Which Leif Garretson Should I Remember on Memorial Day?

When I remember Leif on Memorial Day, which Leif should I remember? The boy who wanted to grow up to be an Air Force pilot but couldn't because his eyes wouldn't pass the flight physical? The college student who joined Air Force ROTC to become an Air Force officer, scoring at the top his class at summer camp, only to be sent home when his body failed him again with a pulled muscle in his groin?

The man who enlisted in the infantry, the toughest physical challenge, to try to find a way into the military, hoping to qualify for Green to Gold to become an officer? The man who went through Infantry Basic Training on a broken foot after a fellow soldier fell on it during first aid training?

The man who breathed and ate sand and dust in Uzbekistan during UN maneuvers and developed severe asthma so that his body betrayed him yet again? The man who served his country with distinction in Bosnia as a peacekeeper? The man who was the best machine gunner in his battalion?

The proud soldier who became a broken man, the one who, with PTSD, finally ended his life like far too many of our veterans? He didn't die in a combat battle, but he died in his own private war, one brought on at least partly by his military service.

So, on this Memorial Day, I remember Leif Garretson, my son, who served his country, and is no longer with us. I will always be proud of him and his service.

This photo was taken around 1999.

What Leif Really Wanted to Be

 From the time he was very small, Leif wanted to be a jet pilot. I suppose some of the things that influenced that desire were visiting Air Force bases, traveling on jets when we moved from one continent to another or traveled, seeing movies like "Top Gun," and all the science fiction movies he saw with incredible flying machines. Two more big components would have been his love of speed and the skies. And lastly, the glamor of it, the cool factor, appealed to him.

He wanted so badly to be a pilot. We were the kind of parents who always tried to help our boys learn more about their interests and be supportive of them. When we lived in Hawaii, Peter W. took Leif to the reserve component of Hickam Air Force Base where a pilot gave Leif a tour and took him up into the cockpit of a jet fighter. Leif was in his element. It was a very special day for an 8 or 9 year-old. This would have probably taken place in 1984. Unfortunately, the photos don't have dates on them.

Leif lived his childhood dreaming of this career and planning on it. Although we all knew he could not definitely count on being selected for AF pilot training, he assumed that was what he would be.

I've posted before his high school essay about when he found out his eyes would not pass the flight physical and what a blow it was to him to have to give up this dream. It must have been even harder on him when his brother, who didn't really want to fly, was at the Air Force Academy and was selected for pilot training. Life is full of ironies we cannot foresee.

Leif tried to capture the feeling of speed by driving his cars and motorcycles like a demon, and would have dearly loved to be a race car driver. He would have been a good one, but that career was closed to him, too, due to the financial requirements.

I read a quote, which I can no longer find, that the death of one's dreams is one of the saddest things that can happen to a person, and that unless we replace the dream we've lost with a new one, a new plan or hope for the future, we flounder.

Leif did try to find new dreams or hopes, whether as an Air Force officer (starting with ROTC), or as an army enlistee, whether with love, or with the gaming and gadgetry he enjoyed, but none of those hopes and dreams came true. It was as though the heavens had determined that nothing he tried would work. How thankful I am that I did not have to live through all the disappointments he suffered.

In the past couple of weeks, we have, as always, had so many reminders of Leif. Yesterday I drove past a Japanese restaurant where we took him to dinner one December. We watched the movie, "Thor," and talked about what Leif would have thought of it. We went out to dinner at another Japanese restaurant and parked next to a silver RX-8 like the one he used to drive. Today I used the computer he built to check how something looked and worked on a Windows machine. Every day I use phones he gave us.

When he died, we lost some of our dreams, too, dreams for his future, dreams of how our future might be with him in it. I miss him every day.

I thought yesterday, after watching an episode of House, about all the babies that die before they are even born, the miscarriages that take their tiny lives, often because they are in some way not viable. Then there are the children who never make it to adulthood because of some congenital problem or disease. And then there are those who do make it to adulthood, but are cut down by, again, some congenital problem or disease, and lead short and sometimes problematic lives.

Perhaps Leif fit into that latter category in some way we will never be able to know for certain. Perhaps that genetic heritage of depression doomed our beautiful son in a myriad terrible ways. But that doesn't mean that he wasn't beautiful, brilliant, funny, loving, generous, kind, and loved. That his meteor only burned a short time and was gone doesn't take away from all that 33 year streak brought us . . . the good and the bad, the happiness and the disappointments. The memories are ours, those we treasure and those we wish had never occurred.

We don't get to choose in life just to have the happy moments. We have to take it all, the good and the bad. Life isn't fair, it just is. It certainly wasn't fair to Leif, and it still hurts every day to think about how he reached that point where he decided to put a bullet into his head. But I'm still glad I had the chance to love him. Still glad of all I learned from him. Still glad he was mine.

His Body Betrayed Him Again and Again

Tall, powerful, seemingly athletic and "indestructible," Leif looked like a formidably fit young man, but sadly his body seemed destined to betray him and ruin his sports and career choices.

It began with his eyes, and finding out that he was nearsighted and could not pass a flight physical so that he could aim for a career as a military pilot. I've posted the essay he wrote about that when he was fourteen.

Next he had to quit playing soccer, a game he had loved for ten years, when he couldn't immediately deal with the heat and humidity in Puerto Rico and then sprained his ankle.

I think those were big disappointments for him, but he recovered and pressed on. The next disappointment was when he gave up his dream of becoming an Air Force officer when he pulled a muscle in his groin and couldn't do the situps to pass the physical fitness test at ROTC summer camp.

Again he switched gears and tried something else. He enlisted in the infantry and had to complete basic training with a broken foot after another cadet fell on it during first aid training.

He might have made it, though, had not something he was exposed to caused him to develop asthma, which made it very hard for him to run with his huge and heavy pack and weapon. Ultimately, he was medically retired from the army at the age of 25. That diagnosis also meant he had to give up his other chosen careers that required him to have a fitness level and ability to run . . . law enforcement careers. I think he also lost something important to him, the ability to serve his country.

I think he had resigned himself to the loss of those options, but he never really found a substitute, nothing he felt committed to and willing to really sink himself into. He wanted to be a hero, but his body failed him.

I still have his army boots in my closet. He walked and ran a long way in those boots, even with his asthma, trying desperately to do it. After he got out of the army and came back to Kansas, I remember one day when he wore those boots to walk all the way out to Tuttle Creek Lake, a distance of over five miles each way. He left the army in May 2001 and many of the clothes and shoes he'd had were long gone, discarded, but his combat boots were still there when he died seven years later, and so were his uniforms. Despite the misery of his last year in the army, they must have held a sentimental attachment for him. Leif wasn't one to keep things unless he wanted them around.

I look at this photo of him in December 1992, when he was halfway through his senior year of high school, and see a very slender and rather brooding young man, though that wasn't his usual aspect at that time. What was he thinking?

In one of his online dating profiles, he was asked what he thought his best feature was. He answered, his lips, and I think you can see why in this photo, although since he isn't smiling, you can't see the cute dimples that charmed everyone. He's wearing two earrings in this photo. In those days, he enjoyed wearing earrings and necklaces.

There was still so much hope in 1992, for him, for all of us. He turned 18 a month later.
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The photo was taken in our old stone house.

Leif Tries Out a Fighter Plane Cockpit - circa 1984 - Hawaiii - Age 9

Aside from exciting things like movies and television shows that sparked my sons' interest in the military and aircraft, there were chances like this where Leif got to climb into the cockpit of a fighter plane; heady stuff for a 7-year-old!

Leif wanted to see a fighter plane, up close, so his dad took him to see a plane at Hickam Air Force Base in Honolulu, where we lived from the summer of 1983 to the summer of 1986. This was a National Guard plane and the pilot was there with Leif. He was in the photo but since I don't know who he was or whether he would want his photo online, I cropped it.

In this photo, Leif is wearing kid's camouflage BDUs ("battle dress uniform" for you civilians) that Peter W. bought in Korea when he was there on TDY (temporary duty). Leif was thrilled to have them and loved wearing them.

Little did we know that he would be wearing the adult version for real, though as I've already mentioned, his hoped-for Air Force career was not to be, and as he found out as a high school sophomore, he couldn't be an Air Force pilot because he was too near-sighted.

Leif Saluting, Playing Army - Japan - 1982 - Age 7

I think most boys play "army." I even played it with my brother as a kid. For most, it's just a game that they outgrow, but for Leif, playing army, and playing with toy guns, became a lifelong passion. We couldn't see that when he was small, and it certainly didn't seem obvious when he was in high school in Puerto Rico and Kansas, with long, long hair, an earring, faddish clothes and electric guitars, but he was to return to it as a major theme of this life, even when a military career was denied to him.

This photo was taken sometime in Japan, in our quarters. I think that helmet he has on is his dad's. If the photo were in color, you would see that his jacket was actually dark blue with yellow trim, which looked considerably less military than the black-and-white version, but the earnestness of his salute, and still the innocence in his eyes, is unmistakable.

Since Veteran's Day is coming, it seems fitting to do a series of photos about Leif's military career. Unfortunately, we have few photos of it. We took some on the three occasions we saw him in his army uniform, but have none of him after he was promoted to Specialist 4. We have none at all of him in his Air Force ROTC cadet uniform. I don't think we ever even saw him in it.

When Leif was in college the first time, before he dropped out and enlisted in the army, he had hopes of a career as an Air Force officer and joined Air Force ROTC. He did well in the ROTC classes. Then he was sent to their ROTC summer camp, where he excelled in the classes and leadership, but experienced a crushing failure when he pulled a muscle in his groin and couldn't do the required situps.

They let him sit it out for a few days and then tried again. As I recall, he tried at least three times, but each time he tried to do the situps, the groin muscle would be reinjured and he couldn't do them.

He could do all the other parts of the PT (physical fitness) test, and was doing great in the classes, but for want of situps, he was sent home, failed. It must have hurt him terribly, though typical of Leif, he didn't allow that to show.

He could have tried again the following summer, but it would have put him out of synchronization with what he would have had to do that summer, and put him behind a year for graduation. He didn't want that, and although he didn't say anything like this to us, I believe he also felt disgraced and didn't want to have to go back and explain to others.

It's a shame. The Air Force lost someone who would have been an excellent officer. How many times in a military career does fitness really depend upon the ability to do situps? Well, real fitness for one's job may not require it, but the annual PT test does, and without passing that, a member of the military is in big trouble.

Leif was certainly able to do situps later, or he never would have gotten through Army infantry basic training. He had long since healed, and never had that problem again.

The loss of Leif's Air Force dreams, probably somewhat following in the footsteps and interests of his older brother, must have been a heavy blow to Leif.

Leif - 1987 - 1991 - How Quickly a Boy Grows Up - Ages 12-16

These two photos were taken four years apart when we visited Leif's older brother at the US Air Force Academy in September 1987 and when he graduated in May 1991. How clearly Leif has gone from being a child of 12 to a young man of 16 (with his Oakley sunglasses hanging around his neck).

In the younger photo he is leaning on the balcony of his brother's room, wearing Peter A's squadron jacket, which he wanted to try on. I'm sure he was dreaming that he, too, might wear such a jacket, go to the Academy, become a pilot. Being a pilot was his dream, the one that was not to be because his eyes weren't good enough. He didn't have the drive to get the kind of grades needed to be competitive for the Academy, though he certainly had the mind for it. At the age of 12, though, he could still innocently dream of charging through the skies.

Leif and Peter Anthony had been close brothers all the years of Leif's young life until, when he was 12, Peter A. (six years older) left for the Air Force Academy. While he came back for Christmas visits, sometimes at spring break, and perhaps for a brief visit in the summer until 1990, they rarely saw much of each other and the bond between them slipped away.

Peter was so busy with his cadet life that he didn't have time to cultivate that relationship and it was quickly replaced by others. Leif didn't talk about it, but I believe he both felt that loss, and was also newly empowered at home and at school by not being in his brother's shadow. He blossomed, but his dream faded as he found out he could not fly.

We moved to Puerto Rico in the summer of 1990, and between then and when Peter Anthony graduated from USAFA in May 1991, we only saw him once when he came to Puerto Rico for Christmas in 1990, if my memory is correct. Then we went to Colorado Springs for his graduation.

Peter A. now says that it seemed to him as though Leif had suddenly grown very tall and slim and had jumped from being a kid to a young man in one giant leap.

It wasn't that fast, and there were several times between these two photos when they saw each other, but it was the Leif of May 1991 that impressed Peter A. with the fact that his little brother was growing up.

I know Leif looked up to Peter. When he went to college, even though he could not be a pilot, he became an Air Force ROTC cadet, hoping for an Air Force career. Even that was not meant to be. He was acing the coursework and summer camp subjects but was sent home when he pulled a muscle in his groin and could not do the sit-ups required for the physical fitness test.

He didn't show his disappointment to us, as ever putting up the good front, but I know it must have been another heavy blow to him. He could have put himself a year behind in ROTC and tried again, postponing his college graduation (which was eventually postponed, anyway), but instead he dropped out of ROTC. Who knows how his life might have been different but for a pulled muscle and that decision not to stay with ROTC. Leif would have been an outstanding Air Force officer if he had made it.

Unfortunately for both our sons, they never again spent much time in each other's company after Peter Anthony left for the Academy in the summer of 1987. The bonds that loosened were never taken up again. Although the two men had much in common, including deep interests in technology and science fiction, they rarely explored it. It was a loss for both of them.

But here in this photo of Leif at 16, you can see a young man who still was looking forward to a good life, a vital teenager coming into his own.