Could a cat have saved him?

 We will never stop wondering. Wondering why he made the decision to pull the trigger. Wondering why at that time. Wondering what could have prevented it. Wondering what could have saved him.

I was thinking and reading about the importance of human connections, of love, of being valued, of feeling needed, and reflecting upon how alone Leif was, how he expressed that no one (or so he thought) but his parents would care if he lived or died. How he felt his life had no purpose.

He worked in a cubicle answering phone questions about Medicare supplemental or replacement insurance. He didn't make any friends at work, or see anyone from work outside the workplace. He didn't socialize with anyone from his work.

Here in Florida, he had concentrated on dating, looking for love, and didn't get involved in any activities like SCA where he might have made friends and connections. Love, female companionship, and being the protective man, was what he searched so hard to find, and even harder to find someone who provided a nurturing, nondestructive relationship.

He had friends, but he saw them seldom, and some of those he did see were acquaintances primarily of his women.

Once he severed the live-in relationship with D., he was alone and without purpose, alone without anyone who needed him.

But what if he'd had a cat? Leif loved cats. All is life he was drawn to them. Cats provided cuddling, needed to be taken care of (at least minimally), fed, cared when he came home, played with him. Cats provided a living being to which he could be affectionate and playful. What a terrible pity that he was allergic to them and they gave him asthma attacks. Where he lived in Tampa, he wasn't allowed to have one, anyway.

But what if he had? Would it have made the difference? We will never know, but I think it might have. I knew a man who was, like Leif, totally heartbroken over the breakup of a relationship and decided to commit suicide via carbon monoxide poisoning in his garage. He was actually in the process of carrying out this plan when he saw his cat in the garage and thought, the cat doesn't deserve this, doesn't deserve to die, or to be deserted. He shut off the car and lived. Later he found another love and was happily married until the natural end of his life.

I don't know whether this could have happened to Leif, but I can conceive of it. I can conceive of having that living being in his home being enough to keep him going until maybe things could get better, of him finding just enough companionship, love and affection, just enough of a being who needed him, to keep him alive.

Maybe not. I wish he'd had the chance.
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The first photo above was taken in Thailand in 1981 when Leif was not quite seven years old. The cat was at a small temple we visited. The second photo was taken when Leif was in the army at Fort Drum, New York in 1999 before he went to Bosnia. That cat was his and Nikko's, and he loved it so.

Thinking of Leif

Next month it will be five years since Leif died, but he seems to be as much a part of our thoughts as ever. We still talk about him, still are reminded of him daily, still feel his loss, still smile over his humor.

We were at Bay Pines National Cemetery on March 3rd, with cousins Wolfgang and Cordula visiting from Germany. It still brings tears to see his niche and know that is all that is left of my handsome, brilliant son, all that is earthly remains, at any rate.

Oddly, a couple of days later, the beautiful Hawaiian lei which has hung over his portrait ever since the day of his memorial service, now dried and still lovely, fell off of it for the first time in all these years.

It's amazing the number of things that can remind me of Leif. I was driving to my friend Chris's house a couple of times in the past week or two and saw many feral black and white cats. That reminded me of how much Leif loved cats, and how he had tried to get close to and tame the feral kittens that lived under our townhouse in Hawaii.

This picture was one that Leif's ex wife Nikko sent to me, taken by her, one of those precious photos I hadn't seen before, and is one of a series she took of him with one of their cats. I've posted some of the others before. I still wonder who else has photos of Leif I have never seen. This one was taken while he was in the army at Fort Drum, New York on August 20, 1999. This was shortly after we had visited them there and shortly before he went to Bosnia.

So much in our lives has changed since he left us, but our love for him has not.

Leif and the Cover of "Griselda"

I've had so many ideas of things to write about in the last eleven days but no time to write them. It makes me a little sad to think that. The problems of the living are taking precedence over writing my memories of Leif.

I wonder what he would think of this. I created the cover of my new ebook (short story) of "Griselda" from a photo he took of Nikko and Sugar back in 1995, and a photo that one of us took of her out by our big hedge. I'm so glad she consented to let me use the photos and make her hair so long and Sugar into a Siamese. Sugar was a little tiger kitten.

When I wrote Griselda as one of the four stories in the ghost story anthology, "Trespassing Time - Ghost Stories From the Prairie," Leif was there and read them. He was one of my "advisors" about those stories, and I was glad to have his opinion. Little did we know, in 2005, that I would ever publish this one separately as an ebook using a photo he took to create the cover.

I suspect he would like this a lot, because he truly loved cats and was crazy about long, red hair! I think he would be flattered I started with a photo he took, though it is much changed through the magic of PhotoShop.

I am amazed that there have now been over 17,000 visits to this blog from many countries, and that even when I am not posting something new, visitors continue to come back and check. Yesterday there were 24 visitors, when I hadn't written anything since September 23rd. I hope I will be able to write more frequently soon. Thank you to all of you who continue to remember Leif and visit here.

The Griselda ebook, for those interested.

Leif and a Gecko on his Hand - Tampa - October 7, 2007

Leif took this photo just about two years ago, on October 7, 2007. He's wearing his motorcycle glove and a cute little lizard is just sitting there on it, a very unusual circumstance, since these little guys are extremely fast and also can jump amazingly far and fast. I don't know whether he caught it or it jumped onto him, but he managed to get out his iPhone and take a photo of it.

Leif always liked reptiles, particularly snakes and lizards. He was fascinated with them and with cats in particular. He had pet snakes but I don't think he ever had a pet lizard, though he would have liked to own an iguana.

He had a lot of compassion for animals, and maintained that he had more compassion for them than for people, since he felt people were often cruel and destructive. However, he was far more compassionate about people than he allowed to show in his bravado persona.

This was taken the day after we returned from our three-week trip to China. He had picked us up at the airport and taken us home. It was then that we found out about the sad end to his life with Donna, and although he feigned bravado about that, too, it was clearly hard for him to come to terms with that, as he sank into depression that fall and a month after this photo was taken is when he sent me the email saying that he felt he had no purpose in life and that it held far more pain and misery for him than it did happiness or meaning.

And yet, he was interested enough to photograph a gecko, and rescue a turtle from traffic just days before he died in the spring.

Leif and Minouche - Hanau, Germany - May 1979 - Age 3

Leif and cats seemed to have a natural affinity for each other from the beginning of his life. He was always drawn to them. His love of cats was one of the recurring themes in his life, and it was probably a great sadness to him when he could no longer have them as pets when he developed asthma that was worsened by cat dander.

These are the last photos of Leif from our visit to the Fackrells in Hanau, Germany in May 1979. My friend Lili Fackrell had a beautiful big Siamese cat named Minouche. After our afternoon of visiting Romberg Castle and playing at the Hanau Bird Sanctuary, Leif needed a bath before he went to bed. To our surprise, Minouche seemed to think it was his job to watch or "supervise." He stayed perched right there on the toilet seat cover during Leif's bath, much to Leif's delight. You can certainly see how happy he was to have Minouche there.

We can never bring back those precious, priceless days when our children were young. I am thankful for the photos and the memories every day of my life.

Leif's Photos of Scamp

Leif loved cats and he knew that I did, too. He twice got me cats for Mother's Day, once as a teen in junior high and once as a senior in high school.

The cat in these photos is Scamp, our all-time favorite cat, and the one Leif first picked out when we were living at Fort Sheridan, Illinois. He went to a pet store and picked out the liveliest one he could find, the one that was climbing all over the place and virtually meowing, "look at me, look at me." Scamp was a tiny kitten when they brought him home and we all loved watching his antics. I wrote two earlier post about Scamp with photos of Leif and him together, but when I found these photos Leif took, I wanted to post them, too.

One thing Scamp enjoyed immensely was changing sheets on the beds. When he noticed that was happening, he would jump up on the bed and run around under the sheet as the new one was settling down on the bed. It looked so funny, like some kind of giant mole scooting around under the sheet. If I picked up a small part of one side I could make it like a narrow tunnel looking in at him and he would go nuts trying to rush down the small space at me, or pose in various amusing ways with just his face showing down the tube made by the sheet and the bed. It was so much fun that when I put clean sheets on the beds I would often lift the sheet up and flutter it down again and again so that he could jump under it, tunnel and scoot, and play silly games. Sometimes we would take photos.

All but one of these photos were taken in late fall or December 1989 when Leif was nearly 15 years old and Scamp was a grown cat, two-and-a-half years old. The other one is the second one from the top, taken when Scamp was still a kitten shortly after we got him in May 1987.

Scamp was a beautiful cat but he had a funny nose which was part orangey-pink and park black, giving him a kind of odd look as though something was wrong with his nose.

I don't know why Leif never took photos of other cats he had when he was older, Merlin, the second cat he gave me, or Sugar and Spice, the cats he and Nikko had when they were married. Leif always loved to cuddle something, whether it was a stuffed animal he had as a child, or a cat, or his lady love. Cats were particularly interesting to him (along with snakes, which he also had as pets at times, and birds, which he never did) and you could see how much he enjoyed having them in his arms and playing with them. It was another sad thing for him that he became allergic to them and after he contracted asthma, he couldn't have cats as they brought on asthma attacks.

Seeing these photos brought back a lot of happy memories for me. Scamp was special. Leif picked a great cat.

Leif & Scamp - Fort Sheridan, Illinois - May 1986 - Age 11

Today I spent a long time talking with my grandson, Marcus, about many things, but mostly about my books, especially "Imagicat." He's going to do a report on me and my writing for school (third grade) and was "interviewing me" for some information. I had sent him photos of our two cats that were the inspiration for Mortimer in "Imagicat," and one of them was this cat above in Leif's arms, Scamp. Scamp was just a small kitten in this photo. Leif picked him out at the pet shop and made sure that he picked the most active, "crazy" kitty he could find.

Scamp was such a terrific cat, intelligent, funny, careful, affectionate; the perfect cat for Leif. He loved that kitty! I've written about him and Scamp before, I think. Scamp only lived four and a half years, dying young of an enlarged heart. He, too, was too young to die but brought so much companionship and joy while he lived.

I've been trying to decide how to acknowledge the first anniversary of Leif's death and the day we found him. We had planned to go to the cemetery then, but we were in St. Petersburg yesterday for an event and it seemed right to go then, when we were already over there because I don't know if I should go out of town and leave my mother just a week after she gets out of the rehabilitation facility after breaking her back.

It was an absolutely gorgeous day, the kind of day Leif would have loved to ride his motorcycle under BOB (Big Orange Ball . . . the sun). The birds were singing. It should have been a joyous day, and it would have been, if he were still alive.

I cried my heart out, as I always do, missing him, wishing he were still alive, wondering for the thousandth or ten thousandth time why this had to be.

I thought of the Serenity Prayer, and wondered if accepting the things I cannot change actually does bring serenity. It sounds good, but I think it doesn't always do that, or perhaps my definition of acceptance is different than Reinhold Niebuhr's. Maybe what he means is acquiescence, and that I don't think I will ever have. I know which things I can change and which I can't, but in this case, that's no help, either.

We so often see that first part of the prayer written or quoted, but not the second part, about "Accepting hardships as the pathway to peace," and surrendering to God's will. I can't accept that. Hardships cannot be the way to peace. Not hardships like this. They don't bring peace. They bring misery, sadness, endless questions. And how could something like this be "God's will." A god like that would be cruel. What kind of loving father, earthly or heavenly, would doom his children to a terrible death . . . my son or anyone else's child, any of us. I don't blame God.

But I do wonder, and will always wonder (knowing that life is unfair) why Leif couldn't have had just a scrap of the luck so many people take for granted, just some lasting happiness as an adult, just some achievement he could be proud of. Why did he have to suffer? Why did he have to die?

It's nearly a year and I don't miss him any less. It's a year, but it feels like so much less.

Leif - Catamount Battalion Awards - Summer 1999 - Fort Drum

Leif participated in battalion challenges at Fort Drum, New York, a year after he had arrived there and before going to Bosnia that fall. The two award certificates read, in part:

Catamount Certificate of Achievement
is awarded to
Private First Class Leif Garretson
for exceptional achievement as a participant in the 2-87 Catamount Truck Challenge. Your superior technical knowledge of the M998 and unparalleled driving ability set you apart as an outstanding example for all soldiers. Your ability to master a variety of skills make you an asset to the Catamount Batallion . . . 23 June 1999

Catamount Certificate of Achievement
is awarded to Private First Class Leif Garretson
PFC Garretson's machine gun team qualified as the highest in the battalion. His experience and expertise with the M240B machine gun are a credit to his team, platoon, Charlie Company, the Catamount Battalion, and the U.S. Army. 12 August 1999

The photo of him was taken about the same period. I think it was taken by Nikko, in their quarters at Fort Drum, and he is holding one of their cats.

Leif told me about the competitions he participated in for these awards, but unfortunately, I didn't write down the details. They were getting ready for their deployment to Bosnia.

Leif did not like infantry life on base when they were not training and "had no mission." He felt they wasted a lot of time and were required to do menial tasks like mopping floors instead of honing their skills as professional soldiers. He was happiest when they were training or on a mission, as they were in Bosnia. He could expound at length on how he thought things ought to be done differently in order to make better use of enlisted soldiers' time, and he resented it when they were kept late with nothing to do because higher ups weren't ready to dismiss them.

However, he had a fierce dedication to his own skills and mission, and to his comrades in arms.

Leif & Scamp - 1987 - Age 12

Leif loved cats. When he was younger and we were moving all over the world, we couldn't have one, but when we moved to Fort Sheridan, Illinois (north side of Chicago) he saw his chance. Leif picked out Scamp at a pet store, the liveliest kitten he could find, the one that climbed up the cage to get at him. He picked well. Scamp was a beautiful and intelligent cat, and completely captivating as a kitten.

In the photo with Leif's beloved black leather Members Only jacket, you can see him cradling Scamp like a baby. In the one on the couch, you can see him cuddling that kitten with a look of the purest happiness and delight on his face. He loved that kitten!

Scamp was funny and entertaining and Leif enjoyed playing with him. Somehow he discovered that Scamp was completely crazy about tiny crumpled paper balls. He would bat them all over the floor like a first class soccer player. How he got the idea to show one of these little balls to Scamp and then drop it into one of his big, high-topped athletic shoes I don't know, but that was a hoot! Scamp wanted to get it out, and he dove into the shoe head and front paws first, and was scrambling around in there trying to get the ball. The rest of his body, back legs and tail were flopping around in the air. He did manage to get the ball and started playing soccer again. From then on, it became a favorite game to show Scamp the ball and where Leif (or one of the rest of us) was going to "hide" it and watch Scamp try to get it out.

Scamp also learned to "surf" in my low-heeled pumps. He would place his two front paws in the front of the shoe, and push with his back legs. How I wish we had a picture or a video of that!

Scamp was a very fastidious cat. Our house was crammed with breakable knickknacks and Scamp would leap up and walk everywhere (except on the kitchen counters or the dining room table, where he knew he wasn't allowed), and walk among all the breakables, but he never knocked anything down or broke anything. He was very industrious about his litter box habits, too, working very hard to be sure everything was adequately "covered."

We lived a couple of blocks from Lake Michigan, and Scamp would go for a walk with us like a dog. I remember one winter walk after an ice storm when he insisted on coming along, but his poor paws were being frozen from the ice cold water standing in places and the ice itself, plus jagged ice pieces hurt them. He would whimper and beg to be picked up, but after a few steps in someone's arms, he was begging to get down and walk beside us again.

Scamp was king of the neighborhood and "inspected" it daily, making sure everyone was behaving properly. There was a hunting hound dog that lived on the other end of our row of townhouses. The owner would put him out on a chain fastened to a stake so that the dog could only get around within a circle the radius of the chain. Scamp quickly figured out just how close he could get to the dog without the dog being able to reach him, and he would calmly walk up and sit down just out of reach. The dog would strain and go nuts trying to reach him, but it was as though Scamp were saying, "Ha, ha, you can't get me."

There was a small male kitten that lived somewhere in the neighborhood who took to following Scamp around. We never knew his name, but we called him Sidekick. Scamp tolerated him most of the time, but one day Sidekick got a little too uppity and Scamp sent him rolling with the swipe of one paw. The little guy got right up and trotted after Scamp, meowing, and Scamp apparently decided he could stay.

When Leif's friend Chris Stone's family was moving, they couldn't take their dog to the hotel with them so they asked if Chris and the dog could stay with us. We agreed but had some misgivings about the dog and Scamp getting along. When Chris showed up with the dog, Scamp took one look at the dog, a small terrier, and chased it to the basement and kept it cornered. The dog was completely traumatized. Once we removed Scamp, it took him a long time to come out of the basement. At that point, Scamp apparently decided that we had understood his point and he no longer needed to terrorize the dog. The two of them made a point of completely ignoring each other, wouldn't even look at each other, the rest of the time Chris and the dog were there.

One of Scamp's favorite games was to jump up and play under the sheets when we put clean sheets on our beds. Leif and I had fun taking pictures of him peeking at us under the sheets.

When Scamp was three years old, we moved to Puerto Rico. We had to leave him in a kennel for a month before he could be shipped to us there, and when he arrived, he was pitiful. He clung to us and didn't want to let us out of his sight. Once he adjusted and went outside, we quickly found out that he could no longer by an outdoor cat. The fleas in Puerto Rico were relentless and nothing we did could keep them off poor Scamp. There were other dangers where we lived, too, including packs of wild dogs that could have killed him, and so the proud outdoor cat had to become and indoor cat, and he hated it.

Leif continued to find news ways to amuse both himself and Scamp. By then he was a sophomore in high school and had been shaving for a couple of years already. He had an electric razor and Scamp hated it. Why, we don't know, maybe just the sound. One evening we had neighbors over for dinner, and afterwords we were all sitting in the living room talking and Scamp was keeping us company. He loved to chase a beam of light and we had a good time shining a flashlight beam around the room for him to chase. It was quite entertaining, but nothing compared to what was to come.

For some reason, Leif decided to bring out his electric razor. He turned it on, and Scamp immediately made his displeasure known. Leif turned it off and put it down in the middle of the carpet. Scamp went into hunting mode. You could nearly see him thinking. "Aha! It's sitting there still and quiet on the rug. I can get it now!"

He flattened himself low to the floor and prowled around it in a circle, making sure it wasn't going to attack, and then HE attacked, claws extended. He jumped on that shaver like he was killing a rat, attacked it with his claws, and beat the thing to death. He was totally intent on what he was doing, and completely serious. We were laughing so hard we had tears running down our faces.

When Scamp was sure he had killed that shaver, he sat down looking quite smug and proud of himself. Then Leif turned it on again! You could just see Scamp thinking, "Dang, I thought I killed that thing!" He was so upset. Leif turned it off and left it on the rug again, and Scamp again went on a killing spree. By this time, we had been laughing so much our sides and stomachs hurt. But poor Scamp was only to discover that the razor wasn't dead. Leif finally had to put it away.

Unfortunately, we have no photos or video of this escapade. It's too bad. Leif might have been able to win a "Funniest Home Video" show with it.

Sadly, Scamp only lived to be four and a half years old. He developed an enlarged heart and because of a blood clot, had paralyzed back legs. Four veterinarians said that he could regain the use of them and live a fairly normal life if we could get medication into him, but he struggled and fought it so hard that three grown men couldn't get it into him, and it was only available in pill form. There's no way to know what is in an animal's mind, but Leif and I believed that Scamp made up his mind to die, not knowing he could regain the use of this legs, and not wanting to live like that.

He was an affectionate and intelligent companion. We loved him for four and a half years, and he was mightily missed when he died.

When we moved from Puerto Rico to Kansas, Leif got me another kitten that he picked out and gave me for Mother's Day. That was Merlin, another interesting character, but not the wit that Scamp was.

When Leif got married, he and Nikko had two or three cats. I remember Sugar and Spice.

Sadly, though, when Leif developed asthma in the army, he also developed an allergy to cat dander which made his asthma worse, and he couldn't have cats any longer. I know he missed their antics, their cuddliness, and their affection.

Leif and the Kitty - Virginia - 1976

His whole life, Leif loved cats. Maybe he got that from me. He sure didn't get it from his dad. They say some people are cat people and some people are dog people. I grew up with dogs (and many other animals) as pets, but as an adult, I chose cats.

From the time Leif was tiny, he was fascinated by cats, and I think he loved not only their feline beauty but their independence and their wonderful cuddliness. Leif loved things to cuddle!

This photo was taken when we lived in Charlottesville, Virginia, where his dad was attending the Judge Advocate General's School, where army attorneys are trained. We were there from the summer of 1976 to the summer of 1977.

We lived in a townhouse in a development that had a small lake behind us and a nice woods we could hike in across the street.

This cat wasn't ours. We never knew who he belonged to, but he showed up in our enclosed back patio area occasionally, always to Leif's delight.

Leif was about a year and a half old in this photo.

Leif with snake

Leif had several snakes as pets, at different times, a boa, a python, and a garter snake. He had interesting names for them, like Pandora and Goldilocks. This particular snake he had a great time with, finally, along with his brother, getting his nieces to touch it. It's name was Shazbot.

He also loved cats and gave me two, Scamp and Merlin, at different times, but he couldn't have them because they gave him asthma.