Star Wars - Missing Leif at the Movie

Yesterday we went to see Star Wars Episode VII - The Force Awakens. We saw it in IMAX 3D, and it was magnificent. It was gripping all the way through, and it had all the classic elements of the tale of freedom against tyranny. It brought back the original stars, and scattered throughout were so many visual and plot references to the earlier films. The special effects were spectacular, and seeing it that large in 3D made it far more so. I enjoyed every minute of it, but at several points throughout the movie I had tears in my eyes or even rolling down my cheeks because I thought how much Leif would have loved it and he wasn't there to share it with.

Originally, we had hoped to go see it with Peter Anthony and Darren, which would have been great full for old times sake, though I would still have missed sharing with with Leif, too, and would have cried for that. I wish we had been able to see it with them.

As it was, I told myself I wasn't only seeing it for me, I was seeing it for Leif, but of course, that's only a nice thought; not in any way realistic.

I grieve for all he has missed, and all he will miss, the movies, the technology, but also what I had hoped for him in life, love, a family, a job that made use of his amazing mind.

If he had persevered, had lived, I don't know whether his life would have gotten better, or just been more misery for him. I don't know whether his health would have continued to deteriorate.

It's nice to think that if he had lived, things would have gotten better, but there's no real evidence that would have been true.

But whatever might have been a different outcome, I know what this one is. This one is missing him. This one is missing sharing something I know he would have loved. This one is missing talking with him about it, his enthusiasm, his insights.

There are so many things inextricably bound to him in my mind. They will always remind me of him and what we have lost.

And so, I completely enjoyed this movie, and completely surrender to the grief of not being able to share at least the discussion of it with him.

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The photo of Peter Anthony and Leif playing with some of their Star Wars toys was taken in October 1979 in Sachsen bei Ansbach, Germany. Leif was four-and-a-half years old.

His Favorite Holiday of the Year

New Years Eve is always tinged with nostalgia and a bit of sadness along with the anticipation of the new year, because it was Leif's favorite holiday. I don't know why, whether it was because of the party atmosphere so unlike other holidays, or the fireworks, which he loved, or something else. He wanted to be celebrating with friends or in a crowd, and most of all, wanted someday to be in Times Square in NYC to watch the ball drop. He never made it. This is our eighth New Years without him.

Our family didn't have any special New Year's traditions, and usually didn't take pictures then. We did stay up to see the new year come in, but that was about it. The most memorable New Years Eve we ever had was when we were living in Sachsen bei Ansbach, Germany, up on the hill where we could look all over the valley and see seven villages. That particular night, there was new fallen snow and a full moon, so everything shown in a soft light. We were watching this from our upstairs veranda, when the fireworks started. We saw the fireworks from all seven villages. How I wish we'd had the video cameras we have today. We don't even have any photos of this magical event. Leif loved it. He was only four or five years old. Perhaps that's what got him started loving New Years.

This photo was taken in January 1977. I no longer remember whether it shows him working with a puzzle he got for Christmas, or whether it was later in the month and was a birthday present. He would have been two years old that January. Bright little fellow that he was, he was already working puzzles. This one was of Oscar the Grouch. It was taken in Charlottesville, Virginia.

Missing Him So Much

Sunday, November 29th I attended a lovely Christmas concert. A part of the program was a sing-along that included "I'll Be Home for Christmas." I couldn't sing it, just as I couldn't sing it seven years ago, the first Christmas without Leif in 2008. I still got all choked up with tears in my eyes, but I couldn't let myself cry. I didn't want to spoil other people's good time, and I was also the "official" photographer for the concert. I had to keep my mind on my task.

But it wasn't easy, and it hasn't gotten easier in the two days since then. Thanksgiving, Christmas, Mother's Day, Father's Day, Leif's birthday. They are always hard. I miss him every day of my life, but I miss him doubly at those times, days we always shared with him throughout his life, with the exception of a very few years when he was gone in the army. But even then, most of the Christmases he was able to come home to be with us, and could still talk to him on the other holidays. I miss the sound of his voice, his laugh, his rascally twinkling eyes. I miss his teasing and his holding forth on any topic.

He would sure have a lot to say about the current presidential race. I wish he were here to say it. He'd have plenty to say about the Middle East mess, too. And strong opinions about the poor treatment of veterans, and the importance of the lives of soldiers. He would understand and agree with "Black lives matter," and he would undoubtedly add, "Soldiers lives matter." We should not waste them!

He would have a lot to say about the events of the day, from support for Planned Parenthood to dash cams for police officers.

And he would be reveling in the upcoming release of the new Star Trek and Star Wars movies, and grinning over the exploits of Super Girl.

There is so much of the world today that would make him angry, and so much he would enjoy, if only he were here. If only. If only. If only . . . .

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This photo was taken December 10, 2006 when we met him and Donna for dinner at a Japanese restaurant in Brandon. He's opening a phone we gave him.

Seven Years and Seven Months - and Missing Him on Veteran's Day

I don't know whether it's because of Veteran's Day or some other unconscious reason, but I've been missing Leif terribly the past two days.

Veteran's Day is so significant because Leif always wanted to serve his country. He wanted to be a pilot but that was denied to him by his poor eyesight. His second choice was to be an Air Force Officer, nonpilot. But that was denied to him because of a failed muscle. His third choice was an army career, but that was denied to him by asthma despite his excellence as a machine gunner.

Being in a soldier, defending his country and his beloved Constitution, was an integral part of his identity. It never left him, even when he was forced into medical retirement from the army after three and a half years of service. It will always be his identity.

Veteran's Day comes this year on the heels of seven years and seven months since he died. It is hard to realize it's been that long. It seems only yesterday he was sitting at my kitchen table, long legs stretched out, talking politics. We still miss him every day, and never know what will trigger an attack of sadness or nostalgia. . . something we see in a movie, something on television, a car like his driving past, someone on a motorcycle, the political process he would have loved to discuss, the new James Bond movie he would have loved to see.

It's hard not being able to share those things with him. It's hard not knowing what to do with what I still have of his things. I finally parted with his bass guitar and his Kramer Floyd Rose guitar. It took me over seven years to do it. My conscious mind knows he isn't coming back for them, but the hidden mind does not accept that. Somewhere in my unconscious it feels deeply wrong and disloyal to sell his prized possessions.

I am proud of Leif's service. Proud that he managed to get through tough infantry basic training on a broken foot. Proud of his tall and soldierly bearing. Proud of his skills. Proud that he persevered even when asthma made it hard for him to breath or run. Proud that he cared about his country. Proud that the studied the Constitution and believed in it, protecting it, from all enemies, foreign and domestic.

I miss you, my son!

The Fallacy of Letting Go

If you read about loss and grief, they say that eventually you reach the stage of acceptance and letting go. I don't believe it. Maybe some people do. Maybe they manage to shut the door on their feelings, or push them aside, or just get so busy with life that they ignore them, but that hasn't happened to me. The stage of anger never happened either.

I started to wonder, what would "letting go" mean, anyway? I tried to find an explanation that made sense to me. It seems, the prevailing viewpoint is, or at least was, that after some period of time, the surviving person will "get over it" and "get on with life" and behave in a "normal way," as though they have healed from the pain of loss.

But the writers that made sense to me were the ones that said that we now know that some people NEVER get over their loss, never get over their grief, but just learn to live and cope with it. That's not letting go. It's just coexisting with your grieving feelings.

Most days I'm not sad, or at least not for long, but there are always triggers that will bring tears to my eyes and the grief comes flooding back in, as though it were just dammed up behind a door and all it takes to let it out is the key to open that door. The key can be something I don't even know will happen, like seeing a car like Leif's, or seeing a news report about the death of soldiers, or remembering him playing with his nieces and nephews, or a host of other things.

If letting go means I can finally and dispose of some of his things that I haven't been able to bring myself to part with for nearly seven-and-a-half years, then perhaps I'm getting closer. After all this time, I still have his billfold intact, but I've finally come to the decision to sell his base and Kramer guitars. It's hard, because yet again, it seems like dismantling a piece of his identity, taking away something he loved and which gave him great pleasure. But, I have finally come to the point where I know that letting them sit untouched does none of us any good, and someone else could have that pleasure in playing them. So, I am now going to sell the guitars.

I don't think, though, that letting go of THINGS is the same as letting go of LEIF. I can't do that. I never will. He is still a daily part of our lives, every day. Like his dad said yesterday, we still have so many of his things, and things he gave us, that we use daily. But it's not just those that remind us of him. It's even just being in this house, remembering where he sat, what his room was like. It's a thousand memories that come back over and over, not always with sadness, but always with connection, with love.

And the lack of that, in the end, the lack of love and connectedness, was what really killed Leif, like a flower that wasn't watered, or a man who felt no one needed him.

I still have and wear the shirt Leif is wearing in this picture. At that time, in 1991, Hypercolor was all the rage. He loved it, found it fascinating. This photo was taken in St. Croix in the U.S. Virgin Islands on October 19, 1991. We were having lunch and he was playing with the shirt, making the smiley face on it and showing off the logo for his grandmother, who took the photo. The shirt is old now, well worn, and no longer has the Hypercolor properties, but I love it for the memories that I will never let go, just as I will never let me son go. I will hold him as close as I can for all my life.

Leif on His Suzuki - Nine Years Ago

Here's a photo I found on Leif's computer. I think it must have been taken by Donna where they lived in Tampa, on September 5, 2006. He was putting on weight, but look at that proud posture. He loved that crotch rocket. Unfortunately, in yet another of his series of bad luck incidents, it was stolen right out of the parking lot.

He rode that thing like he was on a racetrack, admittedly over 100 mph at times. It's a wonder he never had an accident at high speed and really wrecked himself or someone else. The irony was, the accident in which he really got hurt and ended up in the hospital happened a low speed in Tampa going back to work.

Lately we are hearing about all the damage that concussions cause, from IEDs to football, and I can't help but wonder whether that, too, influenced the end of Leif's life. I don't know what kind of micro concussions he may have had due to what he experienced in the army, but I do know that when he had that motorcycle accident in July 2007, his head hit the pavement without a helmet on it, and it was an ugly example of "road rash," as were his hands, as he wasn't wearing motorcycle gloves, either, at the time.

He loved riding his cycles. This was the second of three he owned. The first was a yellow and magenta Yamaha sport bike. The third was a silver chrome Honda, which was a more comfortable ride like a cruiser. I think he felt happier and more alive when he was riding than just about any other time.

A year and seven months after this photo was taken, he would be dead. So many awful things happened in that time; two robberies, his bike accident and surgery, domestic violence against him, financial calamity. It was a heavy load on top of all he had already experienced, but now I am wondering whether he could have handled it differently without the head injuries.

The Summer of 1976

This picture was taken thirty nine years ago in July 1976. We were all so young and happy and vital. Leif was 18 months old, and Peter A. was seven years old. It was a hot July day and we're dressed for it.

We didn't have central AC in the old stone house. There was one large window air conditioner in the living room-dining room, and it more-or-less managed to cool the downstairs. Upstairs we had one more window air conditioner in the front master bedroom. We "hoped" the AC would sort of make it down the hall and into the other bedrooms and bathroom. It was tolerable, but not like central AC.

That was a period when I was doing fabric painting on t-shirts, long before the days when you could buy t-shirts with all kinds of stuff printed on them, or design your own and have them printed by places like CafePress. I also made bead necklaces, none of which compared in style and elegance to all the ones Peter has made in the past few years. Peter has one of those necklaces on, of brown and white beads.

He is wearing a t-shirt that says "The Happy Hun" on a world globe. This was a nickname other JAG officers had for him as a military prosecutor. Peter A. is wearing his own "Sun Boy" t-shirt, that he designed and painted himself. Leif, suitably enough, has no shirt on. At that age, he wasn't much of a fan of clothes.

It was a good summer, the one before Peter A. started first grade. Many changes took place that fall. That summer was one of the happiest times.

Leif at 20 Months Old - A Joyful, Curious Little Boy

Once upon a time he beamed with joy. Once upon a time he was a happy little boy. Once upon a time he turned that headlight smile on me.

I miss that joyful little boy. I miss the teen he became and the man he was.

This is another photo I had never seen. I found it in my sister's photo album.

I wish I could have given that uncluttered happiness back to him.

This photo was taken at our old stone house in Manhattan, Kansas in September 1976. Leif was 20 months old.

Guys and Dolls at Antilles High School

Another find! I was scanning some of my mother's old slides, none of which we had ever seen, and found this shot of Leif (second from left), on stage in his first part in a Broadway musical . . . which we missed!

In April 1991, Peter was sent to a conference in the Washington DC area, and wanted me to go with him. My mother came to Puerto Rico to stay with Leif while we were gone and visit us when we returned.

Antilles High School was putting on "Guys and Dolls," and we knew that Leif was helping with scene construction and lightning, but didn't know he had a small part as well. I'm not sure he even found out he'd be on stage during the performance until we were gone. We were away when the musical was performed and missed seeing him. This photo seems to be the only one. He is wearing his Fedora and carrying his camera. I wish we had been there.

He seemed to be bitten by the theater bug by this experience, and the following spring tried out for a main part in "Grease." No one had ever heard him sing before, but he blew away the audience as Kenicke singing "Greased Lightning."

We moved to Manhattan, Kansas the summer before his senior year, and he tried out for the MHS musical, and was terribly disappointed when he was told that he was good enough to get a major part, but was new to the school and didn't "deserve" it. We never saw him on stage again.

Twenty-Two Years Ago Today - Leif's Graduation Dinner

The last time I posted, using the envelope on my head as an example of Leif's silly humor, I didn't realize what the occasion was. I found another slide my mother took that evening, and discovered it was his family graduation dinner. It was taken exactly twenty-two years ago, June 3, 1993, in our old stone house. Both Leif and the house are no longer.

And now I know what was in the big white envelope . . . and giant graduation card, which you can see in this photo. I'm not sure what Leif was looking at with his head at that angle, but it was after he plopped the envelope onto my head and then stuck my straw hat atop it.

It's hard to realize that twenty-two years have gone by, and now our second granddaughter is graduating from high school this weekend. How could the years slip by so quickly? How could Leif not be here to share the occasions with us?

We are also celebrating our fiftieth wedding anniversary this weekend, and Leif's absence is a heartache for me. I am delighted to be able to share it with Peter A. and our granddaughters, but how I wish we could have our whole family around us, including Leif and Marcus.

If find that it seems to be the days leading up to holidays and special events that trigger a lot of sadness, and I miss Leif most then. It's the anticipation of the coming event without him, I guess. Usually when the actual event happens, I'm over it . . . or maybe I'm just distracted by the good things happening then.

I miss his laugh. I miss his smile. I miss his bear hugs. I miss his silliness and teasing. He would have added so much to all those occasions he has missed in the seven years since he died.