The Falsehoods We Are Taught About Emotions

Stories are wonderful. They entertain us. They teach us. Sometimes they inspire us. And in the aggregate, they seem to program our minds to believe things that we somehow don't manage to learn are not true. Take the "happily ever after" ending, which isn't just attached to fairy tales, but to most stories in some form or another. Things get resolved. The characters go on with their lives, often without feeling the trauma of all they have gone through. It creates unrealistic expectations for all of us. What's wrong with us that WE can't live happily ever after, get past the hurt and trauma. Why doesn't love conquer all for us? Why doesn't something new and wonderful cancel and blot out the sadness or agony of the past? Sometimes it does, for a time, but not forever.

I've learned it's possible to be happy and sad at the same time, to go on with a good life and still feel grief at loss, to love my family and friends and still miss my dead son, to enjoy a beautiful day and still find myself with tears in my eyes when something reminds me of him.

We just returned home from a 23 day trip to South America. It was a fascinating trip, full of new places and things to see, time to relax, time to sightsee, entertainment, learning. We enjoyed it but even there we talked about Leif at least once a day and I found myself with tears in my eyes a few times, but usually not the deep sadness I felt so often before we left. I've learned that the best ways to keep that at bay are work and travel, being involved in something that engages the mind. Travel also takes me away from where Leif lived and all his things that remind me of him, and in South America I didn't see guys driving silver RX-8s, either.

We were ready to come home after such a long trip and looking forward to being here with our home, our own bed, Peter's cooking, and more exercise, seeing my sister and mother, and I was glad to be back. But, I was unprepared for the flood of emotion that hit me the second day. I was terribly sad for most of the day. I came home, driving into the garage, to see Leif's bike hanging up. In the house, all the things he helped put on the walls and into place, his photo on my desk, the memories of him driving up the driveway to come for dinner, the memory of the sound of him playing PlanetSide in his room or his music, the memory of him sitting at my dining room and kitchen tables, the letter from the IRS answering my inquiry about what to do with his economic stimulus check, the knowledge that in just a few days, he will have been dead for two years. How could it go by so fast? I still miss him with all my heart.

The worst of the sadness passed that day, and yesterday was a happy one, full of activities, beautiful Florida sunshine, and fun with Peter W. Today it's raining and something of a mixture.

We go on. We have to. We find some happiness and joy, but they sit side-by-side in our hearts with the sadness at his loss. Peter said on the trip that he thought I might never get over it.

He was right.
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This photo of Leif was taken at a small temple in Thailand in December 1982. He was almost 8 years old. All his life he loved cats. What a terrible irony that as an adult his asthma was worsened by them.

Our Second New Year's Day Without Leif

Today we began a new year, the second one we have begun without our son, Leif. Peter tells me that he hopes the day will come when I will remember Leif only with joy at the years and experiences we shared and not with the sadness and grief that he is no longer with us. I would like that to happen, but I don't know how it will ever be only joy when I remember Leif because I will always miss him and always be sad for the way he died. It's hard to think that all the rest of my life, he will never be there. Even so, this New Years is easier than last year, and I am a happier person than I was a year ago. Not the same person, for dealing with Leif's death has changed me, but even though I still have the sadness beneath the surface (and occasionally on the surface), I do detect changes for the better in me . . . and in Peter, too.

2010 is the new "baby year" so I chose a picture of Leif with me when he was still a baby, my beautiful baby boy. This photo was taken of us in July 1976 when he was 18 months old, in our old stone house in Manhattan, Kansas. We were happy.

Last night we watched the ball drop in Times Square and I remembered that of all the holidays around the year for some reason Leif seemed to like New Years the best. Maybe it was because of the sense of new beginnings. I remembered that he always wanted to spend a New Years Eve in Times Square, in New York, with someone he loved, and I'm sad that he never got to do that.

We toasted the New Year without him. I hope 2010 holds good things for our family, our country and our world. If only Leif were here to share it.

My Three Guys - Giuseppi's Dinner Restaurant - Colorado Springs, CO - May 28, 1991 - Age 16

My two sons, horsing around together; how I loved seeing that, them having fun with each other. These photos were taken the same evening as the last group, outside  Guiseppe's Depot restaurant in Colorado Springs, Colorado, before we attended the Graduation Balls on May 28, 1991. Peter A. graduated from the Air Force Academy the next day.

This is a good example of how strong Leif was, to pick up his brother like that. Below, the two of them are "putting their best feet forward." They look like they are ready to take on the world and conquer it together.

I know Leif was enormously proud of his older brother and respected him greatly for graduating from the Air Force Academy. He must have wished he could follow in his footsteps, but for many reasons, that was not to be.

It was certainly a proud moment for all of us and we were so glad to be there to share it as a family. Peter W. got to pin on Peter A.'s lieutenant's bars wearing his own uniform and attend the ball in his mess dress blues. Leif was dressed in his stylish silver-gray suit and turquoise tie. He was only sixteen but he looks so tall and grown up.

It's odd what things around me trigger sadness and a deep sense of missing Leif. Yesterday we were in O'Hare Airport in Chicago on our way back from visiting Peter A. and family in India when it hit me that this Thanksgiving we will be here with only three of us, Peter W., my mother and me. Leif will not be coming. It seemed inexpressibly sad. Last year, I convinced Peter W. to go to the Washington DC area so that we could spend Thanksgiving with Peter A. and his family, our nephew Rick and his family, and my sister Lannay and her family. It was a warm and loving crowd of people celebrating together and it kept me from feeling Leif's absence so acutely. This year, there will be no big gathering to distract me.

Then, as I glanced around the restaurant where we were having breakfast, I nearly did a double-take. Across the aisle and down a table or two sad "Leif." Of course it wasn't him, but it was a man who was about Leif's age, with a shaved head and a mustache and goatee. From the side he looked uncannily like Leif, and that's when I nearly lost it. It didn't take more than a few seconds for tears to be brimming in my eyes. I tried to keep it under control, since we were in a public place, but I didn't completely succeed. I just wanted Leif to be there, to be with us for Thanksgiving.

The holidays this year will be hard. Although last year's Thanksgiving and Christmas were the first times without him, they were cushioned by the presence of many people we love. This year, we will not have others with us to fill our hearts and minds. This year, we will face his loss.

I have much to be thankful for, and I know many, many people have suffered worse losses than I have, but we, all of us, can only feel our own pain. Intellectually we may measure it against the pain and sadness of others and know that many have experienced far more terrible losses, but although we may be sympathetic, we cannot feel their misery as we feel our own. We may have four sound limbs but if we have a pain in our back, the sound limbs do not make the back feel better. We still feel the back pain. It is still intense. We can't tell ourselves, "Well, my four good limbs negate the back pain."

So it is with Leif's death. I have much to be thankful for in my life, but even my joy and appreciation of those people I love and those things I care deeply about do not take away the hurt of losing Leif . . .  they exist side- by side, the thankfulness and the pain, the joy and the sorrow.

Why counting blessings doesn't really help - and yet how at times, it does.

 



Tuesday evening at my chorus practice, our director gave us an assignment. He asked each of us to write down five things we are thankful for each morning at breakfast time for the next week. There were a lot of groans among the chorus. It sounded like a class of teenagers complaining about homework, though I think the youngest of us is probably my age. He said it was an attitude-changing exercise.

I didn't object. I've tried this before, several times since Leif's death. I am well aware of all I am thankful for, of I have to be grateful for. The trouble is, even enumerating it doesn't make me FEEL truly grateful when I'm feeling sad about Leif's death. I know what I have to be thankful for, but it's hard, very hard find the joy in all the good things in my life when Leif's death hurts so much.

I read about the stages of grief and I wonder when I will pass this point, when I can let go of grief itself. It's not just letting go of Leif, which is hard enough, but letting go of my grief over his death. It's hard to even remember what it was like not to feel like this, though I look at all the pictures and remember all the good times we had.

I AM thankful for so much, and I have been truly blessed in my life, but that doesn't negate the sadness. It doesn't bring Leif back. Does that make me an ungrateful person who doesn't appreciate what she has? I don't think so. I think it makes me a hurt person who has to take time to heal.

I was working in the yard last week and an neighbor who also lost a son to suicide several years ago said that it's never the same, "You can have good times, but you want to share them and you can't. The loss always comes back."

I fear that. I don't want my life to be like that forever. Somehow, I want to regain that sense of joy I once had, not only for myself, but for Peter W., Peter Anthony and my grandchildren. There are glimpses of it sometimes. I savor them, but I wonder how long it will be before they are more than glimpses, before the tears are not so close to the surface.

Sometimes I wonder how terrible a burden Leif's life was, that he would take his life, how hopeless it must have seemed to him, and I know how much better my life is . . . but that doesn't lessen my sadness. If anything, in multiplies it. It hurts deeply, so very deeply, to know my son suffered like that and we didn't know and couldn't help him.

No, counting my blessings doesn't really help . . . not if it means taking away the pain today, but it does help in another way, which is why I continue to do it. It helps me keep perspective and not succumb to the downward spiral of negative thinking. It helps me to hang on to those blesssings and hope that someday the pain will lessen and shrink away to a smaller corner of my being so that all that's good in my life can shine forth again.
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These photos of Leif, Peter W. and me were taken by my sister, Lannay, when we were visiting her and her family in Greenbelt, Maryland in June 1990. We were in the Charlottesville, Virginia - Washington DC area so that Peter could attend the Judge Advocate General's School course for Staff Judge Advocates, and we were in the middle of our move from Fort Sheridan, Illinois (Chicago) to Fort Buchanan, Puerto Rico.

Nostalgia, Remembrance, Gratitude, Wishing

Finding Leif's photo albums, the two he actually put together (as opposed to a bunch of loose photos from his army days, mostly of people we don't know) not only brings back a lot of memories but shows me new things about Leif and what he chose to photograph. Even as a young teen he was photographing himself, though not as much as he did in the last few years of his life. I don't know for sure whether he placed his camera on something and used the timer on these two or whether he had someone there with him who took them, but I'm pretty sure neither Peter W. nor I took them, or even saw them before.

These were taken the the back yard of our house (army quarters) in Puerto Rico, and I probably should have known about them and scanned them to post when I was writing about that house and yard. Now they'll have to stand on their own.

These were taken around February 1991, or at least that's when the roll of film was developed, so Leif was sixteen years old in these photos. In the one where he is far from the camera, it looks like he is swinging the machete he used to help keep the jungle under control around there. In the one where he is posing leaning back against a palm tree, you can see the same outfit closer up. He dressed in fashion and in fashion fads in those days, with his purple shirt and deliberately ragged jeans, the kind with narrow ankles.

Tonight Peter W. and I were having dinner in Brandon and he said he felt very nostalgic for all the times we have shared, and that he wondered whether we would ever have dinner in Brandon without remembering the times we did so with Leif. I said I didn't think so, and that I think of him in every room of our house. Even the car we were driving was hand-picked for us by Leif. We talked about the years and times in so many places and how fortunate we were to have each other and our sons. He said that when we are young, we don't really appreciate what we have because we are so busy trying to get ahead, make a secure future for our family and ourselves, and that he wishes we could go back and do it over.

I suppose in a sense we don't really appreciate everyday life because it is everyday. We don't know how special it is until it's gone. I can share the nostalgia with him, and and looking at photos of Leif or photos he took, and thinking about all this every day for the blog certainly brings home to me how much we had and what a great loss we have suffered. Yet we are still fortunate to have had so many good years, to have had two brilliant and handsome sons, to have each other, to have seen so much of the world.

In another sense, though, I did know how good I had it, how special our lives were. That's why I took so many pictures, trying to save all those memories, trying to preserve something of those feelings, and I am so immensely grateful not only for the experiences and the family, but for the photos and the memories.

It is both joyous and sad to remember it all, joyous because it was so good, sad because Leif is gone. Tonight Peter said it still doesn't seem real or possible that he's dead. We know it is true, but it seems as though it just can't be so.

I wish, oh how I wish, he were still here!

Thankful for Comfort, Thankful for Love

Going back over Leif's memorial services brought back so many sad memories but also brought a chance to look at the ceremonies again and really hear all the words and ponder them, think again about why we said them, about a more distilled view of who Leif was. Each day when I watched a video, I cried . . . and I smiled. I cried for our loss, for Leif's loss, for all the unhappy days of missing him. I smiled at the memories of his life, the people who cared about him, the years we shared together.

Last night Peter and I went to the German American Club May Dance. Peter was beaming, smiling and happy, the happiest I've seen him since before Leif died. It was so wonderful to see him like that, enjoying life, really having a great time, for the first time in 399 days. We've had moments, even hours, of happiness here and there since Leif died, but not this kind of joy, and I was happy basking in his smiles.

I know it's only a start, and that there will still be many hours and days of sadness. There is still much to face about Leif's life and death, and still a lifetime to miss him, but it's good to know that I can look forward to joy on Peter's face again, too.

It was so different than the New Year's dance we went to, the one at which this photo was taken. We were feeling so fragile, so vulnerable, so unready to face a new year without Leif and yet still wishing we could face it with hope. We danced, but there were tears in my eyes several times. We went outside into the night to look at the stars and talk about Leif. We closed our eyes and danced, holding our grief between us in our arms.

It's so important that we have each other for comfort. I can't even imagine how much harder it would be to live through this without Peter and the comfort of his love. The importance of our relationship to us makes me realize all the more how hard Leif's loneliness and need for the comfort of love was for him. I am thankful I have not had to live my life alone.

Leif - Joyful Baby - August 1976

When I look at all the photos of Leif's life, there seem to be three predominant moods; joyful, pensive and serious. Each has its own charms. When Leif was joyful, the photos are so full of it that they make me smile, and I'll bet they make you smile, too. He had a wonderful, infectious smile, but the joyful photos aren't just smiling. They portray a child, or a man, who was truly happy in that moment.

This photo was taken when we were living in Charlottesville, Virginia, in August 1976. Leif was a year and a half old. If I remember correctly, we were at a park, where had been playing on swings and other playground equipment and having a blast.

I think he experienced this kind of joy less and less as an adult, as problems with his health, relationships and jobs robbed him of it, and he became more and more introverted, avoiding people rather than seeking out new companions or friends. He did look hard for female companionship, but did not find what he needed.

This little boy was not always joyful. He could be pouty or obstinate, thoughtful and questioning, rascally and mischievous. He was always loved.

Leif - "Flying" With Dad - 6 months old - July 1975

From the beginning, Leif loved motion. He loved being "zoomed" through the air, going in the car, riding in a stroller, and "flying" on his dad or mom's feet. Look at the joy on his face. I think if must have been when he first felt the kind of exhilaration he loved when riding his motorcycles.

He was lucky to have a Daddy who played with him and was always there for him.

This photo was taken in the living room of our old stone house in Manhattan, Kansas in July 1975.