This photo of Leif was taken at Avebury Circle in England in June 1980 near sundown. He was five-and-a-half years old.





"The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ, Moves on: nor all thy Piety nor Wit Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line, 
Nor all thy Tears wash out a Word of it." 

 — Omar Khayyám

And yet, our tears come despite their futility. Our love endures despite it's powerlessness to bring back the times and loved ones we miss. Our memories flood back though they will not convey one embrace to the past. We cannot forget, though we must go on.

Leif in Dartmouth, England - June 1980 - Age 5

Quite some time ago I wrote about our adventure in Dartmouth England in June 1980 and posted a photo of Leif rowing our rowboat at the age of five. I recounted the crazy story of him running away from me and me chasing him down with a wooden spoon. There are no photos of that, which is probably a good thing, but this photo of him in the city shows a lot better than the rowboat just how small he was and how easily it would have been for him to disappear and be lost. I'm glad that didn't happen. At that age, Leif was good at disappearing, as he had done in the Akihabara district in Tokyo and tried to do in the Dallas-Fort Worth Airport. He was unconcerned, as kids usually are, unaware what being lost and without mommy really means. He came close in Akihabara, when he did realize he was alone in a sea of strangers he couldn't talk to and was smart enough to stand in one place until we found him.

Five was a pivotal age for Leif in several ways. It was during that year that he stopped running off from me when we were going places and got control of his temper.

It was a year of extraordinary travel and experiences. We moved from Germany to Japan, visiting England, family in mainland USA, and Hawaii on the way.

Leif Rowing - England - June 1980 - Age 5

In June 1980 we took a trip from Germany to England, where we visited London, Canterbury, Oxford, Stonehenge, Bath and several other places, stayed in bed-and-breakfast homes and in the Gate House at Greenham Common air base. It was a great trip, including the trip across the English Channel on a hovercraft. We took our car with us and could drive everywhere.

I think this photo was taken in Oxford. It is typical Leif. We rented a rowboat and Peter W. was rowing. Of course both boys insisted they wanted to try it. Leif was only five years old and could hardly hang onto both oars so he settled for one, but he was determined to make that boat move.

One of the last places we went in England was Dartmouth, where we took a trip on a riverboat down the Dart river. While we were standing in line to board the boat, Peter W. decided he was going to walk off somewhere and get us ice cream cones. There I was with the two boys when Leif suddenly decided to take off running, my five-year-old running off in a strange city in a foreign country (something he was to do more than once)! I hollered at him to come back and he paid absolutely no attention. He was rapidly getting away and I finally had to go after him.

Back in Germany some time before this, Leif had been misbehaving one day while I was cooking and had a wooden spoon in my hand. Although I was not one to use physical punishment with my boys, I threatened to "get him" with the wooden spoon. To my utter surprise, he had stopped misbehaving immediately, and the spoon had become a useful tool. All I had to do was brandish it to get him to pay attention and behave, so when we left for England and were going to be going on to visit family in the USA before moving all the way to Japan, I put that spoon into my purse. Which was where it was at that moment in Dartmouth.

I started running down the street after Leif, still yelling at him to stop, but he wouldn't and I was having a hard time catching up. Without ever thinking how this was going to look to the surprised people of Dartmouth, I whipped that wooden spoon out of my purse and brandished it. Leif was near a bench and he immediately stopped and sat down. When I got to him, I gave him a pat on the fanny and the spoon, the shaft of which had split in my purse. It flew apart in two pieces, making it look like I had wallopped him. He wasn't hurt in the least and didn't cry, but went peacefully with me back to the boat line, but by that time, I was feeling thoroughly embarrassed and wondering what the people who witnessed that had thought.

That was the end of the wooden spoon, though. Not only was it broken and discarded, but it's effectiveness was gone. Leif knew at that point that it wasn't ever going to do him any harm and never would have.

My Second Birthday and Memorial Day Without Leif

I would be fooling myself (I tried) if I didn't admit to myself that another reason for a wave of sadness right now is that today is my 62nd birthday, the second one without Leif, the second one he won't be coming through my door. And tomorrow is Memorial Day, another sad day of remembrance. I've had so many lovely birthday wishes from family and friends, and many, many from Peter W., and they are all wonderful and appreciated. They do warm my heart. But unfortunately, they can't take away the sadness, the finality of Leif's death and absence. I cried when I went to sleep in the wee hours this morning, and I cried again when I got up. It's a hard thing to admit that, especially publicly online, but I promised myself I would be honest about grief.

I have discovered that I, like everyone else I've met who has lost a loved one, particularly a child, feel compelled to try to hide or minimize those feelings in front of others. People have moved on. Their lives were not so inextricably intertwined with Leif's as mine was. Their loss is not so great. It's not just that I don't want to inflict my feelings on others and make them uncomfortable, it's also because they don't understand, don't know how to handle it, may even think it's pathological, worry about me. I know it's not abnormal. I've read enough about the process and lengthiness of grief to know this is normal for a parent who has lost a child and that only those who have experienced this can truly understand it for they, too, have gone through years before there was any real healing, and even then, the wound is only healed, not gone.

But I will "buck up." I will go on our bike ride, swim, go out to dinner and I will enjoy it and try not to think of Leif not being there.

At the post office on Friday, one of the clerks that knows I'm a writer asked me what I was writing now that would make me a million dollars and famous -- as if that would ever happen. I laughed, but then I told the truth, that the only thing I was writing was this blog about my son. He asked me why. I said, "Because that's all I can write right now. It's all that matters to me about writing." Tears came into my eyes.

He said he understood. And he does. Last year when Leif died he knew about it because of things I had to mail and told me that he and his wife lost 3 babies in 9 months, including twin boys. It's been many years for him, but he still feels the loss. He said it is "compartmentalized" now, that he escapes thinking about it at work, but it's in the quiet spaces that it haunts him. I know what he means. Work is the best therapy, being busy, but there are always those moments when the mind isn't busy or something reminds us of our losses. There are always the special days, the holidays, birthdays, that we shared or would have shared.

He said something else that I have thought of a lot, that I have memories, 33 years of them, but he had only hopes, dreams and expectations, no memories of time with his sons. He wonders what it would have been like to have sons. He will never know. Which would be worse? Like Darren said, I did have the gift of Leif for 33 years. But do I feel the loss even more because of all those memories? I think so, but if I'd lost him to a miscarriage or in infancy, would I have grieved any less? Differently perhaps.

I wrote some time ago about the silent sisterhood. It is a brotherhood, too.
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The photo above is of my two precious sons by one of the giant stones at the Avebury Circle in England, a circle of stones somewhat like Stonehenge but not preserved as well. It was taken on our June 1980 trip to England, a trip sandwiched into our move from Germany to Japan.