks.

We found it really strange when this thirteen-year-old kid started getting a lot of mail from credit card companies offering him credit cards. It didn't take us long to realize that most thirteen-year-olds are not subscribing to Motor Trend and Car and Driver, and that those magazines had most likely sold their subscription lists to credit card companies.

In an effort to stop the nonsense, Leif and I devised a plan. We would have him fill out one of the applications being absolutely truthful. Occupation: junior high school student. Income: whatever his small allowance was at the time. And so on. He signed it with his terrible handwriting and sent it in. We had a good laugh thinking about what whoever opened it would think. It worked, though. No more credit card offers . . . at least until he was in college, which was a good thing. Although I don't think he would have been likely to actually get a card before he was eighteen without us signing, even as an adult he could not handle credit responsibly.

He had a lifelong love affair with vehicles and speed, and he managed to indulge them (while being in debt for it) with a Mazda RX-8 and a motorcycle, both of which he drove far too fast.
----------------

The red Ferrari is a photo that Leif took when he was 12 years old and in junior high and the drawing is one he made when he was an adult, in 1998 I think when he was 23 years old.

Telling Her Why Men Are Happy With "Real" Women

After Leif wrote to J about what happened to him after she left him, which I posted last, she replied some days later. She told him she often ran from the things that would make her the happiest and from commitment, and that she also ran because she couldn't believe he loved her. She was insecure about her looks and figure, and those insecurities were made worse because Leif had a large collection of pictures of "hot chicks," to whom she didn't think she could compare. His reply explains a lot about his own (and some other men's) psychology, and trust Leif to find a way to compare choosing a woman to choosing a car!

However, the end of this letter is terribly poignant. Leif, the hurt man who was so devastated by her leaving him and breaking the engagement, does is best to make her believe she is wonderful and worthy of love.

Thursday, June 30, 2005, 12:11 AM

It's funny reading this and then looking at pics of you. I understand what you were feeling but I look at the pics from Christmas, or Thanksgiving at my grandma's, and of you in that gorgeous black dress you wore to the WWC party and I just can't help but think how beautiful you looked. Women are always so much more critical of themselves than men ever are. I was so in love with you and I thought you were gorgeous. I remember reading things from your ex and he said things to you that were similar about the beauty of seeing you as a mother - when you thought you were fat.

It is cruel that women are tormented so.

Let me try to give you some perspective, because while you certainly have some demons to vanquish your appearance should be the least of them. I always loved looking at you, touching you, and was completely in love with you.

But as to guys looking at and fantasizing about these models and porn stars and such, surely you knew someone growing up that had a poster of a Ferrari or Lamborghini on his wall. What guy hasn't had dreams of having such a car? Every teenage boy had a poster of a hot car at some point in his life. It is a dream, a fantasy, and that is all.

In reality men drive Hondas and Chevys and Fords and they love their cars. When a man goes shopping for a car it is no different than shopping for a wife. He has many choices. There are sedans, SUVs, sports cars. There are many different models and sizes in each category from many makers. Inevitably he choses one, and in most cases it is not a Lamborghini.

Now I know what you are gonna say. They can't afford the Lamborghini. And to some extent that is true, just like most men aren't rich and famous enough to date a super model. There is that factor, but there is more than that.

Even if we could afford such a car, would we really chose to own one? What would it really be like? I will tell you. One, you can never be comfortable with it. You will always worry, worry that as hot as it is, someone will steal it away from you. Worried that someone will run a shopping cart into it. Worried it will get wrecked. Always worried, because it is too remarkable to just enjoy and be happy with.

Also, it is expensive. The insurance is crazy. It's high maintenance, expensive parts and up keep. And impractical. Can't do anything real with it because it is so exotic and fragile

No, realistically men like their Hondas and Chevys and Fords. They are HAPPY with them. But don' t think that if a Ferrari pulls up along side they aren't going to check it out. They are going to look and say, “Wow, look at that thing!” But if someone asked them, “Would you trade your beloved Mustang GT for a Ferrari and all that would go with owning it, most would be tempted but in the end they would say, “No, I got a good thing going here. Not going to mess it up.”

It is the same with women.

Looking at a hot girl is like looking at a hot car, but when we think about being with her, it's just like the hot car, a fantasy; but the reality wouldn't be that great. You'd always be paranoid that she would leave you for some Brad Pitt type. A woman like that is always getting offers from other men. Do you trust her enough and are you confident enough in her love that she wouldn't find someone better than you?

You talk about your insecurities about your body. Do you have any idea how nuts and paranoid my flabby ass would be if I was dating Angelina Jolie? I would be insane with jealousy, afraid that any minute she would find a better looking man and leave me for Brad Pitt. I would not be able to even feel safe or secure or content in her love for me. You never want your woman to be significantly hotter than you or "out of your league," so to speak, because you will always be waiting for the day she will wake up and realize she can do better.

Men look at hot girls like they look at hot cars. They like the idea of them but not the reality. In reality they want a match for themselves, a normal girl for a normal guy, one they can feel comfortable and secure with, and when they have that wonderful feeling of love and satisfaction they would not trade it for the hottest girl in the world because enticing as that may be, she is but a dream and dreams are not meant to last.

I loved you because with you I had a feeling I had never felt before and it was wonderful and I wanted it to last the rest of my life. I was in love with you and I thought you were beautiful, not just your flesh but your soul.

I have dated many women since we broke up. Many are good people but I compare all of them to you and none measure up. I have had sex with many of them but it is always a mediocre experience. It's like I am going through he motions but I am never really into it. It is flat, empty and unfulfilling. After the magical lovemaking I remember with you, it's just sex, and not even good sex.

But anyway, the point of this is to make you understand that you should not think so poorly of yourself. If nothing else, read these words and believe them as they are the truth. I loved you just the way you were. I picked out the gorgeous ring and gave it to you because I wanted to marry you and spend the rest of my life with you just the way you were. I have never been as happy in my entire life as those few months when you loved me, and I have never been so sad in my life as when you took that away from me.

You are a beautiful and tragic person, a scarred and scared soul that deserves to be loved, if only you will have the courage to let someone love you and trust them when they say they do. You are not perfect. Who is? I am very flawed myself. I have many good qualities but I have many flaws as well. Everyone has those insecurities. There were times when I thought to myself how lucky I was to have you and how scared I was that you would leave me, as I wondered, and still wonder, if I will ever find something so wonderful again. Fears that turned out to be well founded.

Just know, J, that if nothing else there was a man that loved you just the way you were and that you don't have to be anything more. If you want to get thinner, get a boob job or whatnot for yourself, hey, do so if it would help your self esteem, but you are a beautiful person just the way you are.

Know that J. Read this sentence over and over if you have too.

Leif loved me just the way I am. Leif wanted to marry me and spend the rest of his life with me.

Keep telling yourself that 'til you start to believe it.

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The photo of Leif was taken April 4, 2004 in Manhattan, Kansas. I never liked that particular pair of glasses. Leif always wanted fashionable specs. I thought these were just kind of "evil" looking. They seemed to small for him, to me, and were bent so that they fit his face pretty much like a glove. I still have his last pair of glasses. What am I to do with them? I donated the others to the Lions Club vision program, but the last pair he had, I can't quite bring myself to part with.

Looking for Love After the Divorce

We moved from Puerto Rico to Manhattan, Kansas at the end of the summer in 1992 when Peter W. retired from the army. We were very sorry to have to move Leif between his junior and senior years of high school, just as we'd had to do with Peter A., but Peter was more outgoing and made the transition more smoothly and happily than Leif did. Puerto Rico was the first place he had blossomed socially and it was hard for him to leave behind a great group of friends, and hard to leave K., his first real love, too, even though the romance between them had not developed as he had hoped.

When he entered his senior year of high school at Manhattan High School, he found more disappointments when he tried out for a part in the musical and didn't get one, after his triumph as Kenicke in "Grease" at Antilles High School. He was naturally reserved and shy like I was at that age, so he didn't make friends at MHS, other than Jason Palenske. The second semester, he was already taking classes at Kansas State University part time so he spent little time on campus and never really became a part of the social scene there or did much of any dating.

As a student at KSU, though, he did find women to date and I can remember several of the ones he dated. However, it was Nikko, who he met at the SCA Lilies War, that won his heart. He has later written that he didn't have the same kind of overwhelming love for her that he later felt for J., but it was clear that the two of them were in love and were like two frisky puppies together. I've already written about their courtship, marriage and divorce and continuing friendship, and that he was terribly hurt and broken up over the end of their marriage, which lasted from October 1995 to October 2002, though they were separated the last two years of that time.

Back in Manhattan when he was medically retired from the army, he was initially too depressed to date, but eventually he did get back into the dating scene, which he hated, and he found it hard to find women his age and with his level of experience in that town, which was full of young college students.

However, in 2002, he was in love again, this time with someone who had been a friend for some years. I never met L. and Leif only talked to me about her once or twice and only sent any comments about her in email to me once. That email is below.

Leif professed in email to several women over the years that he wanted a marriage like Peter W. and I have, one with love, affection, loyalty, commitment, and being there for each other for a lifetime. He said he wanted a woman like me, which I found very flattering. However, he was not willing to do what Peter W. and I have done to make a relationship like that work. He wanted to continue to be aloof when he pleased, spend as he liked, drive dangerously, drink too much, and not make himself the kind of long-term mate prospect a woman like me would look for. He seemed to think that if he just found the right person, it would all fall into place. I once asked him what he was willing to make it work. Sometimes he seemed to think he would make changes, and other times he basically said a woman would have to accept him as he was (which is probably the truth), yet those things about him made it harder to find someone who could love all of him and not just the wonderful qualities he did have.

As with others, the romance he hoped for with L. did not happen. I never found out any more about it.

And the time from when he came back to Manhattan from the army so terribly depressed and when he was in love with L. was a time we were terribly worried about him because of his depression. The email below was one he wrote in response to one from me,.

Date: Tue, 21 May 2002 23:37:18 -0500

My Dear Son,

Maybe I'm just worrying for nothing (a common problem among mothers), but I am concerned about you when you say that nothing much matters to you or that there isn't much you care about. If I take that literally, it means there is little in life that you enjoy or find worthwhile, and that's a very sad thought, given all there is to enjoy and be thankful for. Sure, there are also lots of things in life that, to use a phrase you might use, "suck," but I hope there is some joy in your life, that there are things you care about and some goals or dreams you care about achieving. If you really are depressed to the point where you have
little interest in all the things available to you, or the possibilities life offers, it really is time to get some help. I love you and care about you and your happiness with all my heart. I am happy when you are animated and seem to be enjoying something. I hope for the best for you in life.

Love, Mom

His reply on May 22, 2002:

I suppose it is just that I have become very jaded. It is not that there is nothing in life for which I have any passion but rather that I have been consistently disapointed by the impossibility of attaining any of the things that I have had any passion for. So I suppose as a defense mechanism I have just stopped dreaming of things that cannot be easily attained. There are some things I have passion for but this is where you would find yourself in a position of conflict because the things I have passion for are the things that, in yours and Dad's min's, I should avoid. Things like new motorcycles and computers and Playstation Twos. All the things that I am interested in or have any passion for are the things I am constantly getting shit about from you or dad because it is not smart financially.

I think I told you once that I would be homeless before I would sell my motorcycle. That is still true. And I really couldn't care less how financially irresponsible it might be to buy a $10,000 motorcycle when I am still paying off debts from other toys. You want to know what I have passion for? There it is. The few dreams that I have left that are not so farfetched that they are not worth pursuing, and things like those motorcycles are tangible dreams. Screw delaying gratification till it makes good financial sense. You can't imagine how tempted I was to go down and buy one of those bikes now during their spring sales event. They are sending bikes out for $49 a month. Sure, in the long run you get screwed financially, but to me, even if I paid $20,000 for that $10,000 bike I still wouldn't have felt like I got ripped off because there is no amount of money that is too much to pay for a great motorcycle. I am sure you cannot understand that but that does not surprise me. Trying to explain a motorcycle to a non-rider is like trying to explain sex and orgasm to a virgin. You simply can't understand.

But other than that I do have a few things that I care about. I care about gaming and I care about Zaon. It is a very promising and interesting thing. Sure, I will likely never see a cent out of it but I am contributing to the creation of a product that I value. I also dig the computers. I am sitting here typing this on one of my 3 monitors or my "global domination center" of a PC. I dig the PS2 and I am getting into fixing up my car.

I am passionate about driving. Fortunately I have the sense to hit the backroads when I get the urge to really push it. There is nothing liek the sensation of having the car slide on all 4 tires at the very edge of adhesion, and you know the tires have got to be screaming like banshees but you can't tell because you can't hear anyhting over the 1500 watt stereo. Or leaning into a curve at 135 MPH with the throttle wide open, still accelerating as the bike rockets along a deserted Kansas highway.

I have passion in my life but it is not the sort of thing you generally would want to hear about.

On a tamer note (but don't tell her that) I have passion for L. I shouldn't, but I dare say I love her. Probably have for years. But like so many other dreams I fear that she will be yet another to slip through my grasp. Hopefully not. And I have certainly not given up, quite the contrary. I am playing my cards slowly and with great calulation but I am nevertheless going for broke.

But anyway, there you have my answer to your concerns. It makes me wonder which would trouble you more, me not expressing any passion, or me expressing passion for all the dangerous, expensive, and irresponsible things that you disapprove of and can't understand.

Leif

That is a portrait of a depressed man.

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The photo of Leif was taken in our old stone house in Manhattan, Kansas on February 16, 2002, three months before he wrote this email, in one of his more sociable and silly moods.

Helping Daddy - Manhattan, Kansas - July 1976

I think this is such a cute photo. How small Leif looks! He was a year-and-a-half old. They were loading or unloading the car and they had also been washing it. That was our old blue 1973 Pinto station wagon. We sold our Mustang V-8 when we left Germany that summer and ordered the Pinto to be delivered in the USA when we arrived. We were used to the power of the Mustang and just about killed ourselves going through an intersection when we needed some quick power and didn't have it with the four cylinder Pinto. By the time Leif was born we were well adjusted to the anemic motor. Leif loved to go outdoors and washing the car was lots of fun.

Over the years, the little boy grew older and there were many times he helped his dad, whether it was ripping the staples out of the upstairs floor in the old stone house, digging holes for fence posts, disassembling the Schrank and putting it back together again, or hanging paintings on the high walls of our Florida house. By that time, instead of being the little tiny guy, he was towering over his dad.

What a day of ups and downs is like

This morning when I woke up Peter W. said he had been awake for a long time, thinking about Leif and his car, his beloved Mazda RX-8 and how it had been a kind of validation for him, something he had achieved, and that it had probably become a burden, a millstone of debt for the car payments and insurance.

How true that was! Leif struggled to pay his car payments, insurance and rent, credit bills, and still have money to eat or do anything else. Of course, those were poor choices he made, spending too much for too many cool things he couldn't afford, but by the time he died and was in over his head and didn't want to tell anyone, he must have felt as though he was working just to pay debts and nothing more.

So, I was thinking about that and walked out of the bedroom to the kitchen and the first thing that caught my eye was a set of mugs he and Nikko had given us for Christmas around 2000. For some reason, the combination made me very sad. I looked at the front door and it hit me hard that he wouldn't be coming for Christmas. Of course I have known that all along, but knowing it and having it hit me like that are not the same. No sending home his favorite cookies with him. No giving him presents. No hugs. No teasing from him. Never again. I started crying and went to my office.

I thought how I wished I could just cry my heart out on someone's shoulder and tell them how much I miss him, and then I thought about Peter Anthony's admonition not to "wallow in grief,' and his statement that he didn't want to "inflict" his grief on anyone else, and realized that I basically feel that, too, so I got control of myself as I always do and got to work.

Work has immense value. I got busy sending out Christmas letters, answering email, and later, working with Peter W. to translate our annual newletter into German and was so absorbed I was feeling entirely normal and reasonably happy. My feelings about Leif's absence were pushed to the background.

In the afternoon, I went to the Macintosh computer club meeting and was completely absorbed in the program and reading stuff on my laptop on the side. I walked out talking to a genealogist who belongs to the club and telling her about how genealogists could use Google Translate and then drove home.

Halfway there "Leif's" car drove right past me and I burst into tears. Silver Mazda RX-8s are not common, and even less so in our small community. It isn't often we see one here, and basically, the only one I ever did see right in town was his. It was as if things had come full circle from this morning, with Peter W. talking about that car (which was repossessed after he died) and now I was seeing it.

Of course I know it probably wasn't the same car, and even if it was, it was no longer Leif's, but it's those unexpected occurrences that surprise us and start the chain of emotions flowing.

I was five minutes from home and by the time I got there, I was fine again, ready to enjoy dinner with Peter W. and spend the rest of the evening finishing up sending out the newsletters . . . until I saw the photos of Leif with Peter A. on his first Christmas Eve.

That's how the days go, ups and downs, happy and sad, some happier than others. Work is the best distraction, having something constructive to do, being with other people and involved.

I hope I don't see that car tomorrow.

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This is a photo Leif took of his car not so long before he died.

Leif's First Christmas - December 24, 1975 - Age 11 months

Christmas for a baby is both exciting and bewildering. All of those new things to see. Lights and pretty shiny things on a tree, fascinating packages under it. People taking pictures. Different music. Leif was taking it all in, looking rather serious and contemplative a lot of the time. Lots of kids are scared of Santa. Leif wasn't that year or the next but when we lived in Nurnberg and he was almost three he was!

These photos were taken in our old stone house in Manhattan, Kansas on Christmas Eve 1975 when Leif was eleven months old. Peter A. got a Hot Wheels set with cars and a track and he was having a great time with it. Leif was mesmerized and trying to figure it out. I got a kick out of them together, Peter having a great time showing Leif how fast the cars could go.

Those were beautiful Christmases, when the boys were young. Sometimes I think parents get so wrapped up in all the time and preparation needed for the holidays that they don't realize how magical they are. It's easy to take our children's wonderment and all it adds to Christmas for granted. Don't. It goes by all too fast and you'll wish those days were back again.

Leif & His Dad by La Creperie - Quebec City, Canada - August 1989 - Age 14

Yesterday we saw a classic car show and of course we couldn't help talking about how much Leif would have enjoyed it. There were the usual assortment of muscle cars and 1940s and 1950s classics, lots of Corvettes, and some cool trucks, but it was the DeLoreans and the Jaguar from the 1950s that really caught my eye as something Leif would have appreciated. Those and the drag racers. I wish we could have shared it with him.

Knowing we can no longer share our travels and such events with him makes all the photos of the times we did terribly precious, so photos like this one are important, with each of the memories that go with them.

This is another photo from our trip to Canada the summer of 1989. We really enjoyed all of it, but especially Quebec City, where we marveled at the Le Chateau Frontenac and the magnificent view from the bluff over the St. Lawrence River.

It was there that we saw a musician playing a "glass harmonica" made from glasses filled with different amounts of water. The sounds was quite beautiful and magical. He was selling CDs and I've always wished I had purchased one. Leif found the instrument and the musician fascinating. It was one of the things he photographed in Quebec City.

Quebec City was the place we got a parking ticket because we weren't able to accurately read the signs in French, which apparently gave some reason for not parking there. Leif found that quite amusing. Of course, he didn't have to pay the fine.

This photo was taken outside a restaurant we particularly enjoyed, La Creperie.

Leif was fourteen and a half.

Flaming Out Young

This morning, the conductor of the Women's Chorus I sing with shook her head when we opened up a piece of music and said, ""Mr. Chopin. So many of the great composers died young. They lived hard and burned out, like Mozart. I'm surprised Mozart made it into his thirties. They were brilliant but maybe that worked aganst them."

Someone in the chorus chimed in, "That's still true today," and people started mentioning names like Elvis Presley and Michael Jackson, and others.

I was thinking about Leif. Those people were immensely talented and they achieved great success, so we know about them. But how many more of our brilliant young people who live hard, trying to experience something, trying to figure out how to use their talents, and end up dying young? I've heard too many stories of young men in their early thirties, like Leif, who took their own lives or died of the consequences of their dangerous lifestyles.

Mozart was 35 when he died of a serious fever with rashes and swelling, which at least one medical sleuth says was probably rheumatic fever. Chopin was 39 and died of tuberculosis. Without modern medical care, it may not have been so much their lifestyles as the inability to treat contagious diseases that took their lives. We have to wonder what glorious music they might have continued to give us had they lived a normal lifespan.

We worried about Leif from the time he was about 21 and bought his first motorcycle, driving it like a demon. He admitted to me that he reached speeds over 100 miles an hour. We worried about the way he drove his car, too. I was always glad to know, each and every day, that he was all right. When we all got cell phones about five years ago (Leif had one since 1993, long before most people got them, and paid for it with his salary), I always kept mine with me, including at night on my nightstand, in case something happened to him. More than once, it did. We feared he would kill himself or injure himself terribly in a crash. It was a daily fear.

He had two minor motorcycle accidents and two minor car accidents, a car accident that totaled his Dodge Stratus and hurt his neck, and then the motorcycle that shattered his collarbone and required surgery. Ironically, that one was not because he was speeding. He was on a street in Tampa, near his apartment, going back to work after lunch and a white Cadillac swerved in front of him. To avoid ramming into the back of it, he had to lay the bike down and he hit the pavement instead. How well I remember the phone calls. How glad I was he was not severely injured and disabled or killed.

Leif did not die directly of disease, like Mozart and Chopin, but he suffered from asthma and depression (and possibly bipolar disorder and PTSD). Without those, he might have been able to sustain his life and deal with all the disasters, disappointments and loneliness. With them and a gun, he succumbed.

He was so bright and talented, had so much he could have given the world, if he had ever found out where and how. How sad that none of what he had to offer remains.
-------------------------------
This glowing and joyful photo of Leif was taken the night before his brother's graduation from the U.S. Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs, Colorado on May 29, 1991. It was a great evening. He was ecstatic. He was 16 years old. He lived to be only 33.

Leif and Lamborghinis

Although Leif loved cars in general, sports cars in particular, and certain ones above the others, I don't think there was ever any car that could quite make it onto the pedestal he had for the Lamborghini Countach or Diablo. He fell in love with the Lamborghinis when he was quite young, before junior high, I think, but by that time he was really enamored and could tell you everything about them. He had a large poster of a black Lamborghini on his bedroom wall when we lived at Fort Sheridan, Illinois, the years from 1986 when he was 11 years old until 1990 when he was 15.

One of the highlights of our time in Chicago (of which there were many) was going to the huge car show where he photographed a lot of fantastic cars. Those that particularly caught his fancy were the concept cars and the Lamborghinis. He would have been in seventh heaven if he could ever have even sat in one. I never knew that he did, but Peter tells me that he got to sit in one at a car show in Hawaii when I wasn't with them, the same show where he met David Hasselhof and saw the "Knight Rider" car, but the surely there would have been a photo.

He took the photo of the white Coutach above at that car show in February 1987 when he had just turned twelve.

At some point (I don't remember when), I gave him a toy black Lamborghini. This wasn't a matchbox car. This one was a about six inches long, a "collector's model," made of metal. He treasured that car, the only Lamborghini he would ever get to own or spend any time with, and I found it among this things after he died and took these photos of it.

His love for the black Lamborghini also inspired me to make that a characteristic of the main character in my middle grade novel, "Imagicat," and Jeff also had the same collector's model. There were other things about Leif that went into the character of Jeff, though Jeff wasn't completely modeled on Leif but rather a fictional composite of several boys.

Leif's Photos of Sports Cars from August 1986 in Oakland, California

Long before he got the Minolta 7000, Leif was taking pictures. The earliest ones I've found were taken the summer we moved from Hawaii to Illinois, and that's probably what got him started wanting a good camera. I no longer remember what camera he was using, but it must have been one that we had and weren't using for Peter W. or me.

These are some of the first photos he took, of sports cars he spotted in Oakland, California, which is where we stayed briefly when we got back to the US mainland. It was in a kind of warehouse district on a military facility and the surrounding area. He was particularly thrilled to spot the unusual stainless steel DeLorean and took quite a few photos of it.

Whether it was looking for them, reading about them, test driving them, making models of them, or owning and driving his own cars, Leif was completely enamored of cool cars from a very early age.

Leif was eleven and a half years old when he took these photos.

Leif's Last and Most Beautiful Car - Mazda RX-8 - December 2005 - April 2008

When Leif wrecked the 2002 Dodge Stratus Coupe, he wasted no time looking for another car. The wreck was on December 23rd, I think, and he had a new car before the first of the year.
He said he had nearly convinced himself to buy a more practical car like a Honda Civic when he spotted his beautiful silver Mazda RX-8 in the used car lot at the dealer where he was looking at new cars. I think it was a 2003 or 2004 model and it was in mint condition, with a stunning red and black leather interior. He had promised himself that he would someday own an RX-8, and here it was, just waiting for him.

Leif had learned some bargaining from his dad and he told the dealer that if he could drive off the lot with the bottom line all-inclusive price being (I THINK it was) $23,000, he had a deal. He had already checked out the loan possibilities and secured one so he could basically just hand over a check. At that point, his credit rating was good. It was a good price, and not a terribly expensive car, and he was making enough money at the time and living with his dad, but it wasn't a practical car, and eventually the monthly payments in addition to his other bills would prove to be difficult for him.

However, at the time he bought it he was ecstatic. He took a lot of photos of the car, even up until just three weeks before he died, and he tried to keep it in pristine condition, although he wasn't much better at "housekeeping" inside his car than he was in his apartment.

He was still living with his dad for about six weeks after he bought the car, and then moved to the first of three apartments he lived in in Tampa. He loved driving that car and it was a joy to see him drive up in it when he came to visit us.

When we drove to his apartment on April 10, 2008, the day we found him dead in his apartment, seeing both his RX-8 and his silver Honda motorcycle parked outside his apartment building and knowing none of us had been able to contact him for about 31 hours, we knew something was terribly wrong.

The sheriff's deputies on the scene advised us not to leave his car or cycle in the parking lot there. They felt they would be theft targets after the neighborhood had seen him taken from his apartment in a body bag. We had the cycle towed to our house and since neither of us could drive a stick shift, were grateful to our neighbor Bill for driving it to our home about 30 miles away. We couldn't keep it, and we didn't have the title to it so we couldn't sell it. The only option was to let it get repossessed. It was towed away to an auction company on my birthday, May 24, 2008. It was both very sad and a relief to see it go. On the one hand, it was a beautiful car that Leif had treasured and while it was in our garage, I sat in it several times and thought of him, but on the other hand, it also made me sad to see it there. It brought tears to my eyes to think of all the times I watched for him to come driving up, or walked out to the car to say goodbye and saw him in it, and then think I would never see him in it again.

It was sold at auction and the money paid off most but not all of the loan Leif had on the car, one of many debts he left unsettled.

Leif, the man who loved cars, who made a hobby of going to car dealerships to see them and test drive them; Leif who drove like a race driver and had little regard for speed limits; Leif, the man who got his dream car, had left it behind, had left us behind, had gone without saying goodbye.
--------------------------------

The photos are, from the top:
1. Leif took this self portrait on November 21, 2007, in his motorcycle jacket, with his iPhone.
2. Leif as he looked on December 24, 2005, right after he wrecked the Dodge Stratus and right before he bought the RX-8.
3. The RX-8 being towed away for auction on May 24, 2008.
4. Leif in the RX-8 showing the interesting way the doors opened on January 4, 2006, just days after he bought it.
5. Leif standing beside the RX-8 on January 4, 2006.
6. The RX-8, taken by Leif on March 1, 2008, just over a month before he died.

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.