Fifty Years of Remembering - Fifty Years of Wondering Why

Today it has been fifty years since my father died. On that cold winter night of February 10, 1960, he got up around two o'clock in the morning, went into the upstairs bathroom next to his bedroom, and took cyanide. There hasn't been a February 10th in those fifty years that I haven't thought of him and wondered why, wondered what my life and that of my family would have been like if he hadn't been depressed and decided to end his life, wondered what it was that made him decide to do it the night he did. What was the catalyst? What was the last straw? Or did he plan it for a long time and then just get up the courage to go through with it?

Like Leif, he gave no clues he was planning it. He left no note to explain it. Yet he had everything that Leif did not, a wife and family, a profession, an advanced degree, a home, friends, and he was not in debt, nor did he have any problems with substance abuse. And yet he was still so unhappy he took his life at the age of 46. I mourn for him and for the misery he must have felt, and wonder how he hid it so well from everyone around him except our mother, to whom he had said he felt "dead inside" and that he felt he wouldn't continue to succeed at his job because he couldn't concentrate and think up new research problems for his graduate students. The eternal question why will never be answered.

Did Leif inherit the genes for depression or bipolar syndrome? Was he doomed by some twist of genetic fate?

He looked like his grandfather. The photo of my father was taken in 1938 wen he was twenty-five years old. When Leif was twenty-five, he was in the army and I don't have many photos of him at that time that are straight-on head shots that I could compare with his grandfather, so the one in this post is from 2003 when he was 28. If you can imagine him with hair and without the beard, maybe you could see the resemblance.

They never knew each other. My father never saw a grandchild. I was his oldest child and was only twelve when he died. He died fifteen years before Leif was born, and yet in some minute and unintentional way, he may have contributed to his grandson's final fate.

Like my questions about my father's death, the questions about my son's will remain forever. I will not likely live fifty years beyond Leif's death, to be 110, but I will likewise never forget April 10th and never stop wondering what made him pull the trigger in the wee hours of April 9th.

I will always love my father and my son. I will always be glad they were in my life, my father for only twelve years, my son for thirty-three. And I will always miss them.

Flaming Out Young

This morning, the conductor of the Women's Chorus I sing with shook her head when we opened up a piece of music and said, ""Mr. Chopin. So many of the great composers died young. They lived hard and burned out, like Mozart. I'm surprised Mozart made it into his thirties. They were brilliant but maybe that worked aganst them."

Someone in the chorus chimed in, "That's still true today," and people started mentioning names like Elvis Presley and Michael Jackson, and others.

I was thinking about Leif. Those people were immensely talented and they achieved great success, so we know about them. But how many more of our brilliant young people who live hard, trying to experience something, trying to figure out how to use their talents, and end up dying young? I've heard too many stories of young men in their early thirties, like Leif, who took their own lives or died of the consequences of their dangerous lifestyles.

Mozart was 35 when he died of a serious fever with rashes and swelling, which at least one medical sleuth says was probably rheumatic fever. Chopin was 39 and died of tuberculosis. Without modern medical care, it may not have been so much their lifestyles as the inability to treat contagious diseases that took their lives. We have to wonder what glorious music they might have continued to give us had they lived a normal lifespan.

We worried about Leif from the time he was about 21 and bought his first motorcycle, driving it like a demon. He admitted to me that he reached speeds over 100 miles an hour. We worried about the way he drove his car, too. I was always glad to know, each and every day, that he was all right. When we all got cell phones about five years ago (Leif had one since 1993, long before most people got them, and paid for it with his salary), I always kept mine with me, including at night on my nightstand, in case something happened to him. More than once, it did. We feared he would kill himself or injure himself terribly in a crash. It was a daily fear.

He had two minor motorcycle accidents and two minor car accidents, a car accident that totaled his Dodge Stratus and hurt his neck, and then the motorcycle that shattered his collarbone and required surgery. Ironically, that one was not because he was speeding. He was on a street in Tampa, near his apartment, going back to work after lunch and a white Cadillac swerved in front of him. To avoid ramming into the back of it, he had to lay the bike down and he hit the pavement instead. How well I remember the phone calls. How glad I was he was not severely injured and disabled or killed.

Leif did not die directly of disease, like Mozart and Chopin, but he suffered from asthma and depression (and possibly bipolar disorder and PTSD). Without those, he might have been able to sustain his life and deal with all the disasters, disappointments and loneliness. With them and a gun, he succumbed.

He was so bright and talented, had so much he could have given the world, if he had ever found out where and how. How sad that none of what he had to offer remains.
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This glowing and joyful photo of Leif was taken the night before his brother's graduation from the U.S. Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs, Colorado on May 29, 1991. It was a great evening. He was ecstatic. He was 16 years old. He lived to be only 33.

Humbling Experiences

In the past few weeks, I have been humbled by comments sent to me about this blog, people I will never know telling me that they "stumbled upon" this blog and found it meaningful, possibly even life-saving. I am gratified that this has touched their lives, that my son has touched their lives, that his life has resonance for them. I thank them for telling me. That means a lot.

I am also humbled by those who suffer the same loss that we have, who mourn a someone close, especially a beloved child, and for those dealing with depression and bipolar disorder, or PTSD, struggling to survive or help a loved one do so.

My heart goes out to you, to your families. May you find hope, love and peace.

Missing Leif for Nine Months

Today it is nine months since we found Leif's lifeless body in his apartment and we are no closer to answers about why it happened or how. We miss him terribly and never know what will trigger tears. People say to live in the memories and hope only good ones will be left, but how could the memory of his death be wiped out? It invades the good memories, colors our lives with sadness. There is so much lost, and none of it fades away. No matter how many times I go over all the difficulties and problems he had, all the disappointments, even knowing he had been suicidal in 2001, I still can't really fathom it.

People say there must have been some indication, but men don't show it. They hide it. They put up a good front. My father did. Others who have had a male member of the family say those men did, too, gave no indication of what they were planning. Did things like telling their wives they were going to work and instead went into the basement and hung themselves. Do they become in some way detached? Do they look at it like some kind of ledger sheet, deciding this is the solution to the unbalanced rewards and punishments of life? A rational solution? I can imagine Leif doing that.

And yet, looking back over his life as I write this blog, looking at the photos of a lifetime in chronological order, remembering the things he said, I see a pattern of denial of much of the hurt and pain he felt, because the evidence is there in other ways. I see a vulnerability he denied and hid. I see a deep need for love and companionship that was always thwarted and left him in despair. I see a strange combination of cynicism and almost unreasoning optimism that next time things would turn out right . . . until the end.

I see a moodiness, even as a child, that didn't seem pathological, but may have been deeper even then than he showed. I see highs and lows that deepened as an adult and now I wonder whether he either suffered from bipolar syndrome or PTSD. He certainly had experiences that could have caused PTSD, and I found an information pamphlet about it in his apartment after he died. And, months after his death, had a surprise correspondence with someone he never actually met but spoke with and corresponded with who said he speculated to her that he had PTSD. Did he take a dive into the deep low of bipolar disorder in the early hours of April 9th?

In researching bipolar disorder to find out more, I discovered that it seems to have a genetic component, like chronic depression, and is a physical disease caused by chemical imbalances in the brain that distort thinking and that those suffering from it are at high risk for suicide. The onset of the disease seems to be caused by trauma and once set in motion is very difficult to treat. Did Leif get that genetic component through my father, for either chronic depression or bipolar disorder? It seems heartbreakingly likely.

Leif, the student of psychology, the observer of life, who tried so hard to help others who were suffering from bipolar disorder, depression and sadness, and made sure they got professional help and medication, never (as far as we know) revealed his own depression to a professional or took medication for it. Instead, he tried to "treat" or self-medicate his depression with alcohol and shopping. His "show no weakness" code probably prevented him from seeking help. I wish he had.

I asked him many times about depression, sent him online self-evaluations for it, but until November 2007 he denied it completely. He new enough about psychology and testing that he could easily fool those tests, and would report to me that he was fine. I think he wanted to believe that.

Whenever a loved one dies, we try to think whether there was anything we could have done to prevent it, to help, but it's far worse with a suicide. Even if you know it's not your fault, you ache to think of their pain and agonize over whether you missed the signs or didn't do what you should have to help.

Leif is gone and the days pass. Most things are normal, but he's never far from our thoughts and the sadness is always just under the surface, waiting to express itself.

This photo was taken the fall of 1992 during his senior year in high school by Blaker's Studio Royal in Manhattan, Kansas. He was 17 years old.