Jerri and Leif - Manhattan, Kansas - November 1975 - Age 10 months

My sister Sherie came to visit us in Manhattan, Kansas in November 1975 and took this photo of us out in our backyard, behind our old stone house. The weather was still pretty warm even in November that year, or I wouldn't have had Leif out there barefooted! That was one of the periods when I had shorter hair . . . like Leif, I guess, who hadn't yet grown his full head of hair. He was ten months old then. I was so happy to have my two boys!

Not Always a Happy Child

Peter W. remarked to me yesterday that when he looks at this blog, he sees that Leif had such a good life as a child, was such a happy child. I answered that one reason it looks that way is that we are usually likely to photograph people when they are smiling and happy, so that's not always an accurate picture of the rest of their lives.

Leif did have a good childhood, but he wasn't always smiling and happy. Like any child he had his ups and downs, disappointments and frustrations. I photographed some of those moments, too, and I have pictures of him looking serious, contemplative, bewildered, pouting, and a variety of other expressions, especially when he wasn't really aware of the camera with someone telling him to smile. When you think about it, why do people have to tell us to smile in photographs? Because we want photos of people smiling. They are more pleasing, generally. However, if it was natural to smile for the camera, or we felt like doing it, no one would have to tell us to.

Leif had the usual assortment of childhood tantrums, upsets, and hurt feelings, though as he grew, he was more and more self-contained and unlikely to reveal much about them. When he became a man, he had almost completely erased showing much emotion or allowing his hurt or misery, or even anger, to show, though he felt them deeply.

As an adult, he took many self portrait shots and usually was not smiling in them. I've posted some of them here. Although I like posting the childhood photos of Leif that show him happy, even joyous, perhaps in the interests of a more well-rounded view of him, I should post some others, like the one above.

This shot was taken of Leif in the backyard of our old stone house in Manhattan, Kansas, in July 1976, shortly before we moved to Charlottesville, Virginia. He was one-and-a-half years old. He's climbing onto the glider on our swingset. Little mister adventurous, barefoot and all. He looks so serious!

No More Christmas Presents for My Leif

This January 1976 photo of Leif playing with the rocking horse he got for Christmas 1975, his first Christmas when he was eleven months old, and so many other Christmas photos of him opening presents or joking around with the family through the years, bring it home to me so forcefully that he won't be here to open any gifts this year, or any year from now to the end of our lives. I don't look for presents for him any more, though I can't help but notice and remark upon things I know he would like, things I wish I could give him.

The holidays and his birthday are particularly hard, as are the monthly reminders, each 9th and 10th, of his death and the day we found him. Tomorrow it will be 20 months since we found him in his apartment. Today it is 20 months since he died. Sometimes I wonder how long I will mark the months that have passed since his death, wonder if I will ever pass those days of the month without remembering. How can the months fly by so fast, taking the time we were with him ever farther into our past, yet the memories seem like yesterday, like he could still just walk through our door.

At a party a couple of nights ago, I hugged a neighbor who lost two children. She asked me how I was doing and I truthfully answered that I was all right most of the time, but not all of it. She said, "It never really gets any easier. You just learn to cope with it. The holidays are the hardest. Even though I have my living son and grandchildren, I will always miss the others. You just have to put on a smile and go on."

Sometimes the smile is real. Sometimes it's a good act.

I'm grateful to have a lot to do, to be busy with real work. It doesn't take away all the sadness but it does keep it at arm's length a good part of the time. It does make me feel useful.

But, it doesn't stop me from thinking, in the interstices, of the eternal question, why? of what we might have done to save him, of what he might have done to save himself, of what we are missing, of what he is missing, of what might have been.

Sadness Amidst the Pretty Colored Lights

I'm very sad tonight. I don't know why it hit me so hard all of a sudden. I think it was driving home from my mother's house at night and seeing all the Christmas lights. I started by telling myself that I could pretend that Leif was still alive, that I could send him a text message or an email, post on his Facebook page. I could pretend he was still living in Tampa and he'd be coming for Christmas. The thought made me smile for a moment or two, even though I knew it was foolishness. Then I started thinking about how denial was one of the stages of grief and wondering whether I had hit that one. I decided I hadn't. I haven't been able to deny Leif's death, no matter how much I might wish to. i haven't done any bargaining with God, either. What good would it do? And I haven't been angry. Why? At whom?

No, I'm just sad. I knew it might hit me sometime during this holiday season. I knew I'd find it hard to deal with Leif not being here, especially without the distraction of grandchildren being here, and without seeing Peter A. and Darlene.

I was talking with Peter W. the other day and saying that since Peter A. was born, I don't think there has been a Christmas that we didn't have more family with us, whether my extended family, or Peter's (when we lived in Germany), or at least one of our sons. The only Christmas that Leif missed (until he died) was the year he was in Bosnia, 1999, and Peter A. wasn't with us, either, but we did have a large family gathering around us in Kansas. So, it's just that one year that we missed seeing both of our sons for Christmas, until now. Peter A. and his family were here last year. This will be the second without either of our sons, but it's vastly different. In 1999, we knew that Leif was alive and serving his country in uniform. He could send email, and we knew we'd get to see him again.

This year, there's no hope of seeing him again, no way to fool myself, no way to make Christmas seem right.

Peter put up a beautiful tree on Sunday, and today he put up the outside lights. They are very pretty, and I do love seeing all the lovely little colored and white lights. Christmas should be a time of happiness, love and hope, but it's hard to feel the same way I used to, hard to realize Leif will not be coming.
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This photo of Peter W. and Leif in front of a toy store in Nurnberg, Germany was taken 32 years ago in December 1977. Leif would be three years old in a month. It was during the holiday season of the one year we lived in Nurnberg, and it was so much fun to walk through the walls of the old city into the heart of town, see the Christkindlmarkt (The Christmas Market) near the Frauenkirche (the cathedral) in the square, have a piece of cake at a bakery, and visit the toy stores. The German toy stores were new to the boys then and they were magical. They loved them! There's nothing like children to make Christmas special. They are still so excited about it, so full of wonder.

Leif in Pacific Grove, California - July 1980 - Age 5

In his 33 years, Leif traveled many places as an army brat and many he saw only once, but a place he visited more times was the Monterey-Pacific Grove area of California during the years his Oma (paternal grandmother, Ellen Garretson) lived there. These photos were taken on one of those trips, in July 1980 when he was five years old and Peter Anthony was eleven.

The boys liked to go walk on the beach and play in the sand. There wasn't much for them to do at Oma's house except watch television, so we tried to get out of the house and go places together. Oma liked the beach, too, especially at sunset. We also took a lot of walks along the seashore path where there was no beach, only rocks, like these at Lovers Point. That was a great place for the boys (and Peter W.) to climb around like mountain goats.

Sometimes we went to visit Ellen at Christmas time and then we would drive or walk around looking at all the Christmas lights. There were some beautiful and elaborate displays we all enjoyed.

We visited Ellen before we moved to Japan, which was when these photos were taken. We were on our way, moving from Germany to Japan, and wouldn't see her again until we lived in Hawaii and she came to visit us about four years later. We weren't back in Pacific Grove with Leif until the summer of 1985, but we visited her every year at least once, sometimes twice, between 1986-1990 and then 1992-1997 when we moved her to the 710 N. 9th Street house in Manhattan, Kansas. Leif knew his Oma much better than Peter Anthony did, because Peter didn't see her on the trips we took after he left for the Air Force Academy. He did see her when he came to visit us in Kansas with his family after 1997.

Leif was a good traveler, adapted easily, or at least it seemed so, and enjoyed seeing new places and things. Looking back, though, I think he felt in some sense cut off from the world except for his dad and me, because we were the constants, always with him, and everything else kept changing. Because of our moves, he had to leave friends behind and those connections were broken. I wonder if it made it hard for him to make friends and commit himself to friendships because of the sense of loss when leaving them.

The sweater Leif is wearing in the photo where he's climbing on the rocks is the one that Peter W's Aunt Käthe made for him.

Oma died in Kansas in September 2002.

Leif Playing Volleyball in Puerto Rico - Fort Buchanan - April 19, 1991 - Age 16

As I mentioned in my addition to yesterday's post, though I don't remember Leif playing football, I do remember him playing volleyball a few times, most notably this time in our back yard in Puerto Rico. He looks like a young Tarzan (that's him from the back in the rolled-up jeans), doesn't he? In the group photo, you can see the ball at the top middle of the picture.

If my memory is correct, this photo was taken when he and some of his buddies decided to throw a birthday party for his friend Lennie T. There was a great group of friends that came and they had a terrific time. In addition to the volleyball, they also had a silly string and shaving cream fight, and I think the object of the latter was to get Lenny as full of shaving cream as possible.

I think that the two years Leif was in high school in Puerto Rico were when he was the most outgoing and social in his whole life, after the first rough month he had there. I know it was when he felt most accepted and had the largest group of friends.

Leif and Football

During this fall season of football madness I'm reminded how little interest either of my sons had in the game. Even their dad didn't show much interest in it until we moved back to Manhattan, Kansas in 1992 and the Wildcats had a winning team. It seems that we always had a football, and periodically their dad would suggest that they go throw it around to each other, but that was about the extent of football at our house. We didn't watch games much, either.

Thus this is kind of a rare photo of Leif, with the green Nerf football. There were about three shots taken during that same afternoon, and I can only think of one other picture of him with a football in his hands. This picture was taken in our yard at Am Römer 9 in Sachsen bei Ansbach, Germany. You can tell it was already pretty chilly that October as Leif was wearing a warm jacket. He was four-and-a-half years old.

Even as a high school student and as an adult, Leif showed practically zero interest in football, and although he knew who some of the well-known players were, he couldn't really discuss the games, players or the season with any real background or enthusiasm.

I've often wondered why this was so. He was enthusiastic about soccer, but never showed any interest in playing football, basketball (despite his height), or baseball, or any other games involving a ball. Aside from soccer, about the only sports he participated in were discus and javelin throwing in junior high school, swimming (primarily because we taught him and took him to the pools and beaches). The two giant exceptions to this were judo, in which he earned his first degree black belt at the age of fourteen, and the sport of fighting in the SCA.

As an adult, it would have been good for him to have some physical sport outlet to help keep him in shape and raise his endorphins, but he preferred riding a motorcycle and playing computer and online video games. He did have a set of weights but I have no idea whether he used them.

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Peter W. tells me that Leif used to play touch football in the yard across the street from us with some of the neighborhood kids when he was in junior high, but I have no memory of this whatsoever. I know he never went to games or talked about it. I know he played volleyball at times, but that and soccer are the only ball games I remember him playing.

He Dreamed a Dream

Leif was a dreamer who dreamed of being a hero, a warrior. Someone who discovered him on Facebook or in this blog and asked to befriend him after death wrote to me that Leif would have liked this blog, that Vikings wanted the songs of their deeds and lives to be sung, to be remembered.

Leif's persona in the Society for Creative Anachronism, SCA, was a Viking pirate. For years SCA was an important part of his life, and he reveled in dressing in his garb, improving his armor and weaponry over the years. He made rattan weapons to fight with and fought many a Sunday battle in the Manhattan City Park (in Manhattan, Kansas), wearing an incredible amount of weight, especially toward this end of the time he lived there when he had the fifty-pound chain mail shirt he made. Several times I went to watch him and take pictures.

He dreamed of being the kind of hero he could perhaps have been in an earlier age, and surrounded himself with both ancient and thoroughly modern weaponry.

I was looking online for information about the Viking songs and sagas and was surprised to discover that they have fragments of ancient Viking songs written in a kind of musical notation using runes, and one site showed both the old runic notation and a modern translation of it. The title of the songs was so completely appropriate, "I Dreamed a Dream," so I decided to try to record it with GarageBand. I wish I had the time and talent to add accompaniment to it, though I have no idea what the Viking sound would have been, beyond the tune. I wonder, too, what the rest of the words were, and whether they, too, would have fit Leif.

The photos I put with the song are ones Leif took of himself on August 7, 2003 when he had just purchased his new armor. He was posing in the living room of the house at 710 N. Ninth Street in Manhattan, Kansas, where he was living at the time. It was a good time for him. I think he had at least somewhat recovered from the breakup of his marriage, he had graduated from Kansas State University that May, and was looking forward to a brighter future. He has just gotten a job at Sykes, which no longer has a call center in Manhattan. Little did he know how his life was about to change, first for the better, as he was so ecstatically in love beginning a couple of months later, and then dashed to pieces when the she left him. I think the period from about May 2003 to February 2004 was one of the happiest of his life, and it shows in his looks. He was so handsome then.

So, my Viking son, although I do not sing your exploits, I do write them and give them to the world.

How could his life end like that?

There are hours when I don't think of it, don't think about him, when I'm absorbed in the moment and the sadness over his death and depression is pushed aside or covered over and I think I'm doing better, much better, that it's time to focus on life and my living family. That feels right and good.

And then, out of the blue, something will remind me of Leif and his death and it floods back and I find myself asking again, with tears in my eye, "how could his life end like that?" I will never know. No matter how many times I think over all that happened to him, all the heartache and disappointment, all the debts he created and all the hopes that were dashed, I will not really fathom it. I look at these photos of that beautiful little boy, so innocent and sweet . . . most of the time; he could have quite a temper . . . and it's not even comprehensible how he could go from that sweet little fellow to the man I saw lying on the floor of his kitchen.

Memories are so bittersweet. I am glad for every one of them, even the bad ones, no matter how much I wish they hadn't happened. Life cannot be without hurt, it seems. Many of my memories are sweet, but thinking of them also makes me feel so acutely that I will never have more, that he is gone forever.

I remember the day we took this trip to Lichtenau, a village not far from where we lived in Sachsen bei Ansbach, about a mile and a half. We could see Lichtenau from our house, especially from the second floor balcony. It's a picturesque place with old half-timbered buildings and a small castle that we explored. I think the boys were as fascinated with these goats as they were with the castle, though. I caught Leif just as he was heading off to explore something else.

Both boys are wearing sweaters that were hand-knit by Peter W's Aunt Kathe, who lived in Stuttgart. This photo was taken in August 1978. Leif was three-and-a-half and Peter Anthony was nine going on ten. August in Germany can be chilly. It was a brisk day but a lovely one for a family outing.

Interesting Study Says Loneliness Can Be Transmitted

This is an interesting article in the Washington Post about a study of loneliness by Christakis and Cacioppo that purports to show that loneliness can be spread from person to person. They theorize that a lonely person interacts with others in negative ways due to their emotions and that affects those they interact with. Lonely people tend to become isolated and loneliness increases. The particularly mention loss of a spouse or a divorce as being a trigger for loneliness and say that loneliness has far-reaching consequences for mental and physical health, bringing with it depression, sleep problems and ill health.

I certainly saw the consequences of loneliness in Leif, and he did become increasingly isolated, except for a very small group of acquaintances. He perked up and seemed a lot happier in a big family grouping, but rarely had that opportunity. He tried hard to find someone to love but did little to cultivate any other kinds of new friendships.

His physical health suffered; his asthma was worse; he gained weight, had insomnia. Feeling worn out and having trouble breathing would feel awful and make it hard to function or be happy and sociable.

It's sad that the breakdown of relationships, even those that are destructive and unhealthy, can cut someone off from the kind of intimate human contact that can prevent loneliness and all that goes with it.

This reminds me of the studies we learned about in psychology of infants who fail to thrive, eat and grow properly because of a lack of touch and human stimulation. I think something similar happens in adults who lack loving touch and human contact and warmth. Something just shrivels up and dies in them.