Thoughts on Independence Day 2009

Last night we were at Disney World's Magic Kingdom with our granddaughters. There were spectacular fireworks in honor of Independence Day, accompanied by narration and music. It was moving and beautiful, and patriotic. I couldn't help thinking of Leif, how much he loved fireworks, how passionate he was about his country and Constitution, how he served his country like so many others, and how this handsome and proud soldier, who looked so stalwart and had the best military bearing in the whole Infantry Basic graduating class, a man with such leadership potential, who wanted so badly to serve his country, had all that taken away from him by the very military he loved; his future, his health, his marriage, his confidence dimmed. And yet, he never stopped being passionate about his country, his brothers in arms, his oath to defend the Constitution.

When the Declaration of Independence was signed, our country wasn't yet free, wasn't yet the United States of America, didn't yet have our Constitution, but it was the beginning of the long road and we are all the beneficiaries of what they started.

Happy Independence day, my son. Thank you for being the patriotic man you were, a man who served his country. I cried for you again last night.

The World Through the Lens of Experience

Each of us views life through the lens of our experience. The longer we live the sharper our lens becomes, the more able to focus, and the more it has been shaped by our lives and the life-changing events we have lived with and through. Sometimes we aren't even aware of the importance of certain experiences, or that they are life-altering, until later, and sometimes we know our lives have been forever changed in a flash.

Finding Leif dead was such a moment. Finding my father dead was another. Until my father died, i was a child who look my parents for granted . . . and children should be able to do. They should have that stability and confidence in life. My father's death was as though someone had completely pulled the foundation out from under my life and it had collapsed, as though there was nothing I could trust in any more, and I was afraid to love again, for fear that anything I loved might be taken from me. Although three of my grandparents had died, and I loved them, I was never close to them and only saw them once a year for a few days. They didn't do things with us grandkids they way we do with ours. I missed being able to go and see them, but they were not in the daily fabric of my childhood life. Life went on. Dad's death was different. He had always been there, our daddy, and then, suddenly, he was not. Not only was he gone, it was by his choice, a choice a child cannot understand.

It took me years to come to terms with my father's death and be able to risk loving again, to stop fearing (as me and my siblings did) that we would somehow lose our mother, too. It took me years to be able to give my love wholeheartedly and be willing to risk the possibility of tragic loss. I was immensely fortunate that I fell in love with Peter W., and that for the 44 years we have been married, he has been the foundation of my adult life.

On that foundation, we built a family, and our two sons meant and mean everything to us. We all know there is a chance we will lose those we love to death, and I knew there was a greater than average chance in Leif's case because of his propensity to ride his motorcycle like a demon and drive his car like he was in the Daytona 500, because of his fascination with and ownership of guns. I knew that, but knowing that does not prepare one for death. Nothing prepares you for the death of your child.

The lens of my experience taught me 48 years before Leif died that you can never count on having the people you love always be there, alive. You never know what might take them from you. But nothing prepares you for the death of your child, and nothing prepares you to deal with their suicide. No matter how many times I worried about Leif getting killed in an accident, while I could feel fear, I could never feel grief. That only comes with death, and it is far worse than anything you can imagine.

Peter W. asked me once how long it took to get over my father's death. I told him I didn't remember. I think in part there is a problem with the phrase "get over." If it means the point at which I stopped obsessing about his life, death and loss daily, the point at which it not longer was raw and immediate for me, I can't say with certainty but I think it was around ten years. If that is true, I think it will take longer to get to that point with Leif's death, but because has hard as my father's death was for me, as hard a lesson as his loss was, it pales beside the loss of my son.

Why should the loss of one's child be so much harder to bear than the loss of a parent? I think the answer lies in how much of myself I had invested in having and raising Leif, how hard I tried to bring him up right, give him a good childhood, a good life, how much I loved being a mother and the role I played in my son's lives. I had spent far more of my life caring for Leif than I had spent with my father, and i was responsible for him for over half of his life in ways a child is never responsible for a parent.

Being a parent at all changes the lens of one's experience forever, makes you realize what it means to have another's life in your care, and that's part of the terrible heartache of Leif's death, that all our love and care did not give him the fulfilling and happy life we wanted him to have, that our love and care did not prevent his misery and suicide.

I know that Leif's death is not my fault, not our fault, but it still feels like a monstrous personal failure, that I could not save me son, indeed, didn't know when he was going to take his life. I know he gave no indication; neither had my father. That doesn't make it any less heartwrenching that somehow we didn't know or have a way to save him.

Now the lens of our experience has changed again. Now there is almost nothing that happens in my life that doesn't remind me of Leif, or some experience with him, or some thought about him. It's amazing to me that nearly everything becomes related to him in some way . . . the words to songs, characters in movies, vehicles, belongings, stories.

For instance, yesterday we went to Disney World's Animal Kingdom with Madeleine and Aly. I remembered that three years ago when we took the grandchildren to Disney World, Leif had enthusiastically recommended that we take them to Animal Kingdom and they had loved it. While there this time, we saw the "Nemo" show, a live musical show featuring puppets that retold the "Finding Nemo" story. We had seen the movie about six years ago with our grandson, Marcus, who loved it. Then I enjoyed it as a beautifully animated, heartwarming story about a loving, protective father who was willing to swim across a whole ocean to find and save his son, and a darling little clownfish with one smaller fin who proved he was capable beyond his father's dreams.

Today I found it not only a beautiful story, but for me, inexpressibly sad. We, too, loved our son and wanted to teach and protect him. We, too, were willing to go to great lengths to do so, but unlike in this story, we were not able to find our son alive. We were not able to save him. We had no happy ending. "Finding Nemo" is no longer the same through the changed lens of my experience.
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The photo above was taken of Leif on January 1, 2007 at our home in Sun City Center, Florida.

Disney World "Lights, Motors, Action: Extreme Stunt Show

We saw the "Lights, Motors, Action: Extreme Stunt Show" at Disney World Hollywood Studios yesterday and had seen it last month when we were in Orlando. It immediately struck me as something Leif would not only have loved, but he would have loved to be IN it. Fast cars sliding around and burning rubber, accelerating fast and doing maneuvers that required tremendous driving skills, fast motorcycles doing the same, and jet skis, too. Combine that with explosives, guns (t was the making of a spy movie in a village in southern France), fire and fireworks and it couldn't have been more quintessentially something Leif would have appreciated. He would have been asking where he could apply for job. Finding out that the stripped down interiors of the cars contained a motorcycle engine would have excited him. He was fond of pointing out that no car could accelerate like a bike. As Peter A. said, the only thing missing was a redhead. I wish he had been there to watch it with us!

The photo of Leif on his super fast Suzuki motorcycle was taken in Sun City Center, Florida on November 7, 2005 and the photo of him behind the week of his silver RX-8 was taken in the same location on January 4, 2006. He was almost 31 years old.

Memories of Disney World with Leif

Yesterday we went to Disney World's Hollywood Studios park with Madeleine and Aly. We had a great time. They are at the perfect age to really enjoy it and be easy to take. Again, it brought back memories of our time there with Leif. We went in 1990 when we drove to Florida to ship our car to Puerto Rico when we were moving there. He was 15, just a year older than Madeleine is now. It was hot, but only a preview of the heat and humidity we would find in Puerto Rico.

We went to Epcot Center and Hollywood Studios and really enjoyed them, but Leif would have enjoyed them even more now, with the new rides and exhibits. We stayed for the "Fantasmic" light and laser show with the girls (this photo is from that show) and that's something we didn't see in 1990.

Leif had been back to Disney World with dates since then, and advised us which parks to visit in 2006 when we first took the grandkids there. He was still like a big kid and loved the parks. I wish he could have been with us.

Today with the girls was so much fun and like our time at Thai Thani and the iMax, or the beach, brought back so many memories of the good times with our sons. I hope that Leif remembered those times as happy ones, too.