Where do they come from . . . and why?

I'm amazed that each day there are visitors to RememberingLeif, from all over the world, even though I post only a couple of times a month now. I wonder about these visitors. How do they come upon this blog?
They didn't know Leif, or me, yet they arrive here. It must be through the keywords on the blog, and probably often they are looking for "Leif Garrett," the singer, not my son.

But what do they think when they click on this site? Do they stay? Do they read about him? Some do, as I've found from comments, but I wonder about all the others. Like so many questions having do do with Leif's life and death, we will never know, but it's still incredible how many people have seen the blog.

Just looking at the visits from the past 24 hours and seeing four foreign countries and four US states is fascinating, but the larger statistics show that there have been visitors from all fifty states and the District of Colombia, and 120 foreign countries. Well over 30,000 visits have been logged by Blogger since April 10, 2008.

I like coming to the blog page, and to Leif's Facebook page, to remember, to reflect, and to know he is remembered in the world.

I wonder how Leif would have viewed this presidential campaign. I would have liked to have one of our lively, rip-roaring discussions about it. He would have had strong feelings and expressed them well. I can't imagine him being wholeheartedly for either candidate, but he would take his right to vote seriously.

Astonishing How This Blog Has Fared

It's amazing to me that in less than three years, there have been over 13,490 visitors to this blog, from six continents and over 90 countries.

I know that many of them arrived here because of some search term, probably many because they were looking for Leif Garrett instead of my son, but it is still an amazing number of visits, and I am glad they saw at least the top of the page photos and saw that my son lived.

It's evident that some were touched, some read on, some were repeat visitors, and I am grateful for that, too.

Now that I post less frequently, I am even more surprised that people keep coming. I come back to see it myself, to check the visitor stats, to post anew. Now that I have posted the best photos of Leif, it's more of a challenge to find new ones, as I don't like to post just words with no pictures.

These photos of Leif were taken on July 26, 2006 when he was helping Peter W. put together my new office furniture. I wasn't there. I was still in Kansas, and Leif's girlfriend at the time, Donna, took the photos with her cell phone and sent them to me.

He had only moved out of this room, which had been his office/living room for a year, five months before this was taken. I wonder, now, if I hadn't needed to use that room, and his bedroom, once I moved down from Kansas, whether he would have stayed with us longer, whether it would have made a difference in his life. I doubt it, though. I think he decided to move when he did because he found the opportunity with her and grabbed it.

Peter W. told me this morning he goes to this page each day wondering whether I've posted something new, even though now I seldom do. This blog became an important focus for both of us to think about Leif and our family and deal with our grief. We have come a long, long way since his death, and we are much happier and function much better. A part of that is because we have learned to live with his death and have come to compartmentalize our sadness, to keep it at a distance most of the time. But not always. It still comes through, and, from what others tell me, always will.

We will miss so many things, but one of them is his wealth of knowledge about technology, vehicles, tools and putting things together, and the help and advice he could give on all of those. Today my sister, Lannay, said she wished that she could just call him up and ask him about her problems with her computer and cell phone. I wish so, too! There are so many times I have the same wish. I don't think Leif knew how many people respected his abilities and counted on them.

Where did they come from, all the visitors?

This is the list of countries with blog visitors to Remembering Leif for the year May 15, 2009 to May 15, 2010. This map represents just over 5,000 visitors to this blog from 109 countries. Thank you for being a part of this.

Current Country Totals
From 15 May 2009 to 16 May 2010

United States (US) 3,775
Germany (DE) 271
Canada (CA) 202
United Kingdom (GB) 200
India (IN) 68
Japan (JP) 49
France (FR) 46
Australia (AU) 45
Netherlands (NL) 39
Poland (PL) 34
Italy (IT) 32
Sweden (SE) 28
Spain (ES) 28
Puerto Rico (PR) 27
Philippines (PH) 24
Hungary (HU) 21
Belgium (BE) 19
Brazil (BR) 19
Romania (RO) 18
Mexico (MX) 16
Russian Federation (RU)16
Turkey (TR) 16
Norway (NO) 16
Switzerland (CH) 16
Singapore (SG) 14
Austria (AT) 13
Pakistan (PK) 13
Denmark (DK) 13
Croatia (HR) 12
Thailand (TH) 12
Ireland (IE) 12
Malaysia (MY) 12
New Zealand (NZ) 12
Portugal (PT) 12
Czech Republic (CZ) 10
Greece (GR) 10
Ukraine (UA) 9
Saudi Arabia (SA) 8
Finland (FI) 8
Serbia (RS) 8
Bulgaria (BG) 7
Argentina (AR) 7
Israel (IL) 6
Korea, Republic of (KR) 6
Europe (EU) 6
South Africa (ZA) 6
Latvia (LV) 6
Indonesia (ID) 6
Chile (CL) 6
Vietnam (VN) 5
Slovakia (SK) 5
Hong Kong (HK) 5
Ecuador (EC) 4
Estonia (EE) 4
Colombia (CO) 4
Slovenia (SI) 4
Taiwan (TW) 4
Iraq (IQ) 3
Venezuela (VE) 3
Tunisia (TN) 3
Asia/Pacific Region (AP)3
Peru (PE) 3
Kuwait (KW) 3
Lithuania (LT) 3
Bosnia and Herzegovina (BA) 3
Macedonia (MK) 2
Malta (MT) 2
Egypt (EG) 2
Bahamas (BS) 2
United Arab Emirates (AE) 2
Qatar (QA) 2
Bangladesh (BD) 2
Netherlands Antilles (AN) 2
Cyprus (CY) 2
Aruba (AW) 2
Nigeria (NG) 2
Panama (PA) 2
Mauritius (MU) 1
Trinidad and Tobago (TT) 1
Paraguay (PY) 1
Faroe Islands (FO) 1
Barbados (BB) 1
Cambodia (KH) 1
Costa Rica (CR) 1
Guinea (GN) 1
Moldova, Republic of (MD) 1
Ghana (GH) 1
Maldives (MV) 1
Kenya (KE) 1
French Polynesia (PF) 1
Sri Lanka (LK) 1
Guatemala (GT) 1
Palestinian Territory (PS) 1
Algeria (DZ) 1
Georgia (GE) 1
Jordan (JO) 1
Lebanon (LB) 1
Morocco (MA) 1
Iran, Islamic Republic of (IR) 1
Bhutan (BT) 1
Bahrain (BH) 1
Saint Kitts and Nevis (KN) 1
Antigua and Barbuda (AG)1
El Salvador (SV) 1
Jamaica (JM) 1
Virgin Islands, U.S. (VI) 1
Montenegro (ME) 1
Oman (OM) 1
Guam (GU) 1

Another Year of Dots on a Map

On May 15th, ClustrMaps archived the map with all the dots on it, the ones showing where the visitors to this blog are around the world. This is the second time they have archived it, so this map shows the dots from May 15, 2009 to May 15, 2010. The first one, from the prior year, is in the column at right. Now there is a new map collecting dots, and I am humbled that there have now been 10,470 visits to the blog. Despite the fact that I stopped writing regularly in April, the visitor count seems to be fairly stable per day. I wonder why. Are all those visitors people who arrive here via some keyword search? I suspect most of them are, and then what? Do they stay and read about my son? I will never know, but I am glad this blog is here, my memorial to my Leif, who I will always, always love.

Nearing 10,000 visits

Yes! Today the counter stands at 9,990. With ten visits today, this blog will have had 10,000 visits since May 15, 2008.

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This photo was taken of Leif on a miniature sort of bumper car at the Bon Odori festival at Camp Zama, Japan on August 8, 1981. He was six years old, and boy, did he enjoy that ride! POWER under his own control, I think for the first time, even though it didn't go fast.

Approaching Two Years Since Leif's Death

What more can I tell you about my son, Leif Ashley Garretson, his life, his death, and our love for him and mourning his loss? I began this blog the day we found him, April 10, 2008, not knowing where I was going with this other than wanting a way to remember him. Sometime in the past six months I came to the realization that near the two year mark I would have said nearly all I want to say, although some new memories may come to me, and will have posted nearly all of the good photos of Leif I have. I resolved to close the blog, or at least the frequent posting, on the second anniversary. I had hoped to reach a visitor count or 10,000 by that time. As of today, there have been 9,854 visits since May 15, 2008, which is when I first placed the ClustrMap counting visitors, so it's likely that 10,000 has been reached, though not by the counter.

I find that I still have a few photos and a few more things to say before I close the book this has become, so I will continue for a few more days. After that, I will only post once in awhile. As with any blog, frequent or daily postings bring more visitors, so I expect visits to trail off after that, and that's all right. It's been two years of intense feelings, remembrance, introspection. I don't think I will ever be free of grief and mourning, nor will I ever be ready to let Leif go, but at least the wrenching pain has lessened and I no longer feel the need to post every single day. Probably that has been helped by the impossibility of it while we were traveling to South America and Texas this spring, when I didn't always have internet access or even time to do it. Maybe it's best that I had that break in routine.

Coming home always brings home the loss of our son. Driving through Tampa on the way home from the airport we can't help but remember how he used to pick us up at the airport, where the freeway exit for his apartment was, how we met him in town for dinner at places like Thai Tani and Mr. Dunderback's and went to movies together. Even having our sprinkler system brought memories of Leif trying to find the buried sprinkler heads after we bought the house, using one of his swords to jab through the hard-packed sandy earth to find them. So much reminds us of him every day.

I loved every day of his life, from babyhood to his death, though of course any truthful mother has to admit there were trying times, times when I was mad at him, times he disappointed me . . . and he probably felt the same way about me. But that's the thing about a strong family tie; those times are forgiven. Love goes on.

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These photos of Leif in one of our apple trees in Sachsen bei Ansbach in Bavaria, Germany, were taken in June 1979 when he was about four-and-a-half years old. They seemed to go with spring.

Ten Thousand Visits

The second anniversary of Leif's death will be on April 9th. I began the blog the day we found his body, April 10, 2008, but I didn't start keeping statistics until May 15th. If I had, there might already be 10,000 visits, but as of today, there were just over 9,500 counted visits. I'm hoping to reach 10,000 by April 9th, so if you are a reader, please come back daily and help. Believe it or not, it only takes an average of 13 visits a day to reach 5,000 in a year, but the way the counters work, they only count you once a day on each computer.

I think Leif would be amazed that this blog has had so many visitors. If only he had realized when he was alive how people cared about him.

565 Posts

Does a mother ever run out of things to say about her child? Does she ever forget? Does she ever run out of photos to show?

I suspect that at some point, the photos do run out, and I am finding it harder and harder to find ones of Leif as an adult that are enough different than what I've posted before and good enough quality, and that I still have baby and little boy photos. I'm finding that I have told so many of the stories . . . are there still new ones to tell, new things to say?

With this post I have written 565 posts on this blog out of 628 days since he died. Some of them have been short little memories. Some have been long stories. Some have been delineations of grief and sadness.

With this post I have posted 934 photos, mostly of Leif, some of family members, some of places he lived or things that belonged to him, but all with significance for his life or my feelings about it.

It would fill a long book.

And yet I still long to see photos of him, to remember him, still long to see him. He will always live in my heart.

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This photo was taken April 19, 1991 at our house in Fort Buchanan, Puerto Rico. Leif was 16 years old.

Visitors to this blog from 86 countries.

It's amazing that since May 15, 2008 when I first put the map counter on this blog, there have been 8017 visits to it from 86 countries. I know that many are repeat visitors, like me and Peter W., and that probably most arrive on the page because of a search they did that turned up one of the keywords on the blog, not because they looked up Leif, but it's still amazing to me that so many people from so many places have at least touched on this blog. To see the stats and where the visitors are from, click on the top world map in the right column.