The Regrets of Bungled Communications

It's coming closer to the anniversary of Leif's death, and it's always the approach of the holidays and the anniversary that hit me. Although I think about him every day, in the days and weeks leading up to those special days, the feelings are more intense, the thoughts come more often. Even after eight years, I am still pondering and puzzling what put him over the edge, whether there were clues. I can't come to any new conclusions. The evidence hasn't changed. Yet the mind still searches.

While I was looking for something else on my computer, I came across an email exchange with him in the fall of 2001, after he had come back from the army a broken, sick man, sick in both body and soul. He was back in school at Kansas State University, and had decided to take German, hoping that the fluent German of his childhood when he attended the German Kindergarten (preschool) for two years would make it easier to learn the language.

It didn't. Although both our sons spoke fluent German after the two years we lived in Sachsen bei Ansbach, we moved from there to Japan, and my silly sons absolutely refused to speak German there, insisting that "they don't speak that here" and even holding their hands over their ears when we tried valiantly (at first) to keep up the language with them.

Leif was only five years old when we moved to Japan, and without using the language, he forgot it. It would be nice to think that it would just "come back" with some memory jogging, but apparently, like most of what happens in a five-year-old's life, the memory just wasn't there. Leif was struggling with his German class and I volunteered to help him study, just as I had helped him with algebra and Spanish when he was in high school.

One evening, he apparently came over, that fall of 2001, to have dinner with us and to study, but wasn't being cooperative. I got frustrated with him and went upstairs to calm down. While I was upstairs, he left without saying goodbye. I was very hurt, and wrote him a long and very critical email about his lack of motivation to study, how he had hurt my feelings by being uncooperative and then leaving without saying goodbye. I was pretty emotional and hard on him, and I am sure it must have hurt.

His answer said that he didn't feel like being with people, was depressed, and didn't want to stay, that he had gone somewhere by himself to study, and that at least my admonitions had gotten him to do that. He was sorry he had hurt my feelings, and said he was not good at expressing gratitude.

It hurt me to read that exchange. It reminded me of the many times when I wrote him critical email or letters about his finances, his studies, his failure to live up to some agreement (like working on the 710 N. 9th Street house painting), or failure to let us know whether he was going to show up for dinner. He didn't argue with me or tell me I was being unfair. He seemed to accept what I had to say, but I'm sure it hurt to read those things. I regret them now because although they were true, I wonder if my writing them didn't make him feel worthless.

Of course, they were not the sum total of our relationship, thank goodness, and the reasons I wrote them were twofold. First, I hoped to get him to live up to his abilities and responsibilities, and I also wanted him to see that his behavior affected others . . . me, and his father.  The trouble is, I didn't then, and I still don't now, know whether what I was doing and saying were the right way to go about it, whether they hurt more than they helped. I puzzle over what I could or should have done differently, and I can't see with any clarity what would have made the difference.

I know Leif loved us, and he knew he was loved. He claimed he had great self esteem, but I wonder about that. I think it would be hard to maintain it with all he went through.

This photo of Leif was taken in Japan when he was about six years old. It was a slide I just scanned about a year ago and hadn't seen in all those years. I don't know for sure where in Japan it was taken, though I think it was in Kyoto. It's a good example of how pensive he could be at times. I wish I could go back to that day, to that little boy, and tell him again how much I loved him. I wish I could go back to that day when he left our house without saying goodbye and write that email differently, or not at all. I wish I had understood that he left not just because he was inconsiderate (which he was), but because he was depressed and just wanted to be alone. I wish he had just told me that. So many missed chances for communication.

He Didn't Want to Be Alone

A day or so ago, Peter was watching a movie and I heard the Eric Carmen song, "All By Myself" playing as part of the soundtrack. It struck me that it could have been yet another theme song of Leif's, though I never heard him play it and don't remember finding it among his music collection. It is such a very sad song, haunting and poignant, and the lyrics sum up in great measure what Leif was feeling. So many songs have a lot to say about life, if you truly listen to the lyrics. It seems oddly coincidental that Carmen wrote it in 1975, the year that Leif was born, which may be one reason he didn't have it. It wasn't part of the popular music scene when he was collecting music.

Having someone to love and be with is so critically important to human well-being, and being alone and without love is so sad and demoralizing. Leif kept himself closed off in many ways, not opening up to anyone except the woman he loved, and when he was without that kind of companionship, he suffered in many ways. He keenly felt the need for a soulmate.

One subject I have alluded to many times in this blog but haven't really addressed is Leif's love life. I did write about his romance with and marriage to Nikko, but not the other women in his life. I can't really write about them as openly as I have about other areas of his life because it isn't fair to them to expose their lives on this blog. However, I can't pretend to close the story of his life in the next few months without trying to tell the stories in whatever ways I can without identifiying people other than Leif. Partly, I can use essays and emails he wrote, but before i try to begin that process, I'm going to post the lyrics to "All By Myself," because they speak to me of Leif's life and longings.

Eric Carmen's "All by Myself" Lyrics:

When I was young,
I never needed anyone.
Makin' love was just for fun.
Those days are gone.

Livin' alone,
I think of all the friends I've known.
But when I dial the telephone,
Nobody's home.

All by myself,
Don't wanna be, all by myself anymore.
All by myself,
Don't wanna live, all by myself anymore.

Hard to be sure,
Some times I feel so insecure.
And love so distant and obscure,
Remains the cure.

All by myself,
Don't wanna be, all by myself anymore.
All by myself,
Don't wanna live, all by myself anymore.

When I was young,
I never needed anyone.
And makin' love was just for fun.
Those days are gone.

All by myself,
Don't wanna be, all by myself anymore.
All by myself,
Don't wanna live, all by myself anymore.

All by myself,
Don't wanna be, all by myself anymore.
All by myself,
Don't wanna live, all by myself anymore.
All by myself...

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If this song speaks to you, I hope you find love, companionship, friendship. If you want the song, it has been sung by many artists, beginning with Eric Carmen himself in 1975. Carmen used music that he composed along with a theme from Rachmaninov's Piano Concerto No. 2 in C minor. I am going to embed a YouTube video of him singing it in another post.

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This photo is a self-portrait of Leif that he took (among a series of similar shots) on April 26, 2003, when he was divorced and alone and hadn't found a new love yet. It was taken in the 710 N, 9th Street house where he was living in Manhattan, Kansas.

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.

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.

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.

The Lack of a Home

It struck me as I was recounting all of the places that Leif lived in his 33 years, and came up with 24 of them, that such instability of a home wasn't a good thing, either. As a military family, we usually had three years in one place, sometimes four, and only once, two. That meant that for the first 20 years of Leif's life, he lived in 9 places with us, and one of them was the old stone house that remained a kind of rooted base for us, that he lived in two out of the nine times I'm counting. It was after her left home that he really became peripatetic, and each time he moved it was either to find a better or cheaper place. Probably the nicest place he lived in his adult life (other than the houses we owned at 710 N. 9th Street in Manhattan or our home here in Florida) was the apartment he and Nikko had in the army housing area in Watertown, New York, but it was also one of the places he was unhappiest.

The stability in his life was always us. Nothing else remained constant or anything he could count on. I hope he felt he could count on us, but I know as a grown man he didn't want to have to.

Living in 15 places in 13 years is too much change, even if he initiated the moves. It means there is no real home, no identity or the sense of place.

Once of the things he and I once talked about was that when I was growing up and in earlier generations, girls and young women were taught that it was their responsibility to make a house a home. I know there are those who would now say that was sexist and is outmoded, but I don't think so. I do believe that it is also a man's responsibility to be a part of that, making a house a home, and I don't think what I'm talking about has much to do with whether one sex or the other does the cooking or the laundry. Household chores ought to be divided equitably and by who does them best . . . or is most willing to do them. But making a house or apartment FEEL like a home is something I still think a woman needs to do. Otherwise, a man and a woman living together are really just roommates, regardless of whether they are married or having a sexual relationship. A home is different than just sharing living space. I don't think Leif ever felt he had that kind of home. The PLACE one calls home is less important (even with a lot of moves) than the atmosphere within it.

A part of that (not the most important part, but a part) is housekeeping. As I've mentioned, Leif was a terrible housekeeper if left on his own, but would willingly work WITH someone else to clean and straighten a place up. I have a threshhold of clutter that drives me nuts and makes me depressed if I don't do anything about it. I think Leif would pass way beyond that to the point where he was depressed and it looked like such a horrible task to try to tackle the mess that he just ignored it unless he thought a new woman in his life might be coming over and then he would clean it up.

I once gave him a certificate I made up on the computer for his birthday, which was good for eight not-necessarily-consecutive hours of housework cleaning up his place. He laughed, but he made good use of it, and he did work while I was there working. We got a lot done.

Each time he moved into a new place, he would fix it up pretty nicely and had some pride in how it looked, but it didn't take long for clutter and apathy to take over, and without a mate to either clean it up or engage him in doing it with her it just looked like to enormous a task. Leif would insist he didn't even see the mess, that he had a male "target mentality," so that he only saw what he was looking for or working with. Maybe, but I don't think so. i think he just ignored it and lived with it, but I can't believe it was the way he wanted to live or would have if he'd had the right companion.

It makes me sad to think that he never really had a home as an adult. Places to live, yes, and brief periods where he liked them and was happier, but living with someone you aren't getting along with, or living alone and being lonely, is not having a home. How I wish he had had at least that. It might have made a difference.
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The photo of Leif was a self-portrait taken on April 26, 2003 at the 710 N. 9th Street house in Manhattan, Kansas.

Leif's Nineteeth and Twentieth Homes - Manhattan, Kansas - August 2001 to March 2005

When Leif moved out of the old stone house for the third time in his life, in August 2001, he moved into the first floor of a small house on 11th Street in Manhattan, Kansas, where he shared the place with a college student named Bonnie. It was the first time he'd had a female "roommate" and he said she was "perfect" for him because while they got along great and she was a good companion, he had no interest in her romantically. Leif lived better with someone, and although they lived like messy students, the two of them would set aside time to clean up the place together. Leif wasn't much on cleaning alone, but if someone else was there working with him, he would get busy and get things done. Companionship meant a lot to him.

It was a small place and he had moved back to Kansas with an apartment load of stuff he'd had during his marriage (though at this time he and Nikko were still legally married, she had left him a year earlier). Other than what Nikko came and picked up, a lot of his things were stored in the garage.

He had the place with Bonnie during the 2001-2002 school year and then she developed a brain tumor and wasn't coming back. He decided he couldn't afford the apartment by himself on his GI Bill and small salary as a school crossing guard employed by the Riley County Police Department, but the basement apartment, which was really tiny and crowded, was available, so he signed a lease on that and moved himself downstairs.

It was about that time when Peter W.'s mother, Ellen, fell and crushed her femur. By July 2002, it was clear that she was dying of complications due to years of undiagnosed and untreated diabetes which made healing of her leg impossible. She had been living for five years in a house we bought for her at 710 N. 9th Street in Manhattan, on the same city block as our old stone house, and because all of her things were in the house and we didn't want it to stand empty, we asked Leif to break his lease and move into the 9th Street house. We paid the fee for the broken lease. The house was a far nicer place to live than the cramped basement apartment but since we owned it and it was just around the corner from us on the same block, he also had to put up with our complaints about how he took care of it and mow the lawn. I had all my stock of books over there in the large basement, and had to go there to get books to sell, so I was in the house frequently (but always well announced). It also made it easy and convenient for Leif to walk over to our house for dinner at least on Sunday nights, and sometimes during the week, or for help with his Spanish, German or algebra homework.

Ellen died on September 22, 2002, just over two months after Leif moved into the house. It took me the better part of a year to sell and give away her belongings and he was very tolerant about me coming over there to work on that and have garage sales.

It was a great place for him to live, with a large living room-dining room area, nice kitchen, two bedrooms and bath upstairs and a full basement. Here he could spread out all his things, work on projects such as the fifty-pound chain mail shirt he made, the wooden guns he designed, cut out and sanded, and much more.

It was also where he lived for a few happy months with J. and her daughter, probably the happiest months of his life.

The 9th Street house was where Leif lived until we moved him to Florida with his dad. We started taking trips to Florida to see where we might like to settle. I think the first one we took was to the Tampa area and up the northwestern coast to the panhandle in March 2002. It was there that Leif rented the white Mustang convertible for a day and fell in love with the Tampa Bay area, especially St. Petersburg and Clearwater. He was just beginning to recover from his depression, as I think you can see in the photos of him above, taken in February 2002. He hadn't yet graduated from KSU or met J. yet, and he was beginning to have hope for his future again.

We continued to make trips to Florida during spring break when he was out of classes at KSU and Peter W. wasn't teaching German at the high school or middle school, looking for the right community for us. Once Leif had gone through the elation and heartbreak of his relationship with J., and found he was miserable in Manhattan where job prospects for a college grad (a dime a dozen in Manhattan) were dim, he was anxious to leave, needed to get out of there to survive. He and Peter W. had nothing holding them in Manhattan, once Peter W.,'s German teaching job was eliminated and Ellen was no longer living, and both of them wanted to move south for their health. Both of them suffered from SAD, seasonal affective disorder, and Leif suffered from cold weather asthma. Peter was miserable with allergies to Kansas plants. They wanted warmer climes and needed them.

The fall of 2004, we planned a Thanksgiving trip to Florida, and although Leif was going with us, I think he had given up on moving there with us because he wasn't willing to wait until we did it. At that time, we were planning to wait another four years to make the move. There was a variety of reasons, but some of them were my job, my publishing adventures, my mother, who I refused to leave alone in Kansas, and all that we had to do to get ready for such a move . . . plus we hadn't found the right place to move to yet. Leif felt he couldn't wait another four years and he couldn't afford to move that far on his own. At that time his friend Michael was living in Tulsa and he had visited him there. He decided if he couldn't move to Florida he could at least rent a truck and move to Tulsa, so he put a deposit on an apartment there that fall. I think that was in late Otober.

To our surprise, during our Thanksgiving trip, when we revisited the Melbourne and Sun City Center areas to try to decide between them, we made a decision and found a house. We all liked it, and it seemed like the right decision to go ahead and buy the house. One of the considerations Peter W. and I took into account was Leif. We felt it was critical to give him a chance at a new life in the place he really wanted to be. The town we were moving to wasn't his ideal place, a retirement community with no young people, but it was near many places that were full of them, particularly Tampa and Brandon, near his beloved St. Petersburg, and in a growing job market. We bought the house in December 2005. Leif canceled the apartment in Tulsa and lost his deposit, but gained the opportunity to move to warmer, sunnier climes.
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The photo are:
1 & 2. Leif in Manhattan, Kansas, February 2002, with and without glasses, which he wore for distance vision only.
3. Leif on Bellaire Beach, Florida in March 2002.
4. Leif on a beach in Florida, March 2002.
5. 720 N. 9th Street house in Manhattan, Kansas where Leif lived twice, once briefly with Nikko from about March to July 1997, and then again from July 2002 to March 2005, a few months of which he lived there with J. and her daughter.
6. The house on 11th Street in Manhattan, Kansas, where Leif lived on the first floor with Bonnie for about nine months and alone in the basement apartment for about a month from August 2001 to June 2002.

An Invitation to Remembering Leif Readers

I have been writing this blog for over a year now. At the beginning, some of you shared memories or made comments, but only one or two, and they tricked off to nothing. I wished they had been main entries and not in the "Comments," and that more of you had been able to participate by sharing your memories of Leif.

Although I still have many photos of Leif and much to write about, I don't know how long I will continue the blog, though I think I will continue at least until the end of May; perhaps a lot longer; I just don't know right now. I don't want the time to go on until some of you no longer visit this site, or forget your own memories of Leif. I would like to be able to post some of your memories, and photos if you have some to share. If you would like to do this, please email your post and/or photos to me at jerri.garretson@gmail.com

I reserve the right to edit them, and to decide whether or not to post them. I have to put in this note because I know there are people who visit this blog who did not know Leif and may choose to email inappropriate things to me.

If you are searching your memory for what to write about, think about his interests, things you did together, what you thought of him, his sense of humor, work, military service, school, vehicles, etc., anything you would like to share about any period in his life.

If you send photos, please be sure that you are willing to give permission for them to be posted and that that permission was given by anyone in the photos; also, if you mention anyone by full name, that they give permission to be mentioned. Otherwise, please use first names only.

If any of you have stories you would like to share with Leif's family but not on the blog, if you send them to me, I will be grateful to read them and will honor your wishes.

I want to thank all of you that come back again and again to read what I've posted and see Leif's photos. I can't see who visits, only how many visit. I know that many visitors get here by "accident" through a search that somehow includes one of my keywords. For those who come to RememberingLeif that way, I hope you realized that my son, Leif Garretson, is not Leif Garrett, and perhaps found something else interesting, touching or profound.

I want to know that others are remembering Leif, too.
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These photos are self-portraits of Leif in his "new armor" for SCA, August 2, 2003, late the same summer he graduated from Kansas State University. They were taken in the living room of the house at 710 N. 9th Street in Manhattan, Kansas, and show the odd juxtaposition of his medieval armor and his computer screens. He was 28 years old. He would only live another five years.

Leif's Last Day Alive - April 8, 2008

It's so terribly hard to believe that this is the first anniversary of the last day Leif was alive and that what we know of that day makes it so hard to understand how he could have been planning suicide. If he was, he gave no one any indication of it.

It was a Tuesday, his day off. It's hard to reconstruct the part of the day before evening when he was with his friend Michael, and Jaime. I didn't have any contact with him except for two emails in the evening which were part of a group discussion. The only way to try to figure out what he did in the last three days of his life is from his email, text messages and bank statement. Unfortunately, the debits don't always post on the day they were spent, so although several things posted on April 8th, they may not have happened then. For instance, the Neverwinter Nights game he purchased on Sunday, April 6th showed up on his bank statement on Tuesday, April 8th. It seems that several purchases showed up two days later. Originally, we thought he purchased an expensive pair of shoes on the 8th but it might have been on the same trip to the mall when he went to the Apple store on the 6th. We found the shoe box but not the shoes in his apartment, so he must have been wearing them when he died.

He played Dungeons and Dragons with Donna and friends on Sunday, April 6th and was invited to do so again the following Sunday.

His tax refund was deposited in his bank account on April 3rd and he paid his rent for the month of April, and it debited on April 7th.

He filled up his car's gas tank, with the debit hitting his bank account on April 10th, after he was already dead.

During those days he spent money on food and alcohol, too.

But what we do know about April 8th for sure is that he purchased a 45 caliber Springfield XD X-Ray Delta pistol and ammunition with his debit card. According to Donna, it was not a spur-of-the-moment purchase, but one he had ordered and been waiting for for months. He was very glad to finally get it. A gun purchase was not unusual for Leif. He had purchased and sold many guns over the years and still had several in his possession.

That evening he sent two email messages as part of an ongoing discussion among Peter A., Dave, Darren and me ranging over topics as disparate as the "ultimate watch" and customer service. These last two messages were in response to an email by Peter A. about a YouTube video of "Das Omen").

Leif wrote at 7:38 p.m., "I just want to know WHO did the music. Sound kinda like Rammstein but more techno, less metal. Either way I want it."

At 8:19 p.m. he wrote, "Found  it. It is a German group called 'E Nomine.'  Here are some of their  videos on YouYube. Hard to find the music.  iTunes does not have it. I just put in a request for iTunes to get it. Amazon does but it's about $35  an album." (He sent the YouTube and Amazon.com links.)

That was the last thing I ever heard from him. He was part of the discussion and then he just dropped out. It didn't sound as though he wasn't planning on being around if he was asking iTunes to get music he wanted. The music was very dark and occult with lyrics in German that translated as, "You are the power, the everlasting prophecy, you are the Omen!" "Open the gates to the dark regions . . . " I sent him that translation in email in between his two posts. That music fit in well with what he liked at the time.

The reason he dropped out of the discussion was that his friend Michael arrived after picking up Jaime at the airport and they wanted to go over to the Tally Ho Pub across the street for beer. They were there for a few hours before they went back to Leif's apartment. Leif had all of his guns out of the safe and they were examining them. Michael said Leif was very proud of his new Springfield pistol. The guns were unloaded, but when Jaime pointed a gun in a manner Leif felt was unsafe, Michael says Leif lectured him on gun safety. Jaime protested that the gun was unloaded, but Leif said that he should always consider a gun in his house to be loaded and treat it safely.

Since Michael had a long drive home and they had to get on the road, he said he and Jaime stopped drinking but Leif continued to drink rum and Coke. Leif was a big man used to drinking a lot and he could hold a lot of alcohol without showing evidence of being drunk.

Michael and Jaime left in the wee hours of the morning, somewhere around 2 or 3 a.m. on Wednesday, April 9th. Leif was mobile and lucid, able to walk and talk, and seemed all right when they left. That is the last time anyone saw Leif alive as far as we know.
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The pensive photo with this post is one of a series of self-portraits Leif took on April 26, 2003 when he was living in the 710 N. 9th Street house in Manhattan, Kansas. They were taken in that house. He was 28 years old.

Leif's 29th Birthday - Manhattan, Kansas - January 28, 2004 - Age 29

It was bitter cold on Leif's 29th birthday. He hated that cold! It wasn't just uncomfortable and miserable, but for him it was a matter of life and breath. With the cold weather asthma he had developed, cold weather made it hard to breathe. The evening of his 29th birthday was one of those days. It was so cold we didn't go out anywhere. He came over all bundled up, with nothing but his eyes showing. He had on a big heavy jacket, and under that, another jacket, and under that a sweater. He had a stocking cap on and it was pulled down to meet the high collar of his jacket, so that only his eyes were showing. It reminded me of how I dressed when we lived at Fort Sheridan on the north side of Chicago and I had to go to work at the Civilian Personnel Office. I, too, used to have nothing but my eyes showing and they nicknamed me "Yukon Jerri." At that time, Leif made fun of me because I was a cold weather and snow wimp, but he had joined me before this birthday came around.

We got him something warm to drink (warm translating as a Scotch on the rocks, I think) and after he got warmed up he finally took off his hat, jacket and gloves and opened his birthday presents. Notice the change in size from the puffed up double jackets to the just the sweater.

I know he got this dagger, two new warm hats, a book of soldier humor, and also an insulated coffee mug for his car. By this time, he was working for Alltel and it was a long drive (long for Manhattan, Kansas, about 6 miles) out to their building past the Manhattan airport. He wanted to have a warm drink with him. I know there were other presents, but I can only remember those. He put both hats on at once, and if you look hard, you can see the tag on the top of the light blue one.

We had a nice evening together before he had to go back out in the cold and walk the block back to the 710 N. 9th Street house. Kansas is in the deep freeze for his birthday this year, too. He wouldn't miss that!

Leif was looking good in January 2004, and he was happy. He was in love. It was good to see him happy like that, but unfortunately, it was not to last. I don't remember why she wasn't with us that night. She may have been in the Philippines for her job at that time.

I treasure the memories of the good times. I'm glad he had some in his life.

Happy Birthday, Leif!

Leif's 28th Birthday - Manhattan, Kansas - January 28, 2003 - Age 28

Leif is looking amused because of the unusual gift I gave him. I made a "Birthday Gift Coupon," good for "8 not-necessarily consecutive" "hours of personal help, working with you to clean your house. Please schedule in advance." He thought it was pretty funny. I did it because Leif seemed to have a terrible "allergy" to housekeeping. At that time, he was living in the house we owned at 710 N. 9th Street in Manhattan, Kansas on the same city block as our old stone house. We had purchased it for Peter W's mother to live in, and she had lived there for five years before she died. Then Leif lived there.

I'd go over there for something, most often to get boxes of my Ravenstone Press books that were stored in the basement there, and see what a mess the place was. It looked pretty overwhelming, and I knew from experience that Leif would work on it if he had someone to work with, and otherwise, he wouldn't. I wasn't about to start just cleaning house for him, at the age of 28, just as I didn't do his laundry, but I was willing to give him a gift of help. And it worked . . . at least until it got to be a big mess again after we cleaned it up.

The coupon wasn't the only thing he got for his 28th birthday. He also got a sword and some other things, and we had a good dinner with some of his favorite foods.

You can see that Leif looks a lot healthier and happier on this 28th birthday than he looked on his 27th. 2003 was a good year for Leif. At this time, he was in his last semester of undergrad work at KSU and was looking forward to graduating in May.

Happy Birthday, Leif!

Leif - The Cutest Devil - Halloween 2002?

I'm not sure precisely when this photo was takenm though I think it was October 30, 2002. It was on Leif's computer, along with a bunch of other photos taken at this party, which he apparently gave in Manhattan, Kansas in the house at 710 N. 9th Street.

I didn't recognize hardly any of the people in the pictures. Since they were all in costume, it would have been fun to show more of this one, which I think is really cute of Leif, Shazbot the snake in hand, placing devil horns on his head and looking like a happy rascal. As it is, I just cropped the picture to show just his face and hands.

Leif moved into the house on 9th Street for the second time in July 2002. We had purchased it at auction in 1997 for Peter W.'s mother, Ellen (Oma to our kids), to live in when we moved her from Monterey, California to Manhattan to be near us so we could care for her. When we first bought it in the spring of 1997, before we moved Ellen there that summer, Leif and Nikko lived in the basement of the house while we were painting and cleaning it and getting it ready for Ellen.

Ellen died September 22, 2002. She fell and crushed her femur in June and never recovered. While she was in nursing care during her last months, we didn't want the house to stand empty, a target for thieves, so we asked Leif to move into it. He had just signed a lease for his apartment on 11th Street, and had to break the lease in order to move into the house. But luckily for him, he went from a tiny apartment to a whole house.

Leif lived there from July 2002 until he moved with his dad to Florida in March 2005. During those years, he went through a lot, pulling out of the depression he was in when he came back to Manhattan from the army in May 2001, graduating from college in May 2003, meeting and falling in love with J. in the fall of 2003, when he was the happiest I remember seeing him since high school in Puerto Rico or when he first married Nikko. And then the heartbreak when the romance didn't work out and he was depressed again in early 2004.

He was involved in SCA, worked as a school crossing guard while in college, and then worked at what was then Western Wireless (now taken over by Alltel), and enjoyed the night life of Manhattan in Aggieville, where he liked to play pool occasionally. The trouble was, he felt he couldn't find women his age in the college town, that the "good ones" were all taken, and that he didn't have much in common with the college girls at his age. The career opportunities were slim, too, and he felt he would have a lot more opportunity in Florida.

Leif had friends in Manhattan and more of a social life than he developed in Florida. He also was heavily involved in ZAON. It's a shame he didn't connect more with people here. He was never very outgoing, an introvert, though when he knew people and liked them, he could be the life of the party. Meeting strangers was harder. I understand that very well. I think he got that "hang back and watch" trait from me.

But enough of all that. It's Halloween, a holiday Leif enjoyed. This is the last photo I have of him having a good time on Halloween, and I hope those who were at his party enjoyed it, too.

Happy Halloween, Leif, wherever you are.