"Think of Me"

I tried to post on New Years Eve from my iPad but somehow, the Blogger app would not upload the post. I wanted to post something on Leif's favorite holiday. We were together with his brother, niece, nephew and sister-in-law, and it would have been so good to have him with us, too.

We came back to Florida and I was busy with my mother's medical needs after a fall, busy enough that I didn't get to try the post again for over a week . . . and then it happened.

I went to chorus rehearsal and we got our new music for the spring concert. I was delighted to see that it was all wonderful songs from Broadway musicals.

Then the director told us to take out "Think of Me" from "Phantom." I got choked up immediately. I love that song, but we had it played at Leif's memorial service, and the words will always make me think of him and how much I miss him. I attempted to sing it, but I couldn't get more than a few notes out. I finally just had to put the music in my lap and sit there dabbing at tears while my friend Chris hugged me. I simply couldn't sing.

We went on to other songs and returned to "Think of Me" at the end of rehearsal. By that time I had pulled myself together enough to sing it.

This is such a good example of how we never know how something is going to affect us, or when grief will come unexpectedly flooding back. Most of the time I can talk about Leif without crying, but I can never predict when something will trigger sadness and tears.

It's hard to realize that his birthday is coming up and he won't be here, hard to realize in April he will have been gone from us for six years. I'm still using his computers. His wallet is still here, untouched except for his military ID that I turned in. My mind knows he's gone forever. My heart will never let go.
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This photo was a selfie Leif took on New Years Eve 2002.

The Tragic Seeker

I wasn't going to interrupt the photos and account of Leif's military career but I have to. Last night we went to the Phantom of the Opera production at the Tampa Bay Performing Arts Center. We had never been there before, and I couldn't help thinking that if Leif were alive, we might well have taken him with us. I wish he could have seen it. We saw Phantom years ago in Kansas City, but other than the music, it's amazing how much of it we had forgotten.

In the past year, the two choruses I sing with each have selected Andrew Lloyd Webber songs, and as with other music, I've found that the words and music speak to me of Leif, especially "Think of Me," "All I Ask of You," and "Wishing You Were Somehow Here Again."

"Think of Me," I can imagine in Leif's mind, as he would think of his past loves, his family. I can also imagine it in my mind, hoping that he would think of me. It's a beautiful song, but I see it so differently now.

"All I Ask of You," has a double poignancy, sung by Christine and Raoul, the two lovers, and by the Phantom, who loves and needs Christine. Phantom, the tragic musical genius and seeker of love, shunned by society because of his looks, an outsider who can never have what he truly needs.

Leif was an attractive man, but his blemish was of another kind, his introversion, his penchant for getting into financial trouble, but like Phantom, he sought a love to make him whole, and like Phantom, he wanted to shape his love into the perfect object of his love.

Leif in some sense belongs in the group of literary men who want to take a "damsel in distress" or poverty (think of Shaw's "Pygmalion," the inspiration for "My Fair Lady," as well as the Phantom and Christine, a chorus girl pining for her dead father) and make her into a fine lady.

"Wishing You Were Somehow Here Again," which Christine sings in front of her father's grave, brought tears to my eyes. How I wish Leif were somehow here again! She sang it with such longing and grief, feeling from the soul, and I know just what Christine felt.

The staging was spectacular. Just the engineering of it would have engaged Leif's mind. He would have loved this show. I wonder if he would have seen any of the things I saw in it. Perhaps not, if he were still alive.

It was a magical, beautiful evening for us, but Leif was there, if only in my mind.

He was a tragic seeker of love, my lonely son, a seeker of his place in the world, a place he never found.
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The photo above was taken in May 1998 when Leif came back to Kansas from infantry basic training to pack up and move to Fort Drum, New York. He was 23.