He would have been 48 today - on Gasparilla

He would have been 48 years old today, had he lived. I wondered what he would look like. What he would be doing. Whether he would have married and had children. That was not to be, but today, on that birthday, was the Tampa pirate festival called Gasparilla, which he surely would have enjoyed. I don't know whether he ever went to Gasparilla during the years he lived in Florida, but as his dad said today, he could have, should have, marched in the parade.

When he joined the Society for Creative Anachronism (SCA) long years ago in Manhattan, Kansas, he chose as his persona a pirate of the Viking age, at least for awhile, before he seemed to morph into a knight in shining armor. He was a rather dashing "fashion conscious" pirate, so he acquired the nickname, "the GQ Pirate" after the magazine "Gentleman's Quarterly" (which now publishes monthly) and bills itself as a publication about men's fashion, sport, sex, health and other subjects. For a time, Leif even used an email address with the handle, "thegqpirate." 

It would have been fun to see him in pirate garb at the age of 48, participating in one of the Gasparilla crewes or marching in the parade....or even in the crowd as a handsome GQ pirate! 

Even almost 15 years after his death we daily use things he left behind...a cordless telephone, a computer, weights, and things he taught us. We talk of him daily, so many memories. We miss him every day, but especially on his birthday, remembering our joy at his birth, that big, strong baby, so curious about the world, so intelligent. When did hope become hopeless? Why did he give up on life?

This photo was taken at the Kansas Renaissance Fair in Bonner Springs, Kansas, September 11, 1994. He was looking handsome and assured, at the age of 19. Little did we know what life had in store for him....or that date of 9/11.

Every Precious Picture

Grief hurts, and many aspects of grief are common to all who experience it, but some are acutely individual. Some people put away all photos, all reminders, of their deceased loved one because they can't bear to see them, can't bear to be reminded, can't bear to think about it. I often wonder, though, whether that is successful. Perhaps they can control the exterior stimuli, but what about their minds? Surely then can't cut off all the thoughts, the questions, the memories.

Others treasure every photo, every little scrap of something that was made by or belonged to their loved one, and I think this is particularly true of parents who have lost a child, no matter what that child's age.

I know it is certainly true for me. I look at these photos and remember when each was taken. Often, I was the photographer and I remember why I grabbed my camera at that point, how I felt, how I wanted to preserve the moment.

Photos that someone else has taken that I've never seen before are a precious gift. There have been very few of those. Surely some of Leif's friends took pictures of him that I may yet someday see.

This photo of Leif was taken by my sister, Sherie, when she came to visit us in Kansas in the fall of 1975. Leif was only about nine or ten months old. He was a happy little rascal then, into everything, and loved to play with pots and pans. He had a laundry basket full of stuff to play with and usually just tipped it over to get at everything. You can see it in the background here.

This photo is endearing in several ways, even the yellow corduroy pants and green shirt, an outfit no kid would be found wearing in 2012. :) His hair was still blond and thin. It's hard to believe that he would be so dark-haired as a teen and an adult.

Leif's 37th Birthday - The Fourth Since His Death

Today would be Leif's 37th birthday, had he lived. It's hard to believe that four years have passed since we shared a birthday with him, and even harder to imagine that it was 37 years ago that he was born. I spent hours looking at all the photos (over a thousand) I've posted of him on this blog in the three years and nine months I've been writing it. He had an amazingly varied life in those 33 years he lived.

On that day, January 28, 1975, when he came into the world, we were so full of hope for him. He was healthy and strong, and proved to be bright and curious as well. Every birthday was a time to celebrate his life, and though he is no longer here to celebrate it with us, I want to do something special today, to honor it, to honor him. No birthday cake . . . or birthday pie, as the men in our family prefer. No birthday fritters, a treat Leif loved. Just a day trip to a favorite place we once spent time with him, and time to remember.
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This photo was taken of Leif and his father, Peter W. Garretson, on January 30, 1975 at the Irwin Army Community Hospital, Fort Riley, Kansas.

"I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus"

 Saturday we went to the German American Club Christmas tree lighting ceremony at our community Atrium building. We've done this every years since moving to Florida, but in the years since Leif died, until this year (our fourth without him with us for Christmas), I have not been able to sing the carols without crying. This was the first year I got through all but one without tears.

Today I sang in the Women's Chorus Christmas Concert, and in our two concerts a year, I've gotten choked up by a couple of songs in each one. I thought I was going to make it through today's concert without that happening, as I hadn't experienced any difficulty with the songs during rehearsals.

But I got surprised by the audience sing-along, which the chorus sings "along" with, too, and by a song I never would have suspected to have such an effect on me.

It was "I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus."

I was glad it was a sing-along and no one would be noticing me, but at least I didn't burst into tears. Just couldn't sing for awhile.

I tried to think of why. I don't associate that song with Leif in any way. It wasn't something we sang in our house. I never heard him sing it.

I think it was the association with Peter W. playing Santa with our boys. It wasn't just Leif; it was Peter A. and our family, and the boys being young, and Christmases together. I missed all those things overwhelmingly.

I DID kiss "Santa Claus."

I've posted these photos before, but not in this context. I could kiss that Santa again, and I wish those little boys were with me again.

The first one was taken in Ansbach in 1978 when Leif was not quite four. He never suspected "Santa" was his dad. That Santa suit had a really nice beard with it.

The bottom one was taken in Kansas in 1975 when he was not quite one year old. The Santa suit Peter W. borrowed didn't have a beard or hair, so he tried to make them out of cotton batting. It looked really funny but the kids believe in him anyway and never suspected it was their daddy.

The ZAON CD

Today I found a surprise. In the months following Leif's death, I searched his computers in vain for all the ZAON files I knew he must have. I remembered how hard he had worked on things like weapons, landscapes, and species of alien peoples. I remembered his showing me how he was creating landscapes with a computer program and some of the planetscapes he had created. I remembered things he had showed me on his computer back in Kansas. I searched in vain.

Today I was looking through a small box of his things that was in a closet, a box I hadn't looked at in all this time. They were things someone (perhaps me) had stuck in there when we cleaned out his apartment, little stuff like a couple of pocket knives, refrigerator magnets, a big plastic drinking jug from Alltel, a company he once worked for, and the like. And among the insignificant clutter was a CD with no label. When I looked at it closely, I could see "ZAON" written on it lightly.

To my surprise and delight, it appeared that many, if not all, of his ZAON files were on the CD, at least those he had backed up when he made the CD years ago. I not only found some landscapes he had worked on, but discovered what the program was that he used to make them.

Leif was an avid player of Planetside. I've written about that here before. I didn't know (or didn't remember) that the program to generate landscapes was from Planetside and was called Terragen. There are a lot more interesting planetscapes on the CD but I can't verify that he created them. These three, I believe I can because he named them with his "thegqpirate" handle, which was his email and online name in those days. (He changed it to Graeloch when he moved to Florida to begin a new life.) They were probably created in 2003.

I am sure there are others he created, but whether they are on this CD I don't know and probably never will. Still, I am glad to have these, something of his creativity to save and savor.

The CD had a lot of photos he had downloaded from the internet to use in creating unusual looking extraterrestrial human races, but unfortunately none of those he created from the mix. Those files must either have been on another CD or lost.

I spent a lot of time online recently trying to find out what had happened to ZAON. There are old discussions on some of the science fiction gaming boards asking the same question, but there are never any answers. The domain names are still registered, but there's nothing posted and the links I once had on the blog leading to ZAON are defunct. Sadly, I had to remove all of them.

All of the posts he put on the ZAON forums are lost to me now, and having read many of them in the months following his death and hoping to go back later and save them, I find it sad that so much of what he contributed is lost. All that seems to be left now is a PDF of the ZAON test playbook, an early version of what was someday to be published. Leif is listed as the "reality tester." in the credits. That title certainly did fit. He talked to me endlessly about whether the weapons that were being designed could really work, based on his knowledge as a military armorer, whether living species could actually function, whether space ships were workable designs. Leif really cared not only about the playability of the game, but the workability of the science fiction involved. For him, those were critical questions.

I wish that game had come to fruition and been published. I know he wanted that badly, wanted to see it out there for the gamers to enjoy, and to see his name as being one of the creators, in is way. Leif had the intelligence and talent to have been a designer. He had artistic ability and the capability to learn to use complex software. However, what he didn't have was the "fire in the belly" to go that route. He did not design the ships, the weapons, the planets, the races, but he helped to shape those designs with countless hours of both research and online conversation. It was such a part of him, and the participants in the design and testing of ZAON, and the players in Planetside, truly saved his life when he came back to Kansas from the army, medically retired, an emotionally broken man. I will always be grateful for that.

And now, I am grateful to have found these designs and remember him showing me how he worked on Terragen. Good memories. We need those.

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 and his Ford 150 Truck

By the time Leif enlisted in the army in January 1998, he had sold his beloved RX-7 and had acquired a used Ford 150 truck. It was old, but I don't know the year, and the paint was dulled in in bad shape. It may have been brown, but it looked like rust. Since I don't have a photo of it, I created this facsimile.

At one point, as a joke he decided to paint over the FORD letters on the rear tailgate with black spray paint and name it FOOD. Then, later, he tried to paint the entire thing black with spray paint, not having the money to pay for a paint job. It wasn't a particularly successful adventure.

The truck was very useful for hauling things, particularly during their moves, and when he came back to Kansas from Infantry Basic Training in May 1998 (when this photo of him was taken), and he and Nikko moved from Kansas to Fort Drum, New York, they traveled there in the truck, with a lot of belongings and his Yamaha motorcycle strapped in the bed of the truck in back.

He kept the truck during his years at Fort Drum, but at some point before he left there in May 2001, he had the idea of taking the motor out. I don't know just what shape it was in at that point. I don't think it was running. He sold it to some guy but didn't have the title to turn over to him. Once he got back to Manhattan and we located the title, we couldn't find out how to contact the guy he had sold it to. The phone number he had no longer worked and no amount of calling directory assistance or anything else turned up a way for him to get the title to the fellow.

Leif liked trucks. While he was enamored of sports cars and loved them most, he also was appreciative of the practicality of owning a truck. Periodically he would talk about buying one as his "next vehicle."

Leif was the only person I ever knew who regularly made the rounds of auto dealers and test drove cars for fun even when he hadn't a prayer of actually buying one at the time. He also did "research" (unbidden) to see what cars his relatives or friends ought to buy, in his opinion and would come and make recommendations to us.

He never did get another truck. I think he had this one about five years.

Leif and the 1983 Nissan Maxima station wagon, 1983 - 1993

In the summer of 1983 we moved from Germany to Japan and sold the cars we had in Germany. In Japan, Peter W. bought a used Toyota Crown Super Saloon, which the boys thought was pretty snazzy, but except for one trip to Osaka and Kyoto, and some drives to Yokohama and Yokota Air Base, we didn't do much long distance traveling in it. It wasn't a sports car and I don't think Leif maintained any strong emotions about it.

However, when we were due to move from Japan to Hawaii in the summer of 1983, we had the opportunity to purchase a new car through a program where we could look at the cars there in Japan but would take possession of the US specification model in Hawaii, the transaction taking place through Guam.

We took the boys along to shop for a car with us, and I remember trying out (that is, just sitting in and looking at the gadgets) the Nissan models. The boys insisted they wanted the Nissan Maxima station wagon. Not only was it practical for us, but it TALKED. And it had a great stereo system and nice upholstery. That was what impressed them, since they were way too young to be driving and we weren't offering any sports cars as options.

We purchased a silver 1983 Nissan Maxima station wagon, which served us well for many years, In fact, we still had it when Leif learned to drive ten years later! We picked up the Maxima in Hawaii. Peter W. drove it to work at Camp smith, but around the island and to the beach we usually took the little red Toyota Tercel that I bought used from Avis Rent a Car. It had plastic upholstery so trips to the beach didn't harm it, and it was cheaper to drive. Peter A. learned to drive in that Tercel while he was in high school in Hawaii, but drove the Maxima, too.

The highlight of Leif's car experiences in Hawaii was meeting David Hasselhof when he was starring in "Knight Rider" and seeing the famous car. He also got to see a variety of other fantastic sports cars on the island, and he started building plastic model cars, chief among them a black Lamborghini.

At the end of our three years in Hawaii, we shipped the Maxima to the West Coast and sold the Tercel, flew to San Francisco and retrieved the Maxima, and after visiting Peter W's motheer in Pacific Grove, headed across the country for Chicagoland. Peter A. helped us do the driving, and one of the experiences we all remembered, and Leif wrote about when he was taking creative writing in high school, was crossing Death Valley at night. Peter A. was driving. It was a moonlit night, eerie, and Death Valley was not at all what I had expected. It was horribly hot, which we did expect, but I didn't realize it was so mountainous and rocky, that the road would be so curvy, that it was so completely desolate. We could hear coyote howling.

For reasons we never understood, Peter A. suddenly switched off the headlights. I'm not even sure he realized that's what he was doing. Perhaps he was trying to put on the high beams and forgot how, but I remember us all hollering and being scared on that curvy mountainous road with no lights. Luckily, there was enough moonlight to make it possible to see as one's eyes adjusted, and he soon switched the lights back on. We were all relieved to be safe.

In the Chicago area, we lived at Fort Sheridan. Peter W. continued to used the Maxima to commute to work at Great Lakes, and we used it for long family trips or short ones into Chicago. I bought a red used Buick Skyhawk that I used and that Peter A. drove when he needed a car.

It was there in Chicago that Leif's interest in cars really took off. We took him to the big car show and he took photos of cars on his own. By that time he was also interested in photography, and photographs of cars were his favorite subject. He was really excited when he saw a DeLorean and got a picture of it.

He started subscribing to magazines like "Car and Driver" and "Motortrend," That brought about a really funny incident. I suppose that the magazines must have sold their subscriber lists to credit card companies, in the theory that guys who read them must have money to spend. Leif started getting all kinds of ads in the mail for credit cards . . . at the age of 13! We couldn't seem to put a stop to them, so I finally told Leif to make out one of the applications in his awful handwriting and tell the truth. Occupation: junior high school student. Income: whatever his measly allowance added up to. We had a lot of fun making it out. He sent it in and that was soon the last of the credit card application.

He poured over those magazines and could tell you just about every feature and statistic of any car that might remotely be considered cool.

It was then that, lacking the required age to drive, he got interested in building radio controlled model cars. I've already written about that.

Once, in Chicago, he had to help change a flat tire on the Maxima, and once he had to dig out the garage which was buried by a snowstorm, so that we could get the car out. He was out there shoveling snow like Tarzan. He worked up such body heat shoveling that he not only took off his jacket, he took off his sweatshirt and shirt, too, and was barechested shoveling snow. By that time, he was a 6' 1" fifteen-year-old.

From the Chicago area, we moved to Puerto Rico in 1990, and again, shipped the trusty Maxima to the island, selling the Skyhawk. We didn't buy a second car in Puerto Rico as we didn't need one. I was surprised that Leif didn't lobby us to learn to dive when he became sixteen, but he didn't. Neither had his brother. They both learned to drive when they were seventeen-and-a-half. When we were moving from Puerto Rico to Kansas, we sent Leif ahead for two months to take driver's ed in the summer at Manhattan High School. Again, we shipped the now nine-year-old Maxima to Kansas. There we bought a 1992 Honda Accord, which Leif never drove, but he got to drive the Maxima. It was the first car he drove as a seventeen-year-old, and I remember taking him up to the huge Bramlage Coliseum parking lot to learn how to drive on ice and snow that winter. he was quite surprised to find out just what happened when you hit the brakes or turned hard, but in a few minutes he was testing the limits of his control. Typical Leif.

A nine-year-old Maxima station wagon is NOT a cool car for a cool high school boy, so Leif did his best to soup it up. He put in a booming stereo system and put on neon yellow and green windshield wipers. They didn't go with the car, but they did make a statement. I sure wish now that we had a photo of the car with them on it.

Leif drove the Maxima until he was eighteen and starting college, and even after that, fairly frequently, when he needed to haul things.

We had that car until February 2003 when we traded it in (it wasn't running) for $1 when we bought the Buick Rendezvous. True to form, Leif was not only part of that transaction, but he picked the car. We had had it for nineteen-and-a-half years. It had been a part of Leif's life all those years but he did not mourn it's passing.
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The photos are:
1. Leif in 1993 when he was a high school student driving the Nissan Maxima station wagon in Manhattan, Kansas.
2. Leif in the summer of 1983 when he wanted us to order the Nissan Maxima during our last months in Japan.
3. What a 1983 silver Nissan Maxima station wagon looks like. Unfortunately, we didn't take any good photos of that car, and I made a composite of it from photos I found.

Thank you for friends and family

We are touched and pleased that so many of our friends and family remembered the first anniversary of Leif's death and sent cards, called, or emailed. My sweet sister, Lannay, and her husband, Doug, sent flowers. We really appreciated the love and support.

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In November 2004 we made the last of our "research" trips to Florida and stayed part of the time at a model home in Sun City Center, which is where I took this photo of Leif. He was relaxed and enjoying being in Florida on vacation, and he was amused at something on television. It was on that trip we found our house and made an offer on it. The following March (2005), Leif moved to Florida to stay with his dad while I still had to be in Kansas for a time.

Leif - Bosnia - Fall 1999 - Spring 2000 - Age 25

If you compare this photo of Leif with one taken just a year or two earlier when he joined the army, I think you can clearly see the decline in his both his mental and physical health. It's a dramatic and shocking change to me. He has gained weight, lost his hair, and no longer has that vital, energetic look he had before. I don't know how much of it was caused by the asthma, how much by being separated from Nikko and knowing they had marital problems exacerbated by the long months apart, or other factors of his army service such as the humiliating treatment he had sometimes endured.

We visited Leif and Nikko just a couple of months before he went to Bosnia, in July 1999. He had gained some weight after basic training and seemed subdued at times, but wasn't the depressed and unhappy man he was by the summer of 2000. We didn't see these photos until after he died, and we didn't see Leif until he and Nikko came back to Kansas in the summer of 2000, just before Nikko left him. I wonder if the changes in him were as much of a shock to her as they were to me, when he returned to her at Fort Drum that spring.

Leif spent Christmas 1999 and his 25th birthday on January 28, 2000 in Bosnia. We never heard how he celebrated either one, or if he did.

In the photo, he is in the gun turret of the patrol vehicle, but relaxing with a soft drink. You can see a bit of the area behind him, with the damage he told of clearly visible. Note he is wearing a flack jacket. The position Leif had on patrol was totally exposed. Luckily, he was never fired upon, but if he had been, he would have been a big target.

The certificate is for the NATO medal. It reads (in both English and French):

North Atlantic Treaty Organization
This is to certify that
PFC Leif Garretson
Charlie Company, 2nd Battalion, 87th Infantry
Has been awarded the NATO Medal for Service with NATO on Operations in relation to the Former Yugoslavia During the Period 20 September 1999 to 28 March 2000.

The actual medal looks like the bronze medallions at the top of the page and the ribbon, which he would have worn on his uniform was the navy blue bar with silver stripes that is in the middle. This was yet another thing Leif didn't tell us about, and I found the medal in the box it came in among his things.

Garretsons - Dec. 7, 1975 - Fort Riley, Kansas

This photo of the four of us was taken by an acquaintance outside the Post Chapel at Fort Riley, Kansas, where we had attended a wedding. Leif was ten and a half months old, and Peter Anthony was almost seven years old and was missing his two front teeth.

It was one of those amazingly warm early December days that we sometimes had in Kansas and one of the first photos of the four of us together. How happy we were then, all of us. Our family was complete and our boys were beautiful young rascals. It's hard to believe all the changes that have happened to us since then, all the places we've lived and visited, the friends we made, the achievements we all accomplished, and now Peter Anthony is an Air Force lieutenant colonel, Peter Walter is long retired, and we are grandparents.

How does life go so fast? Why can't we have the years still before us graced with both our wonderful sons? We have so much to be grateful for, despite the tragedy of Leif's death. We had him for thirty three years, and we are grateful for each of them. We still have our brilliant and creatively gifted Peter Anthony, our three beautiful grandchildren, and each other. Though it is hard, through sadness and tears, we have many blessings to count.

Surfer Dude Leif

Although we lived in Hawaii for three years when Leif was in elementary school, he never surfed, but he had a great sense of humor and loved to joke around. One day while I was cleaning out "stuff" we found an old blonde wig I had worn over twenty years earlier. It was a mess! He promptly put it on and pretended he was surfing, in the entrance to our kitchen at our old stone house (over a hundred years old) in Kansas.