Leif Wrestling With His Cousin Tim

Sometimes I think the photos on this blog leaves the impression that Leif had a sort of solitary existence, since I don't post many pictures with other people in them, but it's a false picture. Leif had friends he cared deeply about and an extended family he enjoyed. Like me, he was more of an introvert and never had a crowd of friends, but he enjoyed and was committed to the ones he had, and he had a good time at social and family gatherings. It would have been fun to show more of that on the blog.

This photo I had never seen until the end of March when my sister, Lannay, brought several photos she had taken years ago. It was taken in 1985 when Leif was ten years old. He's on the floor in the red shirt, wrestling with his cousin Tim. Tim's sister, Holly is peeking over Tim's shoulder at the top left. Leif would have loved to do some of the things that Tim, and his dad, Leif's Uncle Donovan, got to do, like race stock cars. Instead, he raced his used RX7 and later RX8 on the highways. (Not a good idea and it scared the daylights out of us.)

I still wonder how many more photos of Leif I've never seen, that someone else took. Maybe more will surface.

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 and the Plaque for Timothy

Back in the days when I had time to make homemade gifts and thought they would be appreciated, I used to paint, sew, or needlework gifts for the family. I wasn't a good enough artist to come up with my own paintings for most purposes. When some of my nieces and nephews were born, I painted plaques for their rooms. This was one of them. I painted it in June 1978 for my nephew, Timothy, when he was a baby and had Leif hold it so I could take a picture. He looks so beautiful and sweet.

At the time we were living in Fuerth, Germany (Nurnberg), just before we moved to the village of Sachsen bei Ansbach. Leif was three-and-a-half years old. He was bright and curious, persistent and unstoppable. He had been attending a Montessori preschool which was excellent for him, but from which I have no photos.

Like so many of our photos from that time period, this one had fading and chemical staining. I've tried to rescue it.

Our boys did not have "professionally decorated" rooms, just as they didn't have professionally decorated birthday cakes. What they had on their walls was likely to be either things I had made out of needlepoint, posters, or things they had made or colored themselves. They had inexpensive, plain bedspreads, and quartermaster plain furniture, except for a toy box, which was mostly filled with things like Matchbox cars.

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.

Leif & Holly - Fort Sheridan, Illinois - July 1987 - Age 12

Our sons grew up without the frequent closeness of our extended families except for some brief periods.

Peter A. got to spend quite a bit of time with his dad's aunts, uncles and cousins in Germany starting when he was 6 months old until he was 4 and a half years old.

Then there was a short time when we were back in Manhattan, Kansas that he was around my mother and my brother, Donovan and his family (cousins Rick and Holly; Tim wasn't born yet), but we left when he was only seven and Leif was just a year and half.

We were close to Lannay for a year when the boys were 2 and 8, but her daughters weren't born yet.

We also had the four years at Fort Sheridan, Illinois, when we were a few hours away from my sister, Sherie, and her family in Michigan, with cousins Shane, Brenda and Derek. Peter A. was only there for his senior year of high school and then back for Christmases, but Leif had time with his cousins the whole four years.

Then Leif spent more time with my mother and my brother Donovan's family when he was a senior in high school and a couple of years of college back in Manhattan, Kansas. By that time, Rick had left for service in the navy, but he saw quite a bit of Holly and Tim.

Otherwise, were were far, far away from our extended families, so our sons didn't grow up with a continuous sense of larger family and we traded that experience for the travel and life in Germany, Japan, Hawaii and Puerto Rico.

However, Leif always enjoyed his cousins, and I think he if he'd had the chance, he would have spent a lot more time with them. They had a lot of interests and ideas in common.

He did have a chance to spend more time with his cousin Holly during two of the summers we lived at Fort Sheridan. Donovan sent her to stay with us for a few weeks each time and we had a good time together. We visited all the museums, downtown Chicago, and lots more.

You can see how Leif was starting to shoot up in height like a beanpole here. That year he was a gangly kid at the age of 12 and by the time he was 13, he was 6' 1" tall and shaving! It must have been an incredible transformation for him, but he took it in stride.

Veteran's Day - Honor, Pride and Tears

Our family has so much to be proud of on Veteran's Day. Leif's father served our country for 24 years in the army. His brother, Peter Anthony, is in his 17th year of service in the Air Force (21st if you count his four years as a cadet at the Air Force Academy). My brother,Donovan, served in the army in the late 1960s. His son Rick served in the navy and his son Timothy served in the army. My brother-in-law DeWayne served in the army.

And Leif served as an infantry machine gunner, from January 1998 until May 2001, when he was medically boarded out of the service due to asthma that was somehow caused by his service and exacerbated by it when he was required to be out in freezing temperatures or to overexert carrying his incredibly heavy gear and gun. This was a terrible blow to him, but he was proud of his service and identified with it, considered himself a warrior, and was fiercely dedicated to his oath to uphold the United States Constitution.

Today was a day of honor, pride and tears, honor for Leif and all the military members of our family and nation, pride for their service, and tears for those who have fallen, whether in battle, because of their service, or otherwise.

Yesterday there was a piece on television about servicemembers and veterans committing suicide, and how the rate has climbed precipitously. Leif could be counted among those numbers, a medically retired, disabled veteran who never found his place in the civilian world.

Today we went to Bay Pines National Cemetery where Leif is inurned. I wore one of his dog tags, which you can see in the photo above. I knew I would break down, and I did. Peter and I both cried our hearts out for our lost son. I kept saying, "I want him back!"

I know that's impossible. I know the truth. But that's how I feel, and I'll never stop feeling that way. I miss him so!

I suppose that a grief counselor would say that I'm in the denial stage, but I would deny that. I know Leif is dead. I know he isn't coming back. I don't say it can't be so. But I also don't want to let him go.

I ran my hands over the stone, over his niche. I leaned against it and cried and cried.

Leif's friend and former girlfriend, Donna, came there today, too. She placed a single red rose for him and cried with us. Thank you, Donna, for caring and for honoring him.
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The photo of Leif at the top of this post was probably taken in 1998, before he was promoted to Specialist 4, before the problems with asthma set in.