Eighteen Years Ago - Missing Him Still

On April 10, 2008, we found Leif's lifeless body in his apartment. He died by his own hand on April 9, with a new gun he had purchased April 8th. His adult life was a rollercoaster full of, as he put it, more pain than pleasure, more heartache than joy. Yet, this was a boy who knew joy, and he was a man who thought deeply, cared about others, needed love, wanted to serve his country, and did, until he was medically retired due to severe asthma he contracted while serving. 

I still look at those photos of him laughing and happy, or contemplative and philosophical, and wonder how it could all have gone so wrong.

I not only think about him this week, this day, particularly because it is the unhappy anniversary of his death, but because I wish I could talk with him about the world today. I know he would be horrified at our political situation, at the attack on Iran, and the needless death on all sides. Leif was passionate about his oath to defend the Constitution of the United States, and I well remember his anger over the second Gulf War and the war in Afghanistan, He served with the UN peacekeeping mission in Bosnia in 1999 and saw all the destruction that war had caused. I am glad he is not in the army now, when I know his convictions would make it impossible for him to stay and carry out orders and missions he would have believed were both unconstitutional and wrong. 

There are so many things I miss about Leif, still, after 18 years. His laugh, his bear hugs, his incisive mind, his sense of humor. I miss the sheer size of him, the way his presence filled a room. I am thankful for all the photos and memories. Even after those 18 years, it is still hard to believe he is never going to drive up our driveway, stereo booming. 

When I started this blog, exactly 18 years ago, I had no idea I would still write a post occasionally, but now I think, despite the fact that I've already posted so many of the photos and memories, I can't imagine not posting something on anniversary days like his birthday and day of death. I still tell him I want him to come back. I know he can't, but I will always wish it.

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. 

Today would have been his 51st birthday.

We miss Leif every day, and at any unexpected time, something can open the door to feeling his loss and the grief of knowing he's never coming back. and that he suffered. But human beings mark time with dates; birthdays, anniversaries of significant events, holidays, and those are particularly hard. Why should one day be any different from another? Should or not, they are. Remembering Leif's birthday not only brings thoughts of his birth and babyhood, but all the years he lived, marked with birthdays and celebrations. Birthdays mark the years completed in our lives, a measure of our age and the length of our time upon the earth. 

Leif's birthday will always be special to us, for the gift of his life, and for the memories of the birthday parties and milestones he passed. Some years seem to be more poignant and sad than others. Today seems to have hit us hard. Our family, and our hearts, will forever have a huge hole in them. 

This photo was taken when Leif was a high school senior, fall 1992, and was one of his senior portraits, taken by Blaker Studio Royal in Manhattan, Kansas. They liked it so much they make a huge enlargement of it to display. I wish we had it. The other pose they took is beautiful, too. He was such an unusual young man. At that time, luxurious long hair was not common on men, yet he chose to embrace it. He also had his own taste in clothing, which was (except for the ubiquitous jeans) different from his fellow high school students. Here, he's wearing a green silk shirt. He wore chain link jewelry (like chain mail) he made himself. He wore unusual colors, and a long, black leather coat. As a high school senior, he was working and also taking classes at Kansas State University at the same time. He was one of the first to have a cell phone, a little Motorola flip phone. Like one of his friends later said, he was always at the forefront. 

Later, male pattern baldness started to remove that glorious hair, so he shaved his head and grew a beard. He was still handsome, and still the individualist. 

He had dreams he never realized. He had loves that left him bereft. He had ambitions that didn't come to fruition, and health challenges that limited him. Yet, he served his country in the US Army, graduated from college, and saw more of the world than most people ever will. 

We are thankful he was part of our lives.

 

Seventeen years ago he took his life

Sometime between 2:00 AM and time to head for work in the morning of April 9, 2008, Leif ended his life. We only know that because he was with a friend until around 2:00 AM, and he didn't show up for work. His supervisor called me to see if I knew whether he was all right, because Leif was a dependable employee. We tried to reach him all day, hoping he was either off somewhere (since it originally had been planned for a day off for him), sleeping, ill, or something. No one could reach him. The next morning we drove to Tampa to his apartment. The manager let us into his locked apartment, and we found him dead on his kitchen floor.

I've never written, or even told, all the details of that morning, and I probably never will. It was devastating. The man who lived only until the age of 33 grew from this darling child. This photo was taken in Sachsen bei Ansbach, Germany, in October 1979 when he was four years old. I have to smile at the boy almost perpetually needing a haircut. I was the one who cut his hair, and he resisted it until I insisted. But, I loved his soft brown hair, which became a much darker brown when he was an adult, and in high school, when he didn't have Mommy trying to give him a haircut, he let it grow long and luxurious. Unfortunately, as he grew through his twenties, he started to get bald and then decided to shave his head. He was a handsome man with or without hair. 

This is the first year since his death that the years have crossed the threshold; he has now been dead for more than half the years he lived. Seventeen years doesn't seem like such a long time. I can still see him sitting in the kitchen, or at the dining room table, or driving up to the house in his RX7 with the stereo system blaring. I can still hear his chuckle, and his teasing about my driving, "Mom, you've always driven like an old lady."

I miss him, every day of my life. 

 

Sometimes it hits without warning

 

It's been almost 17 years. In two days. Life goes on, and while we talk about Leif every day, and memories are always with us, grief and tears hide behind the closed door most of the time. But we never know what will open it. It's usually a surprise. 

Like today, while we were listening to the audiobook of Isaacson's biography of Elon Musk, and they were making a robot they called Optimus Prime, after a toy robot/truck, I started crying. No warning. Just the sudden memory of a little boy who loved that toy long ago when we lived in Japan. How much he played with it, and all the other fantastic shape-changing robot toys the boys had. 

I miss that little boy. I miss the man. We have so many photos of him, but none that I can find that show him with the robots or Optimus. Maybe there's one that hasn't been scanned yet. But not for today. 

So, instead here's a photo of him in Atami, Japan among the blooming plum trees, February 1981. He had just celebrated his sixth birthday. What he has in his mouth is a handmade bird whistle. We were on a family day trip. He needed a haircut, as my boys often did. I cut their hair, and they resisted getting it cut, whether I did it or not. It was funny, later, when they saw photos as adults and remarked on why I "let" that happen 

Ah, Leif, we miss you so!

He would have been 50 years old today

He would have been 50 years old today. He was 29 in this photo (one of my favorites), happy and "going places" until shortly after this when the woman he loved suddenly left him. He only made it to 33. He has now been gone from us for half as long as he lived, and still, everyday, he is a part of our lives. What would he look like at 50? What would his life have been like if he had been able to get past the horrible years he had in 2007 and the beginning of 2008? What might he have found for purpose? He had so much to give, and nowhere to give it. No one to love, at least not in a romantic relationship. Could he have overcome his terrible asthma? I can't imagine how horrible it must have been not to be able to breathe.

We will miss him, his boisterous "gentle giant" presence, his bear hugs, his sense of humor, his infectious laugh, his patient ability to explain things, and so much more, every day of our lives. I hope others remember him, as so many did right after he died in 2008. I hope they still think of him. I don't think he ever really knew how many people cared for him. I want him back.

 

I dreamed about him this morning.

We don't remember many of our dreams, so I don't know how many times I've dreamed about Leif. I only remember two or three. This morning, just before I was awakened, I was dreaming of him, and I remember the dream clearly. I was walking somewhere in a craggy landscape and looked up on some rocks above me and there he was. He wasn't in his SCA armor, like in this photo, but it was the same tall, powerful, imposing presence, with that intelligent, engaging look. I was surprised to see him and asked, "What are you doing here?" 

About that moment, my foot slipped and I started to fall over a long drop-off. He reached down and grabbed my hand and pulled me a long way back up. He rescued me. I said something like, "You came," and he just hugged me. 

Most of the time, my sadness about Leif's death and the fact that he is no longer with us is locked behind the door we learn to close on grief, but it gets loose in the days approaching Christmas, New Years, his birthday, the Fourth of July (which he loved), and I realize all over again he won't be with us. It certainly hit me today after this dream, or maybe because of it. Once again, he won't be here. 2007 was the last time we saw him for Christmas. He was sad and depressed then, though he perked up a little when he got to play with his nieces. Little did we know it would be the last Christmas together. 

I have been tearing up all day, thinking about this dream and about him. What does it mean, him appearing to rescue me from falling over a precipice? I don't feel like my life is on the brink. The mind is a mysterious thing. 

Merry Christmas, Leif. I will always wish you would be home for Christmas.
 

He wanted to SEE everything

I miss my little boys but I realize how lucky I was to have them, two beautiful, curious, intelligent creatures that kept me challenged. Leif always wanted to be UP where he could see everything that was going on around him. I found I could do just about anything around the house if I carried him around in a baby backpack, but if I put him down, he would wail. If he could crawl and get to something interesting, that was okay, but otherwise, he wanted to be carried in some fashion until he could pull himself up and walk. 

I made many a meal with that heavy little fellow jouncing up and down on my back. He was strong, and he would hook his little toes in the support that ran across my lower back and "jump" up and down with glee.

This photo was taken by my mother. It hadn't seen the light of day because it was so badly exposed and color shifted that she had never printed it or showed it to anyone. I'm surprised she didn't just throw the slide away. As hard as I worked with PhotoShop, I couldn't get the color and exposure right. For instance, the cabinet walls were a supposed to be a lovely shade of blue. The shirt I'm wearing actually had a brown background color. Our faces in the original slide were a lurid magenta-red. So, this will have to do, but I love it because he looks joyful and brings back the memories of those days in that kitchen, in a house no longer standing. It was taken early in 1976 when he was just over a year old.

 

We were at sea on the 16th anniversary of his death

 

Leif died sixteen years ago on April 9, 2008. Not a day goes by when we don't talk about him and miss him. This year, we were at sea on a transatlantic cruise and I couldn't help but remember how much he loved the sea. He would have gloried in the waves and wind. How I wish we could have given him that pleasure.

I am always happy when I discover photos of Leif I didn't know existed. This one was taken by my mother in November 1975 when Leif was ten months old, in the old stone house in Manhattan, Kansas. What a joyful moment.  

April 9 it will be 16 years

The last photo taken of Leif was this selfie. We don't know why he took it on March 11, 2008, unless maybe he wanted to send it to a woman he hoped to date (there was someone he had met). He didn't send it to us. I found it on his phone after he died. 

We saw him on Easter, which was on March 23rd, and had a good time with him at our Easter dinner. I wish I had taken a photo of him then, or of the three of us, but I had no idea it would be the last time we would see him alive. Seventeen days later, he was dead. 

At Easter, he seemed full of hope and plans, very interested in a woman he had met, hoping to move to Orlando and date her. How could it all collapse so fast? No matter how many times I go over it in my mind, I still think some necessary piece of information is missing. He had survived so much, but something made him snap. He had spent the evening with friends, and texting with several of us about music and technology. No hint of any planning for suicide. He was even talking about ordering the music of a German band he had discovered. So, what happened? We will never know.

We miss him ever day. 

 

He would have been 49 years old today

 

He was a beautiful child, so beautiful that sometimes strangers stopped us on the street to say so. He was eager and bright and always curious and investigating. He was born fast and loved speed. He learned to walk early. He was introspective and observed the life around him. 

We miss him every day of our lives, and most especially on his birthday. This photo was taken in the fall of 1975 when he was not yet one year old.

Leif and his stuffed animals

He was a boy who loved cars, planes, ships, any vehicle, especially if it was fast. He loved guns, James Bond, Star Wars, Star Trek, movies, computer games. He liked to go to the beach. And, he loved stuffed animals. He loved to snuggle up with them, an acceptable form of cuddling for him. He wasn't a particularly cuddly or affectionate child, but he hugged and loved up his stuffed animals, especially Fluffy, the big beige bear in the center of this picture, given to him by his Aunt Lannay. Some of these were brought to him by his dad when he returned from TDY trips to Korea. Some were gifts. He treasured them all. This photo was taken in May 1984 in Honolulu, Hawaii, where we were living at the time. He was nine years old and in his pajamas. He was just so cute with his armload of cuddly "pets" I had to take the photo. 
 

Fifteen Years Ago

Fifteen years ago we approached Leif's apartment entrance with great trepidation. We were terrified about what we might find, but it was far worse than we imagined. The day before, we received a call from his work supervisor, who called us as his emergency contacts, because Leif had not shown up for work, or called in. He had tried to contact Leif without success and said that Leif never just skipped out on work. He was concerned.

So were we! But we hoped that maybe he was depressed and hiding out, or had gone to Orlando to see the woman he was dating, or thought he had changed his work schedule, or gotten drunk and was sleeping it off. We tried repeatedly throughout the day to contact him via phone and text messages but got no response. Then I tried calling the hospitals to see if he had been admitted after an accident or something. I did not find him. I tried calling his friend Michael, who said he had been with him the night before, but hadn't heard from him that day, April 9th. He lived an hour and a half away, so he couldn't just go over the Leif's apartment to check on him. We should have. 

But, he was an adult. It seemed intrusive to burst in on him if he didn't want to talk, so we waited. We had no idea he was already dead. 

The next morning, with no contact, we decided we had to go to his apartment and see him. Peter W. was too wrought to drive, so I drove there. We discussed that if both his vehicles, his car and motorcycle, were in the parking lot, it was a bad sign....and they were. 

The apartment door was locked. Calling, knocking, nothing got an answer, so we went to the apartment complex office and asked the manager on duty to let us into his apartment because we were worried something had happened to him. To my surprise, she agreed to do so without an argument. 

We went in, looking into the first rooms, the bedroom and bathroom, and didn't see him. Then we looked in the kitchen and he was there on the floor surrounded by a large and thick pool of blood and tissue, his head and upper back against the refrigerator door, his feet under the edge of the cabinet. A gun was on the counter. At first glance, it looked to me like he had shot himself in they eye, but I quickly saw the gunshot wound in the center of his forehead. I remember the two of us saying, "No, no no!" 

Peter W. was in agony and I told him not to look. I got him out of the kitchen and called the sheriff's office. I knew we could not touch Leif, or anything in that kitchen, because there would be an investigation, when the only think I wanted to do was hold my son. I will always regret that I couldn't, and didn't. 

The detective came. She found the bullet casings. We asked her personnel to be sure all his guns had no ammo in them. He had several more. She said to get everything of value out of there or it would be stolen. We had to get help to get his car and motorcycle to our home, and we packed up the computers, guns, guitars, and anything else of value we could in a neighbor's pickup truck. He and his wife were kind enough to drop what they were doing and drive to Tampa to help us.

I called the insurance company. We drove home. I called family members. All of this sounds so dry and matter-of-fact, but our hearts were broken. There weren't enough tears to every cry it out. 

He had been dead a day, but his death certificate says "Found April 10, 2008." The autopsy says it was a suicide and I talked to the pathologist who did the autopsy and asked how he knew that. He said it was a contact wound, meaning the gun was against his head....the gun he bought the day before.

Fifteen years and I still miss him every day of my life. 

 

I Miss Him So!

On March 11, I wrote about how much I missed Leif, and the recurring sadness has only grown stronger the closer we get to Easter. Why is that? First, the last time we saw him was on Easter in 2008. Easter came early that year, March 23rd. We invited him to come for dinner and he demurred, saying he didn't have extra money for gas, and his Mazda RX8 was kind of a gas guzzler. I told him I'd give him gas money, and I gave him a $20 bill. I wish I'd given him more, though I doubt it would have changed anything in the end. We had a really nice visit. He was positive, upbeat, hoping to move to Orlando, and once again, in love. By April 9, he was dead.

This year, Easter falls on April 9th, the day he shot himself. There is something strangely coincidental about these dates....the date of a resurrection is, this year, the anniversary of Leif's death. And Easter 2008 was the last time we saw him alive. 

I will never stop wondering why, even though I have examined many causes for 15 years. And that's another thing, fifteen YEARS have passed, and yet the grief is fresh. It still seems only yesterday that he drove up our driveway, bass speakers pounding away, and unfolded his 6'2" frame from his snazzy sportscar. It seems only yesterday he was giving me a big bear hug and calling me "silly mommy."

Last August 13, 2022, I posted a photo of his still-intact wallet, with all his cards and $12 cash in it, saying it was time to let go of it....but I didn't. I still couldn't bring myself to do it. But now, I have. I set a deadline to do it before the 15 year anniversary, and I scanned and shredded his cards, his driver's license, his motorcycle license, his concealed carry license, even his laundry card, and his debit and credit cards. The wallet now is empty except for the $12, which I still can't make myself remove. I need to take that out and donate the wallet. I will. I promise. He won't use it any more, and neither will I. But it still feels like I took them away from him. Dismantled his life.

I chose this photo because I am sitting here at the very desk he was helping his dad put together for me in this photo from July 26, 2006. Every day I use this desk. Every day I see his photos and flag case above it. But he is not here, and Easter will not bring him back. Ever.

 

Setting up his Gateway computer for this grandmother

The last couple of days I've been very sad about Leif's death. I don't know for sure why it has hit me so hard already this spring, but I suppose it's because it's getting close to the last date we saw him alive in March 2008, and his death in April, fifteen years ago, Or maybe it's memories that have triggered it, most likely both. 

This memory came up because I was looking at an old hard drive I took out of my mother's computer and saved in an external HD enclosure, just in case there were files on it we might want someday....even though I transferred all her files to her newer Dell computer when the Gateway started acting wonky.

Mom needed a new computer but didn't want to spend much on one, and wanted to be able to use two monitor screens to work on editing her book about bamboo. Leif had an extra computer...he was always buying and trading electronics...and offered to sell it to his grandmother for a bargain price and help her set it up. January 19, 2008, he brought it to her condo and the two of us set it up. This photo shows us doing that. I had forgotten about the photo until I was emailing my brother about some of his files I found on that old hard drive...things he had put then when visiting Mom and using her computer. We were trying to determine the date and I remembered the photo. It's a shock to see Leif having gained so much weight, although of course I saw him that way and have other photos of him at this weight, but what a change from the handsome, slim young man he once was, as he was in the photo I last posted. I wonder, when I see this photo now, whether there was any sign he would be dead in three months. 

The last time we saw him, he seemed happy and relaxed and infatuated with a woman he had met, was trying to find a way to move to Orlando to be near her and hoped to find a better job there. He was exercising and seemed to be trying to lose weight on a keto diet. For his birthday that January, just a few days after this, he just wanted steak and salad. In March, that last time we saw him, he seemed upbeat, but in January, he seemed depressed. I was worried about him, so I was so glad he seemed happier in March. It must have been ephemeral. 

I miss him so much!

He would have been 48 today - on Gasparilla

He would have been 48 years old today, had he lived. I wondered what he would look like. What he would be doing. Whether he would have married and had children. That was not to be, but today, on that birthday, was the Tampa pirate festival called Gasparilla, which he surely would have enjoyed. I don't know whether he ever went to Gasparilla during the years he lived in Florida, but as his dad said today, he could have, should have, marched in the parade.

When he joined the Society for Creative Anachronism (SCA) long years ago in Manhattan, Kansas, he chose as his persona a pirate of the Viking age, at least for awhile, before he seemed to morph into a knight in shining armor. He was a rather dashing "fashion conscious" pirate, so he acquired the nickname, "the GQ Pirate" after the magazine "Gentleman's Quarterly" (which now publishes monthly) and bills itself as a publication about men's fashion, sport, sex, health and other subjects. For a time, Leif even used an email address with the handle, "thegqpirate." 

It would have been fun to see him in pirate garb at the age of 48, participating in one of the Gasparilla crewes or marching in the parade....or even in the crowd as a handsome GQ pirate! 

Even almost 15 years after his death we daily use things he left behind...a cordless telephone, a computer, weights, and things he taught us. We talk of him daily, so many memories. We miss him every day, but especially on his birthday, remembering our joy at his birth, that big, strong baby, so curious about the world, so intelligent. When did hope become hopeless? Why did he give up on life?

This photo was taken at the Kansas Renaissance Fair in Bonner Springs, Kansas, September 11, 1994. He was looking handsome and assured, at the age of 19. Little did we know what life had in store for him....or that date of 9/11.

It could have been him

Today we went to a "showcase" performance, one where nine professional acts (eight musical and one magic) gave twelve minute performances to be rated by the large audience to give local entertainment directors as sense of what their audiences might like to have booked. In the audience were also entertainment directors from the surrounding area. These acts were all talented and varied, and several had bands that had guitarists. One even had four! Two acoustic, an electric guitar and an electric bass guitar. 

I couldn't help but remember Leif playing his four guitars, starting with a blue one he got in high school when he first got interested and started taking lessons in Highland Park, Illinois. That was his "starter" guitar, a decent instrument which he kept the rest of his life. He added a a green Kramer Floyd Rose guitar, the guitar he designed and made himself, and the blue bass guitar he is playing at left. That was the only one he ever played (briefly) in a band while he was a student at Antilles High School on Fort Buchanan, Puerto Rico. This photo was taken when that band was performing at school. 

Leif loved music and had a huge collection of CDs, spent a lot of money to put a top of the line stereo in his car, and loved playing his guitars. He would practice for hours, learning some of the famous riffs and guitar solos, though never to his desired standards. I still hear them played on the radio or in television shows or movies and always remember Leif playing them.

The groups we saw today had some excellent singers. Leif could sing, too, though we didn't even know that until he turned up on the Antilles musical stage acting and singing the part of Kenickie in "Grease."

So,  couldn't help but think, if he'd had the burning desire to be a musician, he could have been on that stage. 

When Is It Time Let Let Things Go?

In April it was fourteen years since Leif's death. We had to clean out his apartment quickly to avoid paying another month's rent, sold his furniture and many of his belongings, gave others away, and brought more home to figure out what to do with them. Over time, we chose a few to keep, some because they were useful, some because we had sentimental reasons, and some because they seemed so personal and part of his identity that it seemed just plain wrong to dispose of them. 

Some of these were his wallet, which until today remains in exactly the same way he left it on his desk the night he died, with the single exception that we returned his retired military ID to the military, as is required. All this other cards remain, and the $12 in cash that was in the wallet. Of course, we reported his death to the accounts for his credit cards, and his licenses have long expired. At first, I just couldn't let go of this because, as totally illogical and foolish as it sounds, even to me, I had some sense in the back of my mind that if he came back, he would want and need it. Of course he was not coming back! We found his body and watched it being taken away in a body bag, but the unconscious part of our human minds are capable of such wishful and crazy thinking, even when our conscious minds know better.

I also kept two of this army uniforms, his "dog tags," and his combat boots. I knew he wasn't going to ever go back into the army, and he also could never have fit into them, but the military was so much of who he was, his identity, that HE had kept them, long after he was medically retired from the army. I knew they meant a lot to him. Those combat boots carried him a long way. I wonder how many miles he walked or jogged in them. After he was medically retired and sent "home" he wore them and still walked miles, miles to the university for classes when he was finishing his degree, and even, one day over ten miles round trip from our house to Tuttle Creek Lake. 

 This photo was taken on a military exercise in 1999. It looks like he's wearing the same boots I saved. The photo below are the ones I've kept for over 14 years. 

Now I am ready to let go of these things, all but the dog tags. I'm keeping those. It should be easy to discard a pair of well-worn combat boots with a hole in one side that no one wants, but it's not. It somehow still seems like a betrayal. There's no logical reason it should feel like that, but it does. 

They will go first. Next will be the wallet. Then, when I have more time and can remove the sewn-on insignia and nametag, the uniforms. I know it's time, but it still hurts. 

Hurt or not, for some reason, after fourteen years, it finally feels like the time has come. The boots aren't going to walk any farther. 

Fourteen Years

There are days in the year that are harder; the day he died, the day we found his body, his birthday,  Mother's Day, Father's Day, Fourth of July (since he loved it so), Veteran's Day, Christmas. But April 9 & 10 are the hardest, with the worst memories. It's still difficult to believe he is really gone, even after fourteen years.

How would he want to be remembered? Today, Peter W. Garretson and I looked at a myriad photos of his life, grateful we have them, grateful for the years we had him. From the baby to the toddler, to the schoolboy to the teen, from the college student to the soldier, from his SCA days to life in Florida. Ever changing, but still the same brilliant mind, the same sense of humor, the introspective frame of mind. To remember the 14th anniversary of his death, I chose one he took of himself in his SCA armor. I think he wanted to see himself as a knight in shining armor, a soldier for right. We will miss him and love him the rest of our lives.

He would be 47 years old on January 28

 

How does one celebrate the birthday of a loved one no longer living? We remember them....from birth to toddlerhood, from child to teen to adult, from soldier to corporate employee. So many years, and yet so few, only 33, and then he was gone. He would be 47 today, if he had lived. What would he have been like? Would he have found love, married, had children? We will never know. I am grateful for the photos and the memories. I am still finding new photos as I scan my mother's slides and negatives. This one I think she took in her house. I do know it was taken in August 1994 when he was nineteen and a student at Kansas State University, still a slim fellow who hadn't yet been required to cut his long hair for his job at Aladdin's Castle video game parlor in the Manhattan Mall. 

What he's wearing has some significance. The t-shirt was a gift from his brother, who had been an Air Force Academy cadet. It's a USAFA Boxing shirt. The necklace is chain mail that Leif made himself. He made a lot of chain mail items, from small things like this necklace and some earrings, to giant projects like the huge chain mail shirt he made that weighed 50 pounds. He learned to make chain mail due to his interesting in medieval armor and participating in the Society for Creative Anachronism. 

We miss him every day of our lives. In April, he will be gone from us fourteen years.