He would be 47 years old on January 28

 

How does one celebrate the birthday of a loved one no longer living? We remember them....from birth to toddlerhood, from child to teen to adult, from soldier to corporate employee. So many years, and yet so few, only 33, and then he was gone. He would be 47 today, if he had lived. What would he have been like? Would he have found love, married, had children? We will never know. I am grateful for the photos and the memories. I am still finding new photos as I scan my mother's slides and negatives. This one I think she took in her house. I do know it was taken in August 1994 when he was nineteen and a student at Kansas State University, still a slim fellow who hadn't yet been required to cut his long hair for his job at Aladdin's Castle video game parlor in the Manhattan Mall. 

What he's wearing has some significance. The t-shirt was a gift from his brother, who had been an Air Force Academy cadet. It's a USAFA Boxing shirt. The necklace is chain mail that Leif made himself. He made a lot of chain mail items, from small things like this necklace and some earrings, to giant projects like the huge chain mail shirt he made that weighed 50 pounds. He learned to make chain mail due to his interesting in medieval armor and participating in the Society for Creative Anachronism. 

We miss him every day of our lives. In April, he will be gone from us fourteen years.

The Regrets of Bungled Communications

It's coming closer to the anniversary of Leif's death, and it's always the approach of the holidays and the anniversary that hit me. Although I think about him every day, in the days and weeks leading up to those special days, the feelings are more intense, the thoughts come more often. Even after eight years, I am still pondering and puzzling what put him over the edge, whether there were clues. I can't come to any new conclusions. The evidence hasn't changed. Yet the mind still searches.

While I was looking for something else on my computer, I came across an email exchange with him in the fall of 2001, after he had come back from the army a broken, sick man, sick in both body and soul. He was back in school at Kansas State University, and had decided to take German, hoping that the fluent German of his childhood when he attended the German Kindergarten (preschool) for two years would make it easier to learn the language.

It didn't. Although both our sons spoke fluent German after the two years we lived in Sachsen bei Ansbach, we moved from there to Japan, and my silly sons absolutely refused to speak German there, insisting that "they don't speak that here" and even holding their hands over their ears when we tried valiantly (at first) to keep up the language with them.

Leif was only five years old when we moved to Japan, and without using the language, he forgot it. It would be nice to think that it would just "come back" with some memory jogging, but apparently, like most of what happens in a five-year-old's life, the memory just wasn't there. Leif was struggling with his German class and I volunteered to help him study, just as I had helped him with algebra and Spanish when he was in high school.

One evening, he apparently came over, that fall of 2001, to have dinner with us and to study, but wasn't being cooperative. I got frustrated with him and went upstairs to calm down. While I was upstairs, he left without saying goodbye. I was very hurt, and wrote him a long and very critical email about his lack of motivation to study, how he had hurt my feelings by being uncooperative and then leaving without saying goodbye. I was pretty emotional and hard on him, and I am sure it must have hurt.

His answer said that he didn't feel like being with people, was depressed, and didn't want to stay, that he had gone somewhere by himself to study, and that at least my admonitions had gotten him to do that. He was sorry he had hurt my feelings, and said he was not good at expressing gratitude.

It hurt me to read that exchange. It reminded me of the many times when I wrote him critical email or letters about his finances, his studies, his failure to live up to some agreement (like working on the 710 N. 9th Street house painting), or failure to let us know whether he was going to show up for dinner. He didn't argue with me or tell me I was being unfair. He seemed to accept what I had to say, but I'm sure it hurt to read those things. I regret them now because although they were true, I wonder if my writing them didn't make him feel worthless.

Of course, they were not the sum total of our relationship, thank goodness, and the reasons I wrote them were twofold. First, I hoped to get him to live up to his abilities and responsibilities, and I also wanted him to see that his behavior affected others . . . me, and his father.  The trouble is, I didn't then, and I still don't now, know whether what I was doing and saying were the right way to go about it, whether they hurt more than they helped. I puzzle over what I could or should have done differently, and I can't see with any clarity what would have made the difference.

I know Leif loved us, and he knew he was loved. He claimed he had great self esteem, but I wonder about that. I think it would be hard to maintain it with all he went through.

This photo of Leif was taken in Japan when he was about six years old. It was a slide I just scanned about a year ago and hadn't seen in all those years. I don't know for sure where in Japan it was taken, though I think it was in Kyoto. It's a good example of how pensive he could be at times. I wish I could go back to that day, to that little boy, and tell him again how much I loved him. I wish I could go back to that day when he left our house without saying goodbye and write that email differently, or not at all. I wish I had understood that he left not just because he was inconsiderate (which he was), but because he was depressed and just wanted to be alone. I wish he had just told me that. So many missed chances for communication.

Whimsical

Leif was funny. He was whimsical. He was silly. He was a cut-up. At least, he was all of those things when he wasn't morose, withdrawn or depressed. How well I remember the times when he was enjoying himself and having fun acting silly.

These days, I seem to alternate between sadness and missing him, and smiling over memories like this one.

He graduated from Kansas State University in May 2003, ten years after he graduated from high school. It took him that long because he spent a part of those years in the U.S. Army.

He came home from the army in 2001 a depressed and broken man, but by the time he graduated from KSU, he was so much healthier in mind and body. He was looking good, feeling good, felt he had a future. I think he was at his handsomest in that year of 2003, and my favorite photos of him are from that year.

It was also the year in which he met J. and was so very much in love, and I'm sure that also helped account for his happiness and glowing good looks that fall, though in this cute picture, he had not yet met her.

It was taken in the back yard of our old stone house. He was acting silly with the tassel on his graduation cap, blowing on it and letting it settle on and tickle his nose. I love the look on his face, looking at the tassel as he gently blows on it, the ends of it splayed around his nose, and that hint of a smile with the cute dimples just showing. How I WISH he could have continued to be that happy, whimsical, silly man. 

Leif at Twenty - Handsome and Hopeful

It was so very long ago, April 4, 1995 when this photo was taken. Leif was twenty years old and at the height of his handsomeness. He was still exuberant and happy. He still had hair. :) He was slender and athletic, and about finishing his sophomore year at Kansas State University.

Just when I don't think I'll see a new photo of Leif (or Alex as he was still called when this photo was taken), someone brings me new ones. My sister, Leif's beloved Aunt Lannay, brought several photos to me in March that I had never seen before. I was so glad to get them.

This photo was taken at my mother's house on Pottawatomie Street in Manhattan, Kansas. We were there for the "April birthday dinner." Mom would make a big dinner for as many of the family as could come, sometimes as many as sixteen, to celebrate all the birthdays in that month. In April, the birthday "boys" were Peter W. (Leif's dad) and his cousin Tim. The original of this photo has Tim and his sister Holly in it.

Those were good times. Leif really enjoyed those family togethers, all the conversation, bantering, and Mom's excellent cooking . . . and I think he and Tim liked the peach fritters with foamy sauce the best of all.

I love seeing a photo of Leif that looks like this, happy, healthy and optimistic, joyful, even. It's so much better than the withdrawn and depressed person he became. He had hope then. You can see it in his eyes.

Leif's MySpace Profile Is Back

To my surprise, Leif's deleted MySpace profile actually did get restored. It doesn't have the background photo of the x-ray of his collarbone with the metal plate and screws, but it seems that the other information is there. I had given up hope that it would ever be resurrected. It's a small thing but oddly a little comforting, that this page that he created is there again. The photo I've posted here is the one he chose to go on that page, a self portrait he took on March 20, 2003, his spring semester as a senior at Kansas State University, when we was coming out of his depression over his failed marriage and beginning to look hopefully at the world again. He looks so innocent and vulnerable in this photo, so different from those taken two years or more later. If you'd like to visit Leif's MySpace page, click the link or paste in:
http://www.myspace.com/97757799

He Dreamed a Dream

Leif was a dreamer who dreamed of being a hero, a warrior. Someone who discovered him on Facebook or in this blog and asked to befriend him after death wrote to me that Leif would have liked this blog, that Vikings wanted the songs of their deeds and lives to be sung, to be remembered.

Leif's persona in the Society for Creative Anachronism, SCA, was a Viking pirate. For years SCA was an important part of his life, and he reveled in dressing in his garb, improving his armor and weaponry over the years. He made rattan weapons to fight with and fought many a Sunday battle in the Manhattan City Park (in Manhattan, Kansas), wearing an incredible amount of weight, especially toward this end of the time he lived there when he had the fifty-pound chain mail shirt he made. Several times I went to watch him and take pictures.

He dreamed of being the kind of hero he could perhaps have been in an earlier age, and surrounded himself with both ancient and thoroughly modern weaponry.

I was looking online for information about the Viking songs and sagas and was surprised to discover that they have fragments of ancient Viking songs written in a kind of musical notation using runes, and one site showed both the old runic notation and a modern translation of it. The title of the songs was so completely appropriate, "I Dreamed a Dream," so I decided to try to record it with GarageBand. I wish I had the time and talent to add accompaniment to it, though I have no idea what the Viking sound would have been, beyond the tune. I wonder, too, what the rest of the words were, and whether they, too, would have fit Leif.

The photos I put with the song are ones Leif took of himself on August 7, 2003 when he had just purchased his new armor. He was posing in the living room of the house at 710 N. Ninth Street in Manhattan, Kansas, where he was living at the time. It was a good time for him. I think he had at least somewhat recovered from the breakup of his marriage, he had graduated from Kansas State University that May, and was looking forward to a brighter future. He has just gotten a job at Sykes, which no longer has a call center in Manhattan. Little did he know how his life was about to change, first for the better, as he was so ecstatically in love beginning a couple of months later, and then dashed to pieces when the she left him. I think the period from about May 2003 to February 2004 was one of the happiest of his life, and it shows in his looks. He was so handsome then.

So, my Viking son, although I do not sing your exploits, I do write them and give them to the world.

Leif's Essay on Freud and His Own Personality Development - February 11, 1994

Leif started taking classes at Kansas State University when he was in the spring semester of his senior year at Manhattan High School and continued at KSU after graduating from MHS in May 1993. This is an essay he wrote for his Human Development class in the spring semester of 1994 when he was 19 years old. I think it is revealing of some of his feelings about a couple of the moves he made as a military "brat" and how he molded his personality to fit the environment in which he found himself. It would be interesting to see what he would think today, or at the end of his life. He always remained vitally interested in psychology and personality theory, and he might have majored in psychology instead of general social sciences if he hadn't had to take math, which he hated, like statistics.

Leif Garretson
HDFS 110
February 11,'94

For this assignment I would like to discuss the various aspects of Sigmund Freud's psychoanalytical/psychosocial theories of development. I find that Freud had a unique and brilliant, but simultaneously narrow and simplistic, insight. His description of the human psyche in terms of the id, ego, and superego, rings true and explains a large percentage of one's personality.

However, Freud's intense concentration on the libido as the sole motivator is unrealistically unilateral. According to Berk (1994) Freud states that the ego develops as a mechanism for satisfying the demands of the id within the confines of reality. Later the superego develops as the conscience that further inhibits the desires of the id. I agree with Freud about the structure of the psyche, however, I do not believe that the child's personality has completely formed by age five.

I have had opportunities to change my personality dramatically much later in life. This, I believe, is due to the fact that growing up as an army "brat" I had my environment changed dramatically every few years. In my opinion, the most profound of these changes occurred immediately following my freshman year of high school, at approximately age fifteen. I had been living in an upper-middle class suburb of Chicago, known as Highland Park. Highland Park was a predominantly Jewish city with a very exclusive social structure. The people that had grown up there and already had long-standing relationships formed their own groups that were virtually impenetrable. I found that an outsider like myself could not break into one of these cliques and became as inconspicuous and introverted as possible.

In contrast, after moving to Puerto Rico I found that I could leave my old self behind and become whoever I wanted to be. I responded much differently. In Puerto Rico I was regarded as something exotic and changed my entire behavior dramatically. I began to wear nicer, less ordinary clothes; I became much more confident and assertive. I began to make lasting friendships that I had not made in the past. I began to do all the things that I never would have dared in Highland Park, including developing a "rep" for being a flirt. The person that I became in Puerto Rico, and for the most part remain today, is the antithesis of the invisible army "brat" that I was prior to the move.

In my opinion the Freudian theory of development can be very helpful as a model for therapeutic reference and is a good base for psychoanalysis. However, it gives explanations for only a few aspects of human development. It suffers from an extreme overemphasis on sexual impulses. Freud seeks to explain all of human behavior through sexual impulse, an approach that is inadequate and rather narrow-minded.

The psychosexual stages are an excellent map through the human psyche which tells us how the mind itself learns to deal with the world. They give a working explanation for certain adult behaviors and are extremely useful for psychotherapy. On the other hand, they are ineffective for defining all but a small number of personality traits. The concept that a person's personality is established by the age of five is absurd (Berk, 1994).

Freud's work was and is essential to the development of both the disciplines of psychology and human development. "His psychsexual theory was the first approach to stress the importance of early experience for later development." (Berk, 1994). His theories are important and must be understood to grasp a large potion of developmental thought. However, they should not be taken as the "Gospel."

[Berk, Laura E. (1994) Child Development, (pp. 14-15) Boston: Allyn and Bacon]

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At the time he wrote this, he probably still had his long hair, but he was required to cut it to keep his job. He was working at Aladdin's Castle in the Manhattan Town Center Mall. When he got the job, he had long hair and the management had no problem with that, but then it was purchased by a new owner (Japanese I think) that required employees to have short haircuts and he cut his, I don't know just when that change occurred but this picture was taken on the day of his marriage to Nikko, October 20, 1995.

Leif and the Mazda RX-7

When Leif was a senior in high school and trying to decide where to go to college, he wasn't enthused about all the application paperwork and also not very enthused about spending four more years in school, yet he wanted to go to college and knew he needed to get his degree. He didn't know what he wanted to major in, which made picking a school all the more difficult. In the end he decided to apply to only three schools, a university in Maryland he chose because it was near where his high school love from Puerto Rico (K.) was going to school, and the two Kansas flagship universities, Kansas State University and the University of Kansas. We had told both our sons we would provide an in-state university education for them, but if they wanted something more expensive, they would have to figure out how to finance the remainder through scholarships or loans.

Sometime during this process, Leif discovered a used Mazda RX-7 for sale for $5000. He wanted it badly. The car connoisseur had found his dream car . . . at least the one he thought might be within reach. He was fascinated the the rotary Wankel engine and the car was stylish, rear wheel drive, and fast. When he came to us wanting this car, his dad made him a deal that if he lived at home and went to KSU, he would get him the car, since there would be a very substantial savings in having him go to school in Manhattan and live with us over paying for a dorm room, meal plan, and transportation to and from Lawrence. He would need some kind of transportation anyway. Leif agreed readily. He wasn't committed to a particular school or going away to school, and he really wanted that car.

I wasn't enamored of this deal. Although would enjoy having Leif with us longer, I felt that it would be better for his development if he left home for college. Whether that really would have been true, we will never know. We can never go back to find out whether doing something different would have resulted in a better outcome.

I think he got this car before he finished his senior year of high school, and he drove it to school. What an awesome change from the old Maxima station wagon! Leif was tall, slim, and good looking. With his long hair, he looked like a guy who should have been on the cover of romance novels. In those days, he was also a fashionable dresser, and he was fond of wearing his long brown leather coat. He also got his first job at Idleman Telemarketing, and had his own spending money, which he quickly used to get himself a cell phone, long before they were common among adults, let along high school students. He must have seemed like a very cool dude.

Leif had this car for about four and a half years, I think. During that time, he finished high school, completed nearly three years of college, got married, and managed to have an accident with the car. I think the accident happened in the first year he had it. According to him, he was out on Fort Riley Boulevard near what was then the Holiday Inn . At the traffic light there, someone got in his way and he had to swerve, resulting in him smacking the car into the pole that held the traffic light. Luckily for him, he was not hurt and the car was repairable. The insurance paid for it and he had it painted a dark green instead of the dark blue it was when he got it. The paint job was an improvement because the original had some problems on the roof, as I recall.

Leif loved that car, but as he got deeper into debt and wanted to keep the motorcycle he bought (the Yamaha) and the old Ford 150 truck he had purchased, he finally sold the RX-7 to a man who was then his brother-in-law. I don't know whether he ever got the full purchase price from B., since he sold in on a personal contract, but he did get the majority of the money. He vowed that he would have another RX-7 someday, and when the RX-8s came out, he vowed that he would get one of those, and eventually, he did. Of all Leif's cars, I don't know whether this one or the RX-8 was his favorite.

Surprisingly, I haven't found any photos of the RX-7 among our photos or Leif's. I can't imagine that we didn't take any. I managed to come up with a kind of composite photo to give an idea of what it was like, but it's not good.
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The photo above show Leif as he looked in August 1993 just before he started college. It was taken on the Caribbean NCL cruise we took. The car photo is similar to his RX-7.

Leif's Ninth (and First) Home - Back to 804 Moro Street, Manhattan, Kansas - July 1992 - Summer 1995

In July 1992 Leif flew from Puerto Rico back to Kansas to stay with his grandmother, Marion Kundiger, and take drivers' education at Manhattan High School, back to the old stone house where he lived when he was born. He stayed with her there until we arrived in September and started renovating the house. I've already written about that.

He went to his senior year at Manhattan High School, but started taking classes at Kansas State University during the spring semester and graduated from high school in May 1993. It was during this time that he became active in the Society for Creative Anachronism, SCA, and began making his own chain mail.

The summer after graduation, he had two special trips, the one back to Puerto Rico to be with his friends there when they graduated, and the NCL cruise to the western Caribbean we took that August.

In the summer of 1995, he moved out with NIkko, who was then his girlfriend, soon to be his fiance and in a short time his wife, but the house continued to be an important part of all our lives until 2005.

The three years he lived there again he was 17 to 20 years old.
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The photos are:
1. The front door of 904 Moro Street with a Christmas decoration on it. Taken in November 1998.
2. Leif at the formal night of the NCL cruise in the western Caribbean in August 1993.
3. Leif in his cap and gown after graduating from Manhattan High School in May 1993.
4. Leif at the Renaissance Fest near Kansas City in October 1993. He made the chain mail necklace and cape he is wearing.
5. Leif at Renaissance Fest near Kansas City in October 1993, with the chain mail necklace and cape he made. Note the earrings.

The Demolition of the Old Stone House - june 2005

Life is full of strange twists, turns in ironies. We owned 804 Moro Street for 32 years. Several generations of our family, from my mother, who lived there 16 years, to Peter W. and me and our children and grandchildren, my nieces and nephews and their spouses and children all spent a lot of time there over those 32 years. We took a vine-covered old wreck of a house and turned it into a home with a lushly green and tree-shaded yard, but the roots we had there, that "homestead" was to end in 2005.

When we bought the old place, the neighborhood was full of young families and retired couples, but over the years the student neighborhoods of Kansas State University encroached, so that we were surrounded by houses carved up into apartments. The street was parked full of cars, and so were what once had been back yards. Days were quiet but nights, especially weekends, were noisy and raucous. Houses were torn down to make way for apartment buildings. Landlords who rented the older homes out to students didn't take care of the properties and let them go to ruin.

It was during this time that Peter W. and Leif started campaigning to move to Florida. Both of them found the cold, greenless, bleak winters depressing, and for Leif, it was worse because of his cold weather asthma. He couldn't breath well. We started making trips to Florida to see where we might want to move.

At the same time, we were approached by one of the Manhattan developers who wanted to know if were were interested in selling our property. At the time, we weren't. We hadn't planned to move for another 3-4 years but not long after that, but an unusual lineup of events changed all that. the builder purchased the two houses west of us and was planning to tear them down (they were in awful condition) and build an apartment complex. He had already built one behind us. if that happened, our old stone house would be isolated on the corner, surrounded by apartment complexes. It became clear to me that the house was doomed. No one would want to purchase it if we wanted to sell it after the apartment building was built to the west of us.

One day in the fall of 2004 when I was walking to work at KSU, the builder happened to see me and asked again if we wanted to sell. Although we hadn't planned to move that soon, it suddenly struck me that this was our golden opportunity to sell and that no matter what, the old house was doomed. We decided to consider his offer. He asked how soon we could be out of the house if we decided to sell it. If he could get our two lots in addition to the two he already had, he wanted to build something different, a townhouse development.

in November 2004 we made another trip to Florida with Leif and found the community and a house we wanted. Leif had put a deposit down on an apartment in Tulsa where his friend Michael was living at the time, and was going to get out of Manhattan no matter what. It was clear that he was dying on the vine in Kansas, pining away for J. and not finding any career opportunities. He couldn't afford to move on his own and other than the fact that it would get him out of Manhattan, we couldn't see how moving to Tulsa was going to improve his situation. Although I couldn't make the move until a year-and-a-half later, we decided to buy the house and move Peter W. and Leif to Florida, hoping to give him a new start in a place he really wanted to go.

So, December 30, 2004 we closed on the house in Florida and moved Peter W. there, then Leif in March 2005. I stayed in the old house until April 2005, then moved to 710 N. 9th Street. The old stone house was torn down June 20, 2005 to make way for the townhouses.

Many people in town were angry with us for selling one of Manhattan's old stone houses to a developer for demolition but they didn't see how the neighborhood had deteriorated and what would have eventually happened to the house if it hadn't been demolished.

Before I moved out, we had big moving sales and people came in droves to see the house, inside and out. Leif helped us get ready. He wasn't there when the house was torn down. I don't think he ever looked back.

People asked if it was hard on me, seeing it demolished, as I was living on the same block when it happened, but by the time they had stripped away all the trees and bushes and emptied out the house, taken out the windows and doors, it no longer looked like our home, the one we'd lived in with our sons. It looked like a sad old derelict. I wasn't sad when I saw it in the end, just a pile of stone rubble.

I don't feel that way now. I know I can't go home there again, neither actually or figuratively, but it's gone just like my son is gone, and I had them just about the same number of years. There is no equating a house with a son, but their time in my life was roughly parallel, and although at the time in 2005 when the house was destroyed I had no idea that in three years my son's life would be destroyed, too, now I feel sad that the house no longer stands.

Leif would not and did not care, or at least he would have insisted he didn't. Places and homes didn't hold the same meaning for him that they do for some of us who are sentimental like me. The literal blood, sweat and tears we put into that house gave it a significance that another dwelling might not have had.

Leif never owned a home. Sometimes I wonder if he ever felt at home once he left this house. The photo of him in this post is the last on taken of him in that house, on December 18, 2004, when we celebrated a early Christmas with him, my mother, Holly, Chad and their boys, Tim and Natalie, because we were flying out to the DC area to be with Peter Anthony, Darlene and Marcus, and my sister, Lannay and her family, for Christmas. When I think of that house, I think of Leif. It was a part of his life for 30 years.
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The photos above are:
1. Leif Garretson, December 18, 2004, the last photo of him at 804 Moro Street, Manhattan, Kansas.
2. 804 Moro Street on June 20, 2005, after the house was bulldozed.
3. 804 Moro Street on June 15, 2005, ready for demolition.
4. The back of 804 Moro Street on March 15, 2005, before the trees leafed out the last time the forsythia was in bloom there.
5. The path along the west side of 804 Moro Street leading to the side door and on back to the white frame detached garage that stood on the alley behind the house. Taken June 1, 2005.
6. The big yard on the east side of 804 Moro Street, along 8th Street, taken on June 1, 2005, before it was stripped for demolition.

The Grandfather He Never Knew - Donald G. Kundiger

Leif never met my father, who died by taking cyanide at the age of 46 when I was only 12 years old, and yet Dad may have passed on several characteristics and propensities to the grandson he never saw. My father was brilliant, as was Leif. He taught himself chemistry, eventually studying organic chemistry at the University of Wisconsin and earning his PhD. He had tremendous musical ability and had studied the piano, playing complex concert pieces. He had the receding hairline that Leif inherited, and that glowing smile. At the time he died, after a couple of years of severe depression, none of us knew back in those days that a propensity for chronic, clinical depression could be inherited, or that the genes for it could be "switched on" by trauma.

Since he died when I was twelve, fifteen years before Leif was born, and I never saw them together, it didn't dawn on me until last fall how much Leif looked like his grandfather. I didn't realize it until I was visiting my nephew, Rick, and saw a photo of him on the wall that reminded me strongly of both Leif (his first cousin) and my dad. Then I suddenly saw the resemblance that Leif bore to his grandfather.

I wish they could have known each other. Leif craved the company of smart people with whom he could discuss ideas. He would have enjoyed my father, though they would likely have disagreed on some things. It's sad that my father never saw his children grow up (my brother and sisters were younger than I was) and never saw any of his grandchildren or great-grandchildren. Sad that he couldn't find joy in life any more, despite his family of four kids and his "American dream" lifestyle owning his own home, a car, and working as an assistant professor of organic chemistry at Kansas State University. By the time he died, he had patented 28 compounds, though the rights to use them were owned by Dow Chemical Company because they had given him grants to do the research.

Dad used to say, way back in the 1950s, that one day we would discover that mental illness is caused by chemical imbalances in the brain. We are finding that out these days. His prediction is coming true, but that didn't save his grandson. Leif didn't ask for help, didn't try medication, as far as we know.

People have often asked me why am interested in genealogy, family history, saying they aren't interested in birth and death dates and a bunch of dead people, but what they don't understand is that family history is the stories, who these people were, the lives they led . . . and how that impacts or influences us. I am more and more sure that they do, in more ways that we can ever know. After all, we are made from their genes. What have they passed on to us?

I have noticed in looking at generations of photos that often there will be startling resemblances between people who are separated by two or three generations, like Leif and my father, but I never dreamed that one of my son's would commit suicide as he did.

Leif grew up knowing about my father's death, knowing how it had affected me. That was one reason that he didn't kill himself at Fort Drum, New York when he was so devastated, because he knew it would hurt me. I told him always to remember that, and that if he ever felt that way again, to remember it and do whatever it took to stay alive. That was not to be. I don't know, and never will know, what tipped the balance and made him decide to put his new pistol to his head and pull the trigger on April 9, 2008. Even though I know of all the problems and disappointments, heartaches, he'd had, what was it that made death seem like the only way out? Was the depression and the decision to die programmed into his genes, passed down from his grandfather, and set in motion by all the trauma he experienced?
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The top photo is of my father on his wedding day, June 13, 1943 when he was 30 years old, just three years younger than Leif was when he died. The second one, one of the very rare color photos of him, was taken in 1959 when he was 46 years old, less than a year before he died.

Leif & Dartboard - Sachsen bei Ansbach - October 1979 - Age 4 and a half

I was amused to find this picture of Leif with our old dartboard, way back in October 1979. I think this is the back side of the very same dartboard he was using as a soldier at Fort Drum. I posted a photo of him with it on March 18 this year. (Find it in the subject list under "darts."

This is yet another instance of Leif's remarkable consistency of interests throughout his life. He had this same dartboard on his closet door during his senior year of high school when we lived in the old stone house. That door suffered mightily and had numerous little holes in it from darts that didn't land on the target. I have a feeling that either these weren't thrown by Leif or he was experimenting with throwing the darts into wood because he was far better at darts than to just miss the board. The same door suffered many little round dents from air pistol pellets. We were not pleased.

Darts fell into the category of sharp projectiles that could be aimed and "fired" at a target. He was good at just about anything that had to be aimed and propelled at a target, whether projectiles like darts and bullets or pool balls hit with a cue stick. I don't have any photos of Leif paying pool, but he enjoyed it a great deal and purchased his own fancy (and expensive) pool cue. I don't know where else he played, but I know he played some at the Kansas State University student union (where I even played with him once, getting roundly defeated) and at Fast Eddy's in Aggieville.

The dartboard in this photo had a good long run. I don't remember when we got it, but it was still among Leif's possessions when he died, so it was around for probably at least 30 years.

Leif - Graduation from Kansas State University - May 17, 2003 - age 28

On May 17, 2003, just about exactly six years ago, Leif graduated from Kansas State University in Manhattan, Kansas with a B.A. degree in general social sciences. He had started classes at KSU while still a high school senior at Manhattan High School, taking psychology and sociology in the spring of 1993. He never did manage to make up his mind which of the social science disciplines he favored most, so he created a program that included courses in psychology, sociology, history and political science.

Leif had an incredible memory. He remembered nearly everything he heard and saw. As a result, most of school, including college, was ridiculously easy for him. He didn't have to expend much effort and if he had, he could easily have earned all As, but he hated studying and wasn't particularly interested in academics. He did like to learn, and what he could learn by sitting in a classroom listening, he learned. He didn't take notes and didn't do homework, except for graded assignments that counted a lot toward a grade such a a theme paper or report. Some of his teachers thought he wasn't "getting it" just as his preschool Montessori teacher thought, but he demonstrated that he was. He once admitted to me that he probably got a college degree with less effort than anyone else he met.

This watch and listen method didn't work for him when it came to foreign languages and math. He could understand what was being shown on the board or spoken in class, but since he didn't want to do homework, when it came time to work college algebra problems on a test or pass a Spanish or German test, he was in trouble. He not only wasn't used to studying, he didn't want to do it. He flunked college algebra (a graduation requirement) twice before he quit school and enlisted in the army.

He quit school in the fall of 1997 because he couldn't keep it all together. He was married, to Nikko, since October 20, 1995, and had been trying to work and go do school (with our help for the school expenses and and $600 a month toward living expenses), but he couldn't make ends meet, in part due to his spending and his motorcycle payments. He worked longer and longer hours at Aggieville Pizza, not getting home until 3 a.m., too tired to get up and go to class, too tired to keep up. He enlisted in January 1998 and spent the next three-and-a-half years as an infantry machine gunner. I've already written about those years.

He came back to Manhattan, Kansas in May 2001 a depressed and broken man in a dark funk, having lost his health, his career and his wife, but he pulled himself together and went back to school using his GI Bill, supplemented with a small income from working as a school crossing guard. And I offered to play the same role I played when he was in high school and tutor him in Spanish, German and algebra. He accepted and tolerated my tutoring pretty well. At least he got through the courses all right.

Leif loved his philosophy classes, too, and the talked a lot about them, his political science classes, and history classes.

He had a brilliant mind for science, and admitted when he was older that he probably should have majored in science, but the stumbling block was math. He didn't want to take more of it, and he didn't get the kind of career counseling that might have shown him that there were careers in science other than being a "lab rat," which he wasn't interested in.

From the way he felt and looked in May 2001 to the vibrant, handsome, mischievous man who graduated in May 2003 was a world of difference. He looked great. He was a rascal. He had achieved his goal.

Leif didn't want to go through the graduation ceremony, like a lot of college students. I told him he "had to," because I wanted to go. I told him that while he didn't think it was important at that time, in the future he would be glad he had "walked" to get his diploma, and that since his dad and I had paid for his education, that was the price. He laughed and said something like, "Silly mommy," and did it to please us. I'm so glad we have these pictures. I particularly like the silly one of him blowing the tassle.

It was a gorgeous and very warm spring day and the graduation ceremony was held at Bramlage Coliseum at KSU.

I think Leif must have had the idea that getting a college degree would automatically mean a better job and a more lucrative career, but just as he wasn't interested in burning up the academic charts, he also wasn't interested in working hard to find a good job. Partly that was due to his lack of focus, not knowing what he really WANTED to do for a career, because if he had, I am sure there would have been no stopping him. However, there wasn't anything he wanted badly enough to spend a lot of time to pursue it. We were disappointed that the summer after graduation, instead of looking for a job, he went to summer school. He enjoyed the classes, but since they weren't aiming toward a graduate degree, from our point of view, it was just running up more tuition to pay, more loans, and postponing a job hunt.

At the end of the summer school classes, he got a job in Manhattan working in a Sykes call center doing telephone customer service about DSL internet service. He was there only about two-and-a-half months before finding a better job in the next building working at a call center for Western Wireless, which was eventually purchased by Alltel. Even when we moved to Florida, Leif continued to find similar jobs, which didn't require a college degree. He always hoped he would move up the ladder through promotions, but it never worked out for him. It must have been very discouraging.

But that day, May 17, 2003, he was on top of the world and so were we. We were so happy to see him graduate, so happy to see him looking healthy and full of mischief and fun, so hopeful for his future.

Leif - Graduation from Manhattan High School 1993 - Age 18

It was a beautiful late spring day when Leif graduated from Manhattan High School in the Class of 1993. He was happy, exuberant, looking forward to his future. He was tall, slim and good-looking, and was excited that he was getting a trip back to Puerto Rico to see his friends there and be at the Antilles High School graduation, where he had spent his sophomore and junior years of high school. He had a great trip, and in August of that year, we took him with us on a cruise in the Western Caribbean on a Norwegian Cruise Lines ship. He was excited about continuing college in the fall.

Leif only attended Manhattan HIgh School during his senior year, and he wasn't really there for a full senior year. Although his fall semester was a "regular" semester of high school classes, Leif had fulfilled nearly all his graduation requirements by December, so he started taking classes at Kansas State University during the spring semester of his senior year. He did well taking classes in psychology and sociology.

Because of his shyness and reserve, and his coming to the school as a senior, Leif didn't have a lot of friends at MHS, and he didn't participate in activities as I wished he had. He tried out for a part in the school musical and didn't get a part, which was hard for anyone in our family to fathom since he had done such a terrific job of playing Kenicke in "Grease" at Antilles High School the year before. Leif felt it was because he was new and hadn't "earned" his place with the director. We will never know, but I know that hurt him. He didn't go out for sports, either, after being out of soccer for two years in Puerto Rico. Instead, he got his first job at Idelman Telemarketing. We certainly learned a lot about what telemarketing was all about from the inside. Luckily for Leif, the accounts he was on involved contacting customers who had a particular credit card already and offering them new goodies, not some kind of hard sell to people without a relationship to the company.

We wee so happy for Leif on the day he graduated, so full of hope and expectations for him. It was a wonderful day, as I know it is for most parents.

Leif at Judo - Fort Shafter, Hawaii - June 30, 1984 - Age 9

Leif first started judo at Fort Shafter, Hawaii when we were living in Honolulu. He loved it! His sensei, Curtis, was terrific with the boys. Leif stayed with judo from the summer of 1984 to the summer of 1990, in Hawaii and Illinois, until we moved to Puerto Rico where he didn't have the same opportunities. He earned his black belt in Illinois at the age of 14.

This photo was taken in a tent at Fort Shafter when they were having a competition. I have a lot of photos of Leif in action but I don't know whether the other boys in the photos would want them posted. I don't even know their names.

Part of this competition that really impressed Leif (and me) was the demonstration put on by some visiting senseis. One was a woman, not a very big one, who managed to lift Curtis (who was hefty) over her head and carry him around.

I always felt bad that Leif didn't continue with judo. He was very good at it and he enjoyed it. When we moved from Puerto Rico to Manhattan, Kansas, there was an active judo group at the university that Leif could have worked with. However, after two years without any practice, he felt self conscious about showing up with a black belt, thinking his skills were not at that level any longer. He could have gone and started back at a lower rank, but he didn't feel quite right about that, either. Ironically, the sensei at Kansas State University was the same one that I took judo from when I was thirteen and fourteen years old, but I never had the guts to compete and earn any rank.

Leif really needed to have some physical activity but he hadn't cultivated anything he enjoyed that he could do throughout his life, except judo, and that he had given up. I think he would have progressed in rank and been a fine teacher if he had gone back to it in 1992 or later.

An Invitation to Remembering Leif Readers

I have been writing this blog for over a year now. At the beginning, some of you shared memories or made comments, but only one or two, and they tricked off to nothing. I wished they had been main entries and not in the "Comments," and that more of you had been able to participate by sharing your memories of Leif.

Although I still have many photos of Leif and much to write about, I don't know how long I will continue the blog, though I think I will continue at least until the end of May; perhaps a lot longer; I just don't know right now. I don't want the time to go on until some of you no longer visit this site, or forget your own memories of Leif. I would like to be able to post some of your memories, and photos if you have some to share. If you would like to do this, please email your post and/or photos to me at jerri.garretson@gmail.com

I reserve the right to edit them, and to decide whether or not to post them. I have to put in this note because I know there are people who visit this blog who did not know Leif and may choose to email inappropriate things to me.

If you are searching your memory for what to write about, think about his interests, things you did together, what you thought of him, his sense of humor, work, military service, school, vehicles, etc., anything you would like to share about any period in his life.

If you send photos, please be sure that you are willing to give permission for them to be posted and that that permission was given by anyone in the photos; also, if you mention anyone by full name, that they give permission to be mentioned. Otherwise, please use first names only.

If any of you have stories you would like to share with Leif's family but not on the blog, if you send them to me, I will be grateful to read them and will honor your wishes.

I want to thank all of you that come back again and again to read what I've posted and see Leif's photos. I can't see who visits, only how many visit. I know that many visitors get here by "accident" through a search that somehow includes one of my keywords. For those who come to RememberingLeif that way, I hope you realized that my son, Leif Garretson, is not Leif Garrett, and perhaps found something else interesting, touching or profound.

I want to know that others are remembering Leif, too.
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These photos are self-portraits of Leif in his "new armor" for SCA, August 2, 2003, late the same summer he graduated from Kansas State University. They were taken in the living room of the house at 710 N. 9th Street in Manhattan, Kansas, and show the odd juxtaposition of his medieval armor and his computer screens. He was 28 years old. He would only live another five years.

A Dream About Leif - He Left Without Saying Goodbye

This morning I dreamed about Leif. I was with him and Nikko. They were friendly and caring about each other, but their marriage was over and Leif was going away somewhere, it seemed to join the army, but I thought I would never see him again, so that wasn't quite it. Everyone wanted to go see him off the at the airport and were organizing transportation. The house was full of relatives and friends, but Leif slipped out alone and left without saying goodbye. I ended up crying on Nikko's shoulder and saying, "Why couldn't it have worked out between you two?" She cried, too. In my dream, Leif was gone and we couldn't contact him.

No goodbyes. The mind finds ways to tell its stories even in our dreams. It made me very sad.

People think that by a year past the death of a loved one, those left behind should be moving on, getting past it, but it is common for real depression and loneliness to set in many months past the death. I have spoken with people who were so heartbroken and depressed a year after a family death that they had to seek therapy and medication. I'm not at that point and I doubt that I will be, but I do have days when I am deeply sad.

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This photo was the closest to how Leif looked in my dream. It is a self portrait he took on September 8, 2002, at the same time he took the one he posted as his profile picture on MySpace. He had regained some of that bright, hopeful look he had lost in the army, and was a senior at Kansas State University. He was 27 years old.

Leif's 28th Birthday - Manhattan, Kansas - January 28, 2003 - Age 28

Leif is looking amused because of the unusual gift I gave him. I made a "Birthday Gift Coupon," good for "8 not-necessarily consecutive" "hours of personal help, working with you to clean your house. Please schedule in advance." He thought it was pretty funny. I did it because Leif seemed to have a terrible "allergy" to housekeeping. At that time, he was living in the house we owned at 710 N. 9th Street in Manhattan, Kansas on the same city block as our old stone house. We had purchased it for Peter W's mother to live in, and she had lived there for five years before she died. Then Leif lived there.

I'd go over there for something, most often to get boxes of my Ravenstone Press books that were stored in the basement there, and see what a mess the place was. It looked pretty overwhelming, and I knew from experience that Leif would work on it if he had someone to work with, and otherwise, he wouldn't. I wasn't about to start just cleaning house for him, at the age of 28, just as I didn't do his laundry, but I was willing to give him a gift of help. And it worked . . . at least until it got to be a big mess again after we cleaned it up.

The coupon wasn't the only thing he got for his 28th birthday. He also got a sword and some other things, and we had a good dinner with some of his favorite foods.

You can see that Leif looks a lot healthier and happier on this 28th birthday than he looked on his 27th. 2003 was a good year for Leif. At this time, he was in his last semester of undergrad work at KSU and was looking forward to graduating in May.

Happy Birthday, Leif!

Leif's 27th Birthday - Manhattan, Kansas - January 28, 2002 - Age 27

After his three and a half years in the army, during which we didn't see Leif for his birthdays, he came back to Kansas in May 2001, medically retired from the army due to the asthma he had developed, and went back to finish college at Kansas State University. His first brithday back with us was January 28, 2002, his 27th birthday, which we celebrated in the dining room of our old stone house on Moro Street.

I made Leif's favorite birthday foods, tonkatsu (breaded pork cutlet with Japanese barbecue sauce called tonkatsu sauce) and peach fritters with foamy sauce, a rather odd and multicultural combination we all loved. Leif could eat a "ton" of those things. I remember one of his birthdays in Puerto Rico, maybe his 17th, when he ate so many fritters that he got kind of giddy. I teased him that I never saw anyone get "drunk" on peach fritters before.

In this photo, you can see him blowing out a candle perched in a big bowl of fritters. They are a family favorite we don't have often, partly because they are a lot of work to make, and messy, since they are deep fried, and partly because they are a great way to gain a lot of weight. I doubt there are many people in the world who have a pile of fritters with a candle instead of a birthday cake, but that's what he wanted. Leif was unconventional in many ways. I'm sad that I'll never make those things for him ever again.

At the time of this photo, Leif was still moody and not happy, but he was beginning to climb out of the severe depression he was suffering when he returned from Fort Drum eight months earlier. He had a successful semester at KSU under his belt and things were looking up.

Happy Birthday, Leif!

Leif Back in Civilian Life - The Cyberpunk Novel - Summer 2001

When Leif came back to Manhattan from Fort Drum, New York, at that time temporarily retired from the army for medical reasons and a 30% disability rating due to his asthma, and also from shin splints that developed from carrying such heavy loads, he was a very depressed man, given to dark moods and apathy. That summer, he lived with us again, in the back bedroom of the old stone house. He didn't have many belongings there, just what he had brought in his car. He couldn't get his household goods delivered until he got his own place and had room for them, and they hadn't arrived in Kansas yet.

He had a fancy black backpack that carried his laptop, important paperwork, and some other things. Mail was coming to our house, mostly bills that he left on the table unopened. He wasn't making any effort to find a job, pay his bills, or anything else but seemed to be in a black hole of depression. I finally asked him whether I could open his mail. I was shocked at the bills that needed to be paid, the same sort of situation we had saved him from before he went into the army. I asked him whether he wanted my help to straighten out his life, and told him that if he did, the condition was that I had to have a power of attorney to make it legal for me to open his mail and help him deal with his affairs, and that he had to cooperate with me in doing what needed to be done, and that he should apply for unemployment, for which he was eligible, but hadn't done. He agreed.

He was surprised that unemployment actually paid him a reasonable amount. While he was staying with us, he could have saved a good bit of that money, but he didn't. Meanwhile, I told him that rather than just paying his bills off as we had before, this time he was going to have to do it himself, using a bill consolidation service. I went with him to Consumer Credit Counseling and had him make up a budget. They helped get his bills consolidated into one payment a month, with reduced interest. Leif was to give me a lump sum each month and I would see to it that the official check was sent in on time. Leif did this faithfully, and he did manage to pay off those bills and repair his credit rating, and keep it reasonably good until the year before he died, even thought he was often scraping the barrel to pay his bills or even eat or put gas in his car because he didn't do well at curbing his spending on electronic "toys," guns, and alcohol.

He was going to go back to school at Kansas State University in August, to finish the degree he had started before going into the army when he couldn't keep working and going to school, and couldn't pay his bills. I told him that we would keep our bargain to pay for his education, but this time, rather than paying for it up front, he would have to get educational loans on his own, and that we would pay them off if and when he graduated, but that if he didn't, he would be stuck with them himself. We thought this would provide him with more incentive to stay with it and graduate.

Meanwhile, I was very worried about his mental and emotional state and it was clear he needed some outlet for his feelings. He didn't want to show his inner feelings to us and there wasn't anyone else for him at that point.

Leif had loved playing Cyberpunk role playing games before he went into the army. I don't know whether he played with people at Fort Drum or not, but I do know that this had absorbed a great deal of his time when he was in college before. He also loved science fiction movies and television shows. He started telling me about some story ideas he had, and it was clear to me that they had some possibilities, not only as Cyberpunk game scenarios, but as a possible novel. Leif had excellent storytelling abilities, but he had never been interested in doing sustained writing. Even so, I suggested that he write a novel.

To my surprise, with a bit of coaxing, Leif decided to try it. He spent a lot of time on it, and he did allow me to read it. The story wasn't polished, more like the first draft, but it definitely had some good possibilities and I wanted him to finish it. I could also tell that a lot of his pain and heartache, as well as things he loved and experienced, were going into the story. I not only insisted he should finish it, but begged him to be sure it was backed up so it wouldn't be lost. I should have insisted that he give me a copy to keep on my computer, but unfortunately, I didn't.

When Leif died and his brother, cousin and a friend and I went over his computers carefully, and I did repeatedly, we never found the Cyberpunk novel. The only conclusion I could come to was that it must have been on the laptop that was stolen in July 2006. That wasn't the one he originally wrote it on, but if he kept it, he may have transferred it to that one. I feared it was completely lost forever.

However, in looking all over the ZAON forums for things Leif had posted, again looking for insights into his life and death, I discovered that in December 2002, he had posted the beginning parts of his novel there. It wasn't all he had written, but at least it was a part. I copied them and corrected things like capitalization and punctuation he had done hastily and not checked, but otherwise, I am going to post what he wrote just as he wrote it the summer of 2001.

I looked for a photo taken at that time and found I had hardly any. I think that was because he wasn't around for photo taking opportunities much that summer, preferring to stay up late into the night, sleep late during the day, and go out as much as possible. The photo posted here was taken August 19, 2001, and was actually part of a family portrait I insisted we have taken. He is actually smiling his "Mona Lisa" smile here, the result of some cajoling. Leif was 26 in this photo.

I will post what he wrote in four parts beginning tomorrow.