Sailing With His Friends in the Caribbean

This is a mystery photo for me. I found it among Leif's photos after he died. Leif is sitting on the very top right of this catamaran named The East Wind, and it was clearly taken somewhere in the Caribbean during the years we were living in Puerto Rico, but I know nothing more about it. 

I've asked some of his friends from Antilles High School if they can tell me but they don't know either.

It's possible it was taken in the British Virgin Islands when he was there on ActionQuest, but it seems unlikely they would have gotten off their sailboat and onto a catamaran. Maybe this boat belonged to the family of one of his friends in Puerto Rico that I no longer have contact with. 

I hoped to find out the story behind the photo and who took it before I posted it on this blog, but since it appears I can't do that, I'm posting it now. Maybe someone who knows will see it.

Leif would have been in his element here. He loved boats and the Caribbean. I'm glad he got to do this, however it happened. He would have been about 16 years old. I think this was taken in 1991.

We thought a lot about Leif on our cruise in New Zealand and Australia last month. 
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Update April 21st: After I posted this, I found out I should have asked Peter W. about this picture. I thought it was Leif off with his friends, and it still looks like that to me, but Peter says that this was a SCUBA dive trip to the smaller island of Palominito, off the northeast coast of Puerto Rico, and they took this boat to get over there. Now I still wonder who took the picture. I went along on some dive trips but I know I didn't take this one, and I found it among Leif's things, not ours.

Leif in Blue on a Sailboat in the Caribbean

I love these photos. Peter W. took them when we were out on a sailboat when we lived in Puerto Rico in 1991. Leif was such a "Tarzan specimen" then, so tall, slim, muscular and handsome. He was letting his hair grow long, was finding good friends and dating, doing well in school, making his own guitar. He loved the sea and sailing. This was the summer that he went on the teen sail adventure in the British Virgin Islands and came home really looking like Tarzan with his long hair in tiny braids -- not the Tarzan ever actually had that hairstyle, but this was the Caribbean version. :) The memories of that time are good, happy ones. I'm glad he had some good times. Though not all his time in Puerto Rico was happy, I think some of the happiest times of his life occurred there, like his first love, K., and his triumph as Kenicke in the musical "Grease," his sail adventure, guitar playing, his group of friends. How I wish the successes he felt then had continued.

Today was a beautiful day, one that would have been lovely for a sail, a day at the beach, or Leif's other joy, a motorcycle ride. As we were driving down Dale Mabry in Tampa, a silver RX8 was alongside us. It might have been Leif's car. We thought of him, talked about him, reminisced, and how we missed him. BOB (big orange ball) was smiling on Tampa today. I wish he'd been there to enjoy it.

There are always so many reminders of him. I was thinking yesterday, as I was driving home from doing some errands, about this blog, about how I've been writing for more than three years. Haven't I said it all? Told all the memories, some more than once? Asked all the questions? At least all that I can put out here for an internet audience to read. What is left for me to write? And then I'll have a new dream, or something will trigger another memory, or I find a new picture or set of photos I'd like to post, and the blog goes on. I'm glad, for as long as it lasts. It's become a part of me.

Scars

We all have our scars, those injuries life has dealt out to us that heal over but leave their image and imprint on us forever. Sometimes they are things we would fervently wish that we had never experienced. Sometimes the experiences were worth the pain. Sometimes we learn from them. Sometimes we grow. But sometimes, they are just wounds that heal over but leave us irreparably harmed. The scars of our lives, whether visible or invisible all have stories, and all those stories are worth telling. How different they are than tatoos, which also may have stories, sometimes even ones from invisible scars, but which usually are meant as decorations on the body, not evidence of wounds. So, although I think Leif would have heartily approved of this t-shirt saying, I think that scars and tatoos are quite different.

Leif was fond of saying he had no regrets though in the end I don't know whether that was completely true. He also believed that it's the things we don't do we regret, not those we do. Both are popular viewpoints, but I am not so blithe in either assertion.

There are so many things that remind me of Leif, of his life, of the things he said, the things he loved, the places he lived and visited. I just returned from a Caribbean cruise that visited San Juan and St. Thomas. We lived at Fort Buchanan in San Juan for two years, during Leif's sophomore and junior years of high school, where he attended Antilles High School. I've written about him during those years on this blog. They were good years for Leif, years when he blossomed in many ways. I hadn't been back to Puerto Rico since we left in 1992, and each place I walked in Old San Juan was a place I'd walked with Leif many times. I remembered him there, remembered the times we took him with us out to dinner, the visits to El Morro fortress, the trip to the Bacardi Rum Factory, the trip to El Yunque Rain Forest, swimming at Luquillo Beach, sailing to Vieques, and so much more. How I wish I'd been able to take him back there again.

We visited St. Thomas, too, and I remember climbing the hill to have lunch at Blackbeard's Castle, the place I saw this t-shirt. The restaurant is now gone, replaced by a gift shop and a bar, but the view is still spectacular, now "graced" with statues of famous pirates. Leif would have gotten a kick out of the story of Blackbeard, a man Leif's size who was a giant in his time, when the average man was 5' 2". He wore 6 pistols across his chest and would put cannon fuses in his hair and light them, then jump on to a ship with his hair on fire, yelling at the top of his lungs, and scare the daylights out of the crew of his victim vessel. They say he had little need of his guns to intimidate them. Leif would have loved hearing that.

I think that Puerto Rico and the Caribbean was the closest place to a home where Leif really felt AT home, where, after an initial series of difficulties, he made good friends, had an active social life, fell in love the first time, and loved the climate and culture. I am grateful he had those years.

Leif - Caribbean Cruise from San Juan 1992

In January we planned a trip to Alaska, another one of those travels we promised ourselves in retirement. Little did we know when we paid for it that we would be going a couple of months after Leif's death.

We hoped that we were ready to get away and try to find some happiness in life again. And we did . . . but only sometimes. How I wished I could share the experiences with Leif, show him the beauty, talk with him, text message him, find him waiting to pick us up at the airport.

Instead, I had to keep remembering his death.

I marveled at the glaciers, the mountains, the lakes, the beauty of Alaska, and enjoyed the entertainment on the ship, but it was all so bittersweet. I kept remembering the two cruises we took Leif on, both in the Caribbean, and how much he loved them.

I kept wishing he were going to be here when I got home.

The photo above was taken when Leif was a junior in high school in Puerto Rico and we took a cruise in the Caribbean on Carnival. We had a great time. He loved it.

We had wanted to take him on another cruise, and it wasn't long before he died that I asked him whether he had any vacation time and whether he had a valid passport. He said no to both. How I wish we had taken him on another cruise!

It was hard for me to come home to see the places where he lived, slept, sat, played chess with our granddaughter, to see his things.