Are you over it yet?

Peter asked me on our bike ride yesterday whether I was "over" Leif's death after four years. I told him no, that I still felt like the man we sat with at a German American Club Christmas Party a couple of years ago whose 17-year-old daughter had committed suicide some fifteen years ago . . . that it still hurt just as much, just not as often.

We didn't continue to discuss it then, but today I asked him whether HE was "over it," and he said he thought he was. But then it occurred to me that so often we use words in different ways. What did "over it" mean to him? So I asked.

He said he still thinks of Leif "all the time" and misses him, but that life must go on and that he was able to enjoy our trip to Germany.

I guess my definition is different. I knew all along that life had to go on, and since Leif died I've helped take care of my mother through a broken back and a broken hip, and now am helping her with another move. We've traveled to Egypt, South America, Alaska, Germany, India and Russia since Leif's death, and I've enjoyed the trips. Most of each day I'm busy and functioning well. I don't dwell on his death the way I did for the first three years after he died. I cry more rarely, but I still do get tears in my eyes, and once in awhile grief still comes back for a pity party.

If being "over it" means being able to function and enjoy life most of the time, I guess I am . . . but if being "over it" means it no longer hurts or affects me, or that I no longer miss him, or that I no longer question and wonder why, no, I am not "over it," and I don't think I ever will be.

There is something so integral to one's life about being a parent, about loving someone so completely, that even if we can eventually let go of the daily depths of grief, we can never really let go of the person we love and miss so much.

I was thinking just today, again, of all Leif's things I still have and what to do with them when there he had no family to give them to, no children to wonder about their father, no grandchildren who would like having his things.

I was thinking of all the memories that we cherish, how glad I am to have them, and yet how hard it sometimes is to remember and know what we have lost.

There are so many days I'd like to write on this blog but find no time. The demands of life have closed in and taken away the time I used to spend each day here with "Remembering Leif," and it may seem to the casual reader of the blog as though I am no longer remembering as often or as deeply, but that would be untrue.

I'm glad I had the time in the first two years after Leif's death to write more often, even daily, to be with him in my mind's eye and share those moments in some inner way with him. Now those moments are fewer, but not because I think of him any less.

I think Peter, too, wishes for more of that time. He checks the blog every day and waits to see whether I've written anything new, tells me I should write something, even if it is short. He may be "over it," but he's not over wanting to see the photos and read about our son.

This photo of Peter and Leif was taken in the back yard of our old stone house in Manhattan, Kansas, in June 1976 when Leif was a year-and-a-half old. He had been playing in the little wading pool and gotten tuckered out, so he climbed up on daddy and fell asleep in the sun, all cuddled up, safe and warm. He must have felt so snuggled up and loved . . . and he was. It's a precious moment, to have a little boy asleep on you like that. They both were so young then.

At Bedtime They Were Mine

I loved bedtime for my boys, and not because they'd soon be in bed and I'd have time for myself and Peter W., though I enjoyed that, too, but because it was a special time together. During the day, I had "competition" from friends, play, television, and school on their part, and household chores, cooking, work, shopping, and more on my part. Bedtime was just us, no distractions, a time apart. After they were bathed and in their pajamas, I'd cuddle up and read to them, and after that, cuddle in the dark and talk. That was always the time when they'd talk about things that really mattered, the things that were on their minds, things that happened to them, what hurt their feelings, what scared them, what they had questions about, their dreams, the future. It was magic and sweet.

After that, I'd sing to them. Sometimes each one separately, but more often, once Leif was about two years old, I'd sit on the floor in the hallway between their rooms and sing to them.

It astonishes me that with the literally thousands of photos we have of our boys and our family, there is not one single photo I can find of me singing to them, or cuddling in bed with them, or singing with my guitar. I can picture those times in my mind, but no one else will ever see them now.

This photo of Leif asleep on a train in Europe the summer of 1977 is something I took. He was so little and sweet, though very tall for his age at two-and-a-half. We took a long train trip that summer, from Germany to Norway, back south to Paris and the Riviera. The boys slept on trains and in hotels, and it was a great time for us. I posted a photo of the two boys cuddled up in a hostel bed in Norway. But no photos of me with them.

I think so many of today's children don't have a "bedtime," not in the sense of a time to go to bed, or in the sense of a comforting and loving ritual they can count on. So many are allowed to stay up way too late and are tired the next morning. Even with a regular bedtime I had a hard time getting my boys up to go to school. They slept soundly and didn't want to wake up!

I wish I had a list of all the books I read to them and all the songs I sang to them. I'm trying to make a list of the songs. I'll probably be able to remember a few of the books. I'll have to post those lists when I think I've exhausted my memory of things to add to them.

Most of the time the boys were cooperative about going to bed, and I think that the pleasant ritual and the affection and cuddling made it something enjoyable instead of something to fight against. However, it wasn't universally that way. When Peter A. was about four he would go to bed just fine, but then in a few minutes start calling that he needed a drink of water, or had to go to the bathroom, or saw a monster outside his window.

Leif went through a period where after we'd gone through the bedtime cuddling and I hugged and kissed him good night and went downstairs, he would wait about five minutes and then sneak down the stairs after me. I'd put him back in bed and down he would come again. This would go on repeatedly until I had to be very stern with him or put in in his Zip-a-Babe harness so he couldn't get out of bed. Oddly, as I've written before, he didn't seem to mind that, seemed to find it a relief that he couldn't get out of bed. The "getting out of bed" period didn't last long, just a month or so.

I missed those bedtime routines when the boys got into high school and I think they did, too.

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Four years ago tonight we were having dinner here with Leif, his last birthday dinner, a day before his birthday because he had to work on his birthday, the evening shift. Little did we know it would be the last birthday dinner we would share with him

Songs that Speak

Today was one of those days that I heard songs lyrics that brought Leif to mind, not because he played those songs, but because they spoke of the life and feelings he had. Kris Kristofferson's "For The Good Times" seemed to pour out the kind of feeling Leif might have had for his lost loves, "make believe you love me one more time, for the good times." How sad those times were gone.

i don't normally turn on the radio, or even music. First of all, Peter usually has the television on so I don't like competing sounds, but I also treasure quiet and I'm usually working on something and would only be distracted by music. Music is very involving to me. it isn't just background sound. I want to really listen to it. So most of the time when I encounter songs like this, it's because Peter has turned on the radio in the car or I'm somewhere with piped in music, or it's in a television show. The pool where we swim has a soft rock radio station on all the time, so I often hear songs there that make me think of Leif and his life. So many songs are about love and love lost. They all have so much more meaning, and so much more sadness, for me now.

I have a CD of music that is supposed to help lull you to sleep. It's beautiful, haunting music, very soft and dreamy, and I like it, but for some reason, it often brings tears to my eyes because it makes me think of Leif. I have tried to contemplate what it is about this music that I associate with him, because I know he never heard it and I bought the CD after his death. I think I know what it is. There is something about the music that sounds as though it should be accompanied by beautiful photos of the cosmos, photos like those taken by the Hubble Telescope. They should be carrying us. me, though space. And that's why I hink of Leif. He had a marvelous slide show of Hubble space photos on his computer and he loved space. i associate that with him and I imagine him traveling through space, seeing at last a place his soul wanted to go. At least it's a lovely idea, whether it could possibly be true or not. The music, though, makes me miss him.

Music is so powerful.

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This photo of Leif looking so young and vulnerable was taken in Japan when he was five or six years old. I wish that I could hug him one more time.

The Importance of Sleep

Today I read an article about a British study of teenagers and sleep that showed that teens who had an established bedtime at 10:00 p.m. were less likely to be depressed than those whose parents allowed them to stay up until midnight or later. The speculation was that continual sleep deprivation is likely to lead to depression and a rise in suicidal thoughts and suicide. This is really no surprise, as the link between sleep deprivation and depression is well established. One of the problems with adults is finding out whether depression causes difficulties sleeping, or whether lack of sleep causes depression, though I suspect both are the case in a kind of vicious circle.

Our family unfortunately has a history of insomnia, which is bad enough when you don't have to get up early and go to work daily, but is far worse when you can't sleep later or during the day to make up for it. Leif suffered from insomnia, but beyond that, he didn't like to go to bed. He would stay up until the wee hours of the morning watching television and playing online computer games, which he loved, but that hyped him up so he couldn't sleep. Then he tried to drug himself to sleep with beer.

One reason Leif didn't like to go to bed at a decent hour despite the fact that he had to go to work was the family night owl gene, which nearly all of us seem to have, but two other factors were the just plain bad habit of going to bed really late (one that I have, too) and the fact that there wasn't anything attractive about the bed when he had to go to bed alone. Leif was a man who liked to cuddle up and there was no one for him to cuddle up with much of his adult life, and certainly not the last months of it, though he tried hard to find love.

Continual sleep deprivation has also been linked to weight gain, and Leif also had a problem with that.

Enough sleep would not have solved his many other problems, but he certainly would have felt better physically and mentally if he had slept regularly and long enough. Perhaps life would not have seemed quite so bleak or his depression so deep. The night before he died, in the early morning hours of April 9, 2008, he had stayed up visiting with friends and drinking. Lack of sleep and alcohol both increase depression and impair judgement. Could it have been as simple as him saying to himself, drunk and worn out, that it wasn't worth getting up in the morning to go to work just to try to pay his debts? We will never know, but I can conceive of it.

I look back at all the photos of his life, and I am grateful for all the smiles and joy in his childhood and teen photos, and I'm glad I made sure he got enough sleep in those years when I had some control over it.

I have been fortunate in my life that sleep deprivation has made me tired at times, but not depressed. I hope it never will. I am also fortunate that I no longer have to force myself to get up early every morning no matter how tired I am and go to work, especially since I seem to sleep most soundly after about 3:00 a.m.

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This photo of Leif was taken at Fort Sheridan, Illinois in July 1987. He was 12 years old.

Leif & Peter Anthony - Sagamihara, Japan - June 1981 - Age 6

I wish I still remembered the circumstances of this photo. I think it was probably the last time these two were even able to both get on a couch to sleep at the same time, as Leif was a very tall six year-old and Peter Anthony was twelve. This was in our living room in our quarters at the Sagamihara Family Housing Area in Japan. But why were they there?

There are so many photos without notes on them, but at least this one had a place and a date. How many times we snap photos thinking we will remember . . . and the years pass, and we don't.

I wonder if I'm posting photos of the boys sleeping because I dreamed of Leif recently, and so did my niece, Brenda. Why now, when Leif has been gone nearly a year? Why the two of us? Is he with us somehow now?