So Long Ago

Peter asked me today whether I ever posted this photo, and I don't think I have. It's a sweet one of Leif with his niece Madeleine, when she was only about 17 months old, long ago in 1997. She was quite fascinated with Leif. He still had hair then and was so slim. She wanted to touch his moustache. I don't know if she had ever seen one before.

Leif enjoyed his nieces and nephew on the rare occasions when he got to see them, and they liked to climb all over him until they got to big to do so. He was a great "tree."

I'll always wonder what Leif might have been like as a father, whether he had the patience. I know he would have had love.

The Magic of Mass Effect

Ever since Leif died, we had his Mass Effect game here but no one played it. Our great niece Kimberly tried it once, and our grandson Marcus as well, but both were too young to play it and lost interest. Mass Effect is the game that Leif bought about three months before he died. He was absolutely captivated by it and he played it for days, once even 24 hours straight until he solved the game more than once. He created both a male and a female character to play with.

Our granddaughters are now interested in strategy games and Aly in particular likes first person shooter games, so I wondered if she would like Mass Effect. To our amazement, as soon as she tried it, she was as captivated as Leif and she has played it every waking minute that she's been allowed to use the television, up to 8 hours a day. She even set her alarm clock to get up early just to have more time before others were up.

The game has proven fascinating to Madeleine and Peter Anthony as well, and even Peter W. has enjoyed watching them play. How I wish Leif were here to enjoy the game with them. He would be giving Aly tips, chuckling at her intensity and helping her along. I can see the two of them together playing. How he would have enjoyed that, a kindred soul to share one of his passions.

It seems a little bit amazing to me that over three years after Leif's death, the game he loved has brought such pleasure to the family.
----------

The photo is a screen shot of Aly's character in the game.

Will They Remember Him?

Leif's nieces and nephew found him irresistible. They would climb all over him, touch his beard, play with him, act silly, make cell phone videos together, play chess together, and generally horse around. He was good with the kids, gentle and tolerant, and amused, my gentle giant. I wondered how he felt about being with them, whether he wished he had children of his own to go home to, though he never really voiced that sentiment.

I wonder, now, whether they will really remember him. I know they will remember that he lived, that they had an uncle that died, but they were so young when he left them that I imagine they will only remember him from photos or stories we tell.

I have a lot of photos of him with them, but I don't post photos of them online. This one is an exception because it was taken six and a half years ago and their faces aren't shown. That night in July 2004, all three of them were climbing all over him and having a great time. He was pretending to roar and flex his muscles like some kind of giant and they loved it. I loved watching it. That was a happy evening with all of us together, and Leif seemed relaxed and happy. It's a good memory.

The photo was taken in our old stone house in Manhattan, Kansas. Now neither Leif nor the house is still on this earth.

Children, Happiness, Parables, Poems and Life

When I was in graduate school at the University of Hawaii, one of my professors told me that I would have a hard time with the empty nest syndrome when my sons left home because I was so close to them and involved in their lives. They were then ten and sixteen. I told him I didn't think so, that I had raised them to become independent, that I wanted them to lead their own lives, that I had much to do in my life, too. All of that was true, but it was also predicated on the assumption that we would always have a close relationship with our sons throughout our lives.

For 23 years, I was basically right, though the details took on different hues. First Peter Anthony left home to go to the Air Force Academy. At first he came home for breaks and spent time with us and his high school friends, but he quickly pulled away into his own sphere, and though I realized I had lost the close intellectual exchange and camaraderie we had before, it seemed natural that he was finding new companions for both friendship and mental challenges, new horizons to pursue, and we rejoiced in his successes, as we have continued to do in all the years since he graduated from high school and left home the summer of 1987.

At the same time, we were seeing Leif blossom and come into his own as a young man with his older brother away and I continued to have a close relationship with him. It was a joy seeing them both develop into interesting, intelligent adults. My "empty nest" was delayed when Leif decided to live at home and attend KSU rather than go away to school, a decision influenced by his father's willingness to buy him a used RX-7 if he stayed there and saved the cost of a dorm or apartment, but not one I felt was best for Leif. For me, it was great. I loved having him there.

Even when he moved out with Nikko, and got married, he was still close by and in frequent contact, so my "empty nest" was delayed again. It wasn't until he enlisted in the army in January 1998 that he left and went far away for three and a half years and began to pull away from the closeness we'd always had, and I think it was partly the lack of the contact and closeness that kept me unaware of just how bad things really were for him in the army, though he did tell us what happened, and expressed anger, but didn't let us know of his despair.

At the time he left, I was just beginning my publishing venture and a year later began working on a graphic arts degree, writing more, and being creative in ways I never had time for when I was a "mom" and working, so I was happy in my own new life and didn't feel as much the lack of my sons' presence, though I loved the contact we had. I think I adjusted pretty well to their adulthood and I enjoyed my time with Peter W.

I can't say it never occurred to me that we might be without either of our sons. We worried a lot about Leif because of his penchant for fast driving, with either his car or motorcycle, and his ownership of guns. Once we found out he had been suicidal the last months he was in the army, and he was so depressed when he came back to Kansas, we worried about the possibility of suicide, too. We worried about Peter A. as an Air Force pilot flying into potentially dangerous areas, and of course, we were acutely aware that other possibilities for disaster always exist, but worrying about possibilities is not the same as dealing with them. There is no way you can feel something you haven't yet experienced. Despite our worries I don't think either of us envisioned our future without our sons there for the rest of our lives. We counted on them being there the way a child counts on his parents being there. It wasn't that we ever took them for granted. We took them for integral parts of our lives.

Today we took our granddaughters, Madeleine and Aly, to the airport to fly back home and after spending four weeks with us. We loved having them here and we had so much fun together. I found myself thinking and realizing that this was how I felt when I had my two sons all those years ago, only they were my children, and I was bound to them in an even deeper way. I realized again how happy I had been then. I knew I was happy then, but I don't think I knew HOW happy, because I didn't have a way to measure it, something to measure it against. Having the girls here gave me a measure of depth, how wonderful it was to hold them in my arms, to have a conversation with them at the dinner table, to read to them, to show them new things and teach them how to do something, to have fun together at the pool or beach, to share our lives. It made me remember and realize anew how much I loved those days, those years, with our sons.

It made me think of Khalil GIbran's poem "On Children," and how well it expressed some of my feelings. I first read that poem when I was in high school, and I have remembered it all these years. I reread it again tonight to see if I remembered it well, and it is so poignant and so prescient.

Your children are not your children.
They are the sons and daughters of Life's longing for itself.
They come through you but not from you,
And though they are with you yet they belong not to you.

You may give them your love but not your thoughts,
For they have their own thoughts.
You may house their bodies but not their souls,
For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow,
which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.
You may strive to be like them,
but seek not to make them like you.
For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.

You are the bows from which your children
as living arrows are sent forth.
The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite,
and He bends you with His might
that His arrows may go swift and far.
Let our bending in the archer's hand be for gladness;
For even as He loves the arrow that flies,
so He loves also the bow that is stable.

Now that Leif is gone and can no longer be the arrow shot into the future, but instead an arrow that somehow fell to earth, I mourn for him, but I rejoice that Peter Anthony is truly of the future, a futurist, who has and is projecting himself far beyond my aim.

Then I thought of the parable of the Prodigal Son. In some ways it parallels our family story, with the older son steady, stable, reliable, and the younger one wanting to take his inheritance and head for other lands, wasting it, working at menial jobs, and eventually coming home humbled . . . but received with rejoicing and open arms. Leif was received home again with joy an open arms more than once, but our story doesn't have that final happy ending. We will never be able to rejoice that he has come home again. He was never "lost" during his lifetime, not to us, and he could always come to us, but in the end, he didn't. I will always be sad that he did not. Was it pride? Was it shame? What kept him from seeking help, from us, from anyone? I suppose he would say he did, in that he tried to use his GI Bill benefits to improve his finances . . . but then spent it unwisely and eventually lost the stipend because he didn't get proper advising about what classes to take . . . and by applying for personal loans to try to cover his debts when he finally realized he couldn't pay them. Was it the loan rejections that finally discouraged him? Was he just completely unwilling to come to us again? What about all the other things he needed help with, his loneliness?

The rest of my life I will go over and over every detail about the his life, especially the last years, trying to understand, trying to find a clue to what made him come to the decision to take his life.

And through it all I will be missing him. Through it all I will be loving him.

Through it all I will continue to realize, day after day, how happy I was when my sons were young and in my care, how fortunate I was, and am, to be their mother. I will shed tears because I miss those days that will never come again, and tears because Leif is dead. I will remember those days and all the days since that we were together.

I had another realization today. I miss Peter Anthony. I miss the relationship we once had where "mom" was a "good reference book." I don't think I let myself realize how much I missed him all these years since he left home, because I wasn't "supposed to." I wasn't going to be one of those obsessive mothers who hover over their children, or one of those demanding mothers who expect attention all the time. I wasn't going to be one of those needy mothers who pile guilt on their kids. I wasn't going to be one of those mothers who mopes around an empty nest when her kid grow up and leave home. And I don't think I have been any of those things. But, I still miss him. And I found out the truth by missing Leif. I need to rejoice in Peter Anthony's life and family. They are here. They will help keep our lives full.

But there will always be two intermingling streams, the lively one of son and grandchildren, the dark, sad one of loss and grief.
-------------------

The photo is of Peter Anthony and Leif on December 25, 1981 in Sagamihara, Japan. It was Peter Anthony's thirteenth birthday.

The World Through the Lens of Experience

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Sense of Place in Memories, and Seeing the World Through New Eyes

Everything happens in a place, and location, place, is such an important part of memories. One's home, the place one lives, is a key to so many memories. That's why I spent so much blog time on the old stone house. It was such a large part of our lives for so long.

But every place one lives has significance and memories attached to it, and as a child in a military family, and then as an infantry soldier, Leif lived in so many places. For those of us who have that peripatetic lifestyle, we keep track of where and when things happened in our lives by attaching the memories to where we lived at the time.

I find myself often thinking that Leif lived here, in this house, where I now live. He slept in this room, ate at this table, washed his clothes in this washing machine, showered and got ready for work in this bathroom, parked his car in this garage, watched movies with us in this living room. It's so hard to come to grips with the fact that he will never do those things again, though the memories live on without him.

Today the sun was streaming in behind a curtain and then a cloud passed over the sun, the room suddenly darkened, and I thought that is how long term grief feels. You go about life, finding a sense of normalcy, even, at times, a bit of the old joy you once felt, and then a shadow passes over you and blocks out the light, blocks out the happiness, even if only briefly, though it isn't always fleeting. Sometimes is lasts and lasts, like the clouds that come to stay on a dark dreary day.

Tonight Peter Anthony's friend Dave was here for dinner with his family. We had a great visit, lively conversation. I thoroughly enjoyed it, even remarking how Leif would have felt about some of the things we discussed, remembering how much he would have loved participating in that discussion. Then, because Madeleine and Dave's son Andrew came in with a butterfly she caught and put into her bug cage, and Andrew's interest in it, I recalled a time in Japan before Peter Anthony had children when he asked me why someone would want to have them. I had begun to answer him that one of the greatest joys of having children is the opportunity to see the world through new eyes, to relearn the marvels of the world that have become commonplace to us as adults.

Just telling that got me choked up and misty-eyed, Peter W. told me not to cry, and I didn't. I managed to keep it under control, but I couldn't help but remember how much that meant to me, seeing the worldl through the new eyes of my sons . . . and how I continued to do that all their lives, as they grew into men and kept showing and teaching me new things. Peter Anthony still does. I miss it so that Leif never will do that again.
----------------------

The photo of Leif above was taken on New Years Day 2007 when he was visiting here and playing with Madeleine and Aly with the video camera of his cell phone. They had such fun.

Memories of Disney World with Leif

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

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

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

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

Leif at Thai Thani in Tampa, Florida - July 9, 2006 - Age 31

There are so many things that bring back memories of Leif and the good times we had together. Saturday (June 13) we went to Thai Thani Restaurant in Tampa with Madeleine and Aly, and then saw "Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian" at the iMax theater there at Channelside. That was one of Leif's favorite things to do. We would meet him there and enjoy dinner and a show. On July 9, 2006, we were there and I happened to take a photo of him with my cell phone. I think I did it because that was when my phone was new and we were experimenting with it. it's just a small, low-pixel image and you can't see any detail, but it's still precious to me because it depicts a happy memory. He would have enjoyed being there for Thai food with the girls and seeing that over-the-top movie . . . and would have been full of talk about the new movies that interested him. How I wish we could be making a date to do it all again.

Leif at Waikiki - Honolulu, Hawaii - June 1980

Yesterday we took our granddaughters, Madeleine and Aly, to the beach and took turns in the water with them while the other stayed with all the belongings on the beach. While it was my turn to sit there I was musing on how pleasant it was to be there, how much like it was when we took our two boys to beaches years ago. I remembered how much fun it was, how I was content to be with them, happy just being together. The girls loved the beach, spent most of their time diving for shells, and didn't want to leave. We finally persuaded them to leave the water when the sun went down. I spent most of the time in the water with them, but that time sitting watching them with "Grandpa Peter" brought back so many happy memories and a few tears, thinking that those times will never come again, and a great sense of gratitude that we can experience this with our granddaughters.

This photo of Leif when he was five-and-a-half was taken on the beach at Waikiki, Honolulu, Hawaii, in June 1980 when we were stopping in Hawaii on our way to Japan, the summer we moved from Germany all the way to Hawaii. How small he looks, though he was big for his age.

Leif on New Years Day in 2007 and 2008, his last New Year

We rarely spent New Years Eve with Leif once he was grown. He usually spent it with friends or his current romantic interest, except for the year he was in Bosnia. But on New Years Day, he often was with us for dinner and the evening. We will miss him this year.

The past two years, his brother, Peter Anthony, was here with his family, and Leif had a lot of fun with his nieces, Madeleine and Aly, who took to Leif from the beginning. He played chess with Madeleine, gave Aly rides and held her upside-down by one foot, played silly games with them and made videos of them cutting up on his cell phone. I found they were still on the phone after he died. In the last few years of his life, I rarely saw him as happy as he was then.

The last day we were all together, on January 7th just after midnight, I insisted that Darlene take a photo of Peter W. and I with our two sons. It's the last photo we have of the four of us together. Leif looks happy and amused. You never know when a photo you take of someone you love will be the last, or when you've said your last goodbye. We did see Leif three more times after this, on his birthday, out to dinner in February, and for Easter dinner at our house. Only three. At least each time was a good time, and we hugged each other and told him we loved him . . . and he said, "love you, too."

Leif's 33rd and last Christmas 2007 - Sun City Center, Florida - Almost 33 years old

Christmas 2007 was the smallest family Christmas we've ever had, just Peter W., Leif and me. My mother was in the Washington DC area staying with our nephew, Rick, and his family, and visiting the family in the area; my sister Lannay and her family. Peter A. and his family didn't arrive here until after Christmas.

Leif had wanted a particular computer game for his new iMac, and I'd gotten it for him, but unfortunately, he never got it to run, so it was only a source of frustration to him. He was subdued at Christmas and it was practically impossible to get him to smile. I knew he'd been unhappy, but he did have some joy and interest in the Mass Effect game on his xBox 360.

Although we had our traditional foods and enjoyed our dinner together, the real fun came when Leif's brother and nephew and nieces got here a few days later. Then he enjoyed joking around with Aly and playing chess with Madeleine.

I'm glad we didn't know it was his last Christmas with us. I wouldn't have been able to bear it.