A New Realization: I Lost a Friend

I was thinking again the past two days about how families stay close and how we become friends and I thought of two very different kinds of time together. There are the family gatherings where we all enjoy being in a group and sharing time with each other, the kind that cements family closeness but in which there's never really time for any kind of personal closeness or intimacy, time to talk in depth with another person. Those times are what cements a personal closeness as opposed to a group identity and closeness. So often, once children leave home, find their adult friends, become immersed in careers, move away and have their own families, we only have the first kind of visit. The one-on-one or just parents and adult child kind of visit happens infrequently if at all. It happens with siblings, too, for many of us.

When I was considering this, I realized why we felt so close to Leif. He WAS with us as an individual all of his life except for his years in the army. We had him to ourselves, with time to visit, time to talk about so many things, time to be close. And that revelation suddenly brought another one. I hadn't just lost a son when he died. I lost a friend. A dear and close friend whose company I enjoyed. It was a loss in so many ways, the loss of our son, the loss of his future, the loss of the grandchildren we'd hoped to have, but it was also the loss of a friend, and I realize I've been mourning that as much as the others, without even knowing it until now. I miss my friend.

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These photos were taken in Old San Juan, Puerto Rico in 1991 when Leif was sixteen years old. I'm with him in the second one. When I was in San Juan a couple of weeks ago I pictured him on those streets and down by the harbor.

Recipe for Longevity: No Smoking, Lots of Friends

Recipe for Longevity: No Smoking, Lots of Friends(Click on this link to read the article.)

As I read this article, I couldn't help but remember how Leif's circle of friends shrank and his contacts and personal intereactions with others diminished over the last year of his life. It wasn't that he didn't seek companionship, but that he focused solely on finding a mate and when he thought he had, he found it so hard to be apart and out of contact. He had little contact with the friends from his past and didn't make new ones in Florida, at least not lasting ones, and the few new contacts he had weren't the kind of healthy and close ones that would have helped him thrive and survive.

Science is coming closer to realizing and documenting that we need love and friendship to be healthy, and perhaps even to survive, in some cases, but what it doesn't tell us is why some people are good at finding those social contacts and friendships, and others aren't, why some are good at keeping them and others don't. What is it that makes the loner, the lonely, that way? Is it lack of social skills? Is it shyness? Is it an inferiority complex? Is it fear? It is some other mental or emotional, or even biological, factor?

Why do some people suffer alone, in their homes or apartments, go to work and come home without ever having a meaningful human interaction?

And does our current world that offers so much ersatz contact and entertainment through television, cell phones and the internet give people the illusion that they are in contact with others, but yet they suffer all the same symptoms and health problems, the same emotional pain, of those who are isolated?
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This photo of Leif was taken at the Michie Tavern area near Charlottesville, Virginia in the spring of 1977 when Leif was just over two years old.

Looking for Love - Love Lost - What Marriage Meant to Leif

When Leif moved to Florida in March 2005, at first things really were going well for him. Once he found a job and began dating again (after a year of not dating in Kansas when J. left him and he was miserable and depressed), and bought a new motorcycle and loved riding it, for a time he seemed to be happier and more content. However, he was still looking for love and companionship, trying to find people through Match.com and eharmony, as well as other dating services. He wasn't finding anyone he felt more than a casual interest in until someone who had seen his Match profile struck up an email correspondence with him beginning in June 2005. The interesting thing about this correspondence is how much Leif wrote. Leif usually wrote curt, short, utilitarian emails. The exceptions were when he was involved with a woman he cared deeply about, or when he was writing about one of them to me.

As a part of this correspondence, Leif wrote to this woman, who had hadn't yet met, about what love, marriage and friendship meant to him. It is poignant, revealing, and, given what ultimately happened in the last three years of his life, infinitely sad. Here it is in his own words. This was written, as was most of his most revealing communication, in the wee hours of the morning, and sent at 4:35 a.m. on Sunday, July 10, 2005. He wanted something meaningful and committed, but he never found it. I think what he writes about his feelings in this email, those he felt at the end of his army career when he was alone, must have been again true in the last days of his life.

I want a marriage that means something, a real partnership and a loving commitment to each other. I am tired of fair weather friends that are only there for you as long as it is to their advantage but leave you as soon as it is not. I wonder does anyone ever take that vow "for better or for worse" seriously anymore? I have a big thing about promises. If I am not prepared to keep a promise I won't make it, even if I think I want to fulfill it, if I am not sureI actually can, I will not make a promise. I will not commit to something I am not sure I can hold true to. I wish others were the same. I made a promise when I got married and I took it seriously and took a lot of abuse due to that promise, but my wife did not take it seriously and bailed when things got "Worse." Considering that I had always been the knight in shining armor rescuing her, the idea that she could no longer need me and leave me when she was the weak one hurt a lot.

You want to know something about me that few people know? Well, here is a little known fact. I am generally considered to be the "Rock," the unshakable, confident, stable man that was immune to stress and that nothing bothered me. Many people really believed that. What few know is that at the end of my time with my ex wife and as my army career was in decline, I was so miserable and unhappy and hurt that I was genuinely suicidal. Every day was nothing but another 24 hours of suffering and humiliation and I just wanted it to stop. I was sick, hurt, lonely and emotionally destitute. My wife had left me and I was stuck in a miserable place I hated with no friends and a job that punished me, which I could not quit. There was no way out and I seriously was at the point that I had planned out exactly how I was going to kill myself and how to ensure that it would work, and that I couldn't survive and be one of those horrible cases of disfigured attemtped suicides.

Ultimately, I obvioulsly did not go through with it. I wanted a release from the misery but I simply couldn't do it because while I had no concern for myself I knew how badly it would hurt the people who would survive me, namely my parents and the friend who had left his shotgun I was going to use at my house. My own compassion for them drove me to endure each day that followed until I escaped the situation. I recovered and I am now much happier. I am so glad I was not foolish enough to succumb to my weaknesses. I am loving life today and everything has turned around.

I don't want to bring you down or bum you out but I wanted to give you some insight into me and how important loyalty and reliability are to me. Save for my parents, I have never had anyone that I could count on to be there for the rest of my life. I have never known any friend that loved me and cared for me and would be there for me through thick and thin, wanting nothing in return but my friendship. I want that.

They say most men fear commitment. I have never known commitment. I have dreamed of it and desired it but never experienced it. The ideal of forever is alien to me. Perhaps most men can't see this far and don't see the value in such things but I see the old men that come into my store alone and I pity them and wonder If I will be one of them. I wonder who will love me when I am old and gray and wrinkled? Will I die alone? If not, who wil be there when I die? Will anyone mourn my passing? Will it matter that I lived?

I head an interesting discussion of the idea of marriage and its merits. One person said that it is not really necessary but what it really means is that we are agreeing to be witnesses to each others lives. In the vastness of all humanity what, meaning does one life make? What is one person in 6 billion? Who cares? Marriage is about two people promising to care about each others lives and to witness them.

Wow, I am getting side tracked, but I hope that gives you some insight into what I value and why.

Oh, Leif, yes, it mattered that you lived! It mattered to me, and always will.

And it mattered to many others. How could you not know?

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The photo is one Leif took of himself, oddly enough in his bathroom, with his Treo phone, to send to a woman on Match.com who requested a photo. It was taken on March 30, 2005, about three weeks after he moved to Florida.

Leif's Memorial Service at St. Petersburg Unitarian Universalist Church - April 29, 2008 - "My Friend, My Brother, Is Gone" - Jason Palenske (Video))

One of Leif's long-time best friends was Jason Palenske who came from Manhattan, Kansas to be with us for Leif's memorial services. Leif and Jason met in their senior year of high school. They shared many interests, Cyberpunk gaming, role-playing game development, Society for Creative Anachronism, motorcycles, and more. Jason refers to growing apart. It happens to so many of our friendships. Jason was married and had children, while Leif was divorced and alone. A married man has so many responsibilities and so little time. But there was always friendship and affection there. We were very touched that Jason came to be with us and gave his son Brayden, born March 4th, the middle name Leif.

Jason wrote a part of the remarks he read at the memorial service on his MySpace page on April 14. I found them meaningfl and touching and I asked him to read them at Leif's service. Jason did that for me, for us, and added to them. I have been profoundly grateful for the continuing contact with Jason and his wife, Melissa, who gave us the beautiful flag case for Leif's military honors flag.
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"My Friend, My Brother, Is Gone" by Jason Palenske

I was trying to make it through the day...

Not understanding why, not knowing what I could have done to make things better, not knowing how I could have helped...

Then for a moment I saw you again, saw you riding the wheels of a stranger, but then your hand reached out...

I wanted to follow, I wanted to turn around and ride, ride until there was no where else to go. I can't follow you this time, you're riding somewhere I can't go yet...not yet.

My dad once said a person is lucky to have 5 true friends in their life, and as you drove me to his funeral I told you you were one of mine. I made mistakes though, I made one of the worst mistakes a friend can make. I went down the wrong road and didn't make sure you were there. I didn't make sure that we didn't drift farther and farther apart.

I took the wrong road and now I can never get back...

I want to be able to call, I want to say "Why aren't you here?", I want to here the surprise and then that mocking tone "I am here, but where are you, I'll be there in a minute."

I am here my friend, I am here...it'll be awhile before I get there though. I've got things to finish here first, then, then I can be there. So be patient my friend, my brother, be patient. I'll be there soon enough, it just may take awhile.


My brother is gone and I can't fill the void that he left...not yet, not yet.

Leif and Love

It's impossible to understand Leif without knowing of his quest for love. I've already written of that, and posted his thoughts on dating, but I haven't written about the women he loved. Leif wanted to be in love. He was a romantic man who wanted the companionship and friendship of a soulmate and was actively searching for one beginning in high school.

His first love was a beautiful young woman in Puerto Rico. She went to a different school and her mother worked in the office with Leif's Dad. He only went out with K. a couple of times but he was head over heels in love with her and carried a torch for her long after we moved away from Puerto Rico back to Kansas. He never had a girlfriend during his senior year at Manhattan High School there, though he dated quite a few young women.

At a Society for Creative Anachronism event (Lilies War), which I think was in June 1994, he met Nikko, and married her a few months before his 21st birthday. I've already written about their marriage and divorce, and subsequent friendship.

After he climbed out of his depression when he came back from the army and losing Nikko, he again began dating and looking for love. He had a pretty good case on L. and hoped it would develop into something, but somehow it never did.

Then, after he graduated from KSU and began working at Sykes, he met J., a young woman who looked a lot like Gillian Anderson (Scully on the X-Files) and fell deeply in love with her. J. had a toddler daughter and had been in the army. Leif took them in and was prepared to make a life together. He got a better job at Western Wireless next door and she continued at Sykes. Sykes sent her to the Philippines to train people there for a call center (effectively making their team train their offshore replacements). While she was gone, he determined that he wanted to ask her to marry him and he had every reason to believe that she would. He bought the gorgeous ring above and showed it to me, thrilled.

I wanted so badly to be happy for him, to rejoice with him, to praise his choice of rings and bride, but I was concerned; concerned that the ring was beyond his means, concerned that J. wasn't ready to settle down, concerned that he would get his heart broken again. He was walking on air, though, and I didn't want to burst his bubble. I wanted his wishes to come true.

I asked him whether he was ready to be a father and he said he was. I think he had come to love J's daughter, too. Earlier in his life, he had said he didn't want children, but by this time, I think maturing had made him think perhaps he did, and being around J's daughter had convinced him. I took care of the daughter a few times. She was a cute little girl. I have a photo I found on his computer of the three of them going to the zoo in Manhattan, Kansas. J. and her daughter spent Thanksgiving and Christmas of 2003 with our family, and I have lots of photos of that, too but I won't post photos of anyone without their permission.

The night J. got back from the Philippines, Leif proposed to her and she accepted. He was ecstatic! He posted the news and the photo of the rings on the ZAON forums. I hoped things would go well, but a week later, she gave back his ring and left town. He was left with the payments on the ring and heartbreak, but he hoped the would get back together. Ever since that day in 2004, they had contact on and, and they both said they loved each other, but they never got back together, and Leif never got over her. He loved her till the day he died, and when he died, friends immediately asked if something had happened to her. Leif knew he would never have her, went on with his life, and continued to seek for another love, but he never really let go of any of the women he loved.

When we moved to Florida, he continued to search. He dated quite a bit and found someone he cared a lot for. Some strange circumstances broke up his romance with L., oddly enough, another friend of his somehow poisoned the relationship with thoughts that he was getting back together with J., which didn't happen. Although Leif loved J., I think by that time he knew it wasn't going to be a relationship that would happen or that he could trust and he was ready to find a new love even if he couldn't get J. completely out of his mind.

Then he found Donna. He was fascinated with her frenetic, mercurial intelligence and street smarts, her cuteness and bubbly personality, and overjoyed to have found a woman who not only liked to ride motorcycles and play online computer games (like his favorite PlanetSide), but also read Douglas Adams and was a model. He moved into an apartment with her in February 2006. For a time he was in love with her, but their relationship with through numerous ups and downs and he eventually and regretfully concluded that although he cared about her that their relationship was destructive to both of them and he wanted to end it gently and still be friends. Unfortunately, it didn't end well and it ended on top of his cycle accident. He did not take it well, and by November loneliness and depression had set in. He sent this email to me:

"No things are not bright. Rather dark actually as I struggle to find purpose. People have asked why I stayed with Donna. Including Donna. The simple answer is that she gave me a reason to exist. I had a purpose when I was with her. I had skills and knowledge that could benefit her. I had a reason to exist. That is the hardest part of this whole thing. I don't miss Donna; I just miss having a purpose. A reason to keep trudging on despite the fact that each day holds far more dificulties and irritations than it holds joys or pleasures. Part of me is relieved she is gone; part of me misses having someone that cared that I was there and was better for it."

I cried when I read that email. I felt so sad for him. How could my son, who wanted so badly to love and be loved, who needed so badly to be needed, to be someone's hero, be so lost and without a purpose in life? I think it also deluded himself that he didn't miss her, just as he tried to insist he didn't miss Nikko. It was that old male bravado again. Show no weakness. It was obvious that he missed them, missed the companionship, even if he didn't miss the problems. He knew the relationships were over, knew they weren't right for him, but just the same, he was so lonely and berift. I worried terribly about him between that email and March 2008. We tried to stay in contact every day, tried to see him as often as he would allow, which was about once or twice a month. When he came for Christmas he was clearly not a happy man. When he was here for his last birthday, he was subdued and preoccupied, looked depressed. As I've written, the photo of him at his last birthday made me cry. I had to cajole him into smiling, but his eyes did not smile. He looked so sad.

He got back into the dating game with Match.com and eharmony.com and tried again. I tried to get him to look at some other possibilities, organizations, SCA, but he focused on the online world, and he found someone yet again. In March, he began corresponding with and talking on the phone with D. who lived in another city in Florida. He was thrilled to have found someone he considered not only compatible but ideal in several ways. He only had one date with her and he immediately started sending me text messages all about her, then sending photos. He was totally smitten. I was so happy for him, but worried that once again, he would find disappointment and wondered how he could survive another one.

He never saw her again. The night they were to have a second date, her mother had a heart attack, and she had to cancel. He was willing to wait, he said. She was worth it. We saw him on Easter, March 23, for the last time. He seemed so happy, so animated. He talked about her, hoped it would work out for him. We hoped so, too. She, however, had pulled away to be with her family after her mother's heart attack. While Leif understood, he felt left out and lonely again.

Somewhere in this time, he lost control of his finances. He had lost his GI Bill benefits in February when USF decided the classes he was taking didn't meet the requirements. That cut his monthly income. Then he applied for loans and didn't get them because he was maxed out on his credit cards and couldn't pay his bills. We found letters rejecting his loan applications on his desk, neatly laid out as though he wanted us to find them. Perhaps he felt he wouldn't even be able to see and date D. without any money for dates and the gas to get there. As a joke, he sent me text messages about the gas mileage his RX-8 got. I was more than a little slow on the uptake.

Leif: "Have I told you about how great my car is for the quarter mile?"
Sent on Saturday, Mar 22 2008 at 5:46:06 PM

Mom: "Didn't know you were on a racetrack. Is this happening right now or is it a fond memory? Amusing. You can't afford gas to come here but apparently can afford a much more costly potential ticket or accident or using lotsa gas.:-P love your car? Sure is pretty!"

Leif: "No its a joke... Normally that means drag racing however in my case..."

Mom: "Joke? In your case?"

Leif: "At $3.50 a gallon a tank costs $50. One tank lasts 200 miles. Therefore 4 miles per $. Or one mile per $0.25. " In other words my car is built for a quarter ($0.25) mile."

Mom: "Argh! 4 mph? That bad?"

Leif: "No four miles pet dollar not gallon."

Mom: "Oh, that kind of 'quarter mile.' Kind of a sad joke, tho. Did you come up with that? If so, otta send it to Stewart or Colbert. Ok. Little slow here."

Leif: "14 mph but a quarter a mile.:-@"

He was joking on March 22nd. He hadn't yet received the rejections on his loans. 18 days later he was dead.

On the "desktop" of his computer I found this letter to J. I don't know whether he ever sent it to her. I was written February 18, 2008, a month before he met D., and less than two months before he died:

"I must say that as I write this I am a bit intoxicated. While I am not so intoxicated as to be unable to think clearly I have learned that for individuals like myself which are prone to be overly cerebral and rational such moments are not a dilution of ourselves but rather a liberation of our souls. Forgive me if my execution is not as brilliant as I would desire but the clarity is present. If you know me at all I always seek to make sense of things, to understand and to rationalize. I seek to find order in the universe and o make sense of things. I am not sure if it's my close connection or some other factor which makes it so hard for me to reconcile my undying love for you, but I cannot deny that never in my short life have I felt even a fraction of what I felt in those brief moments which you smiled at me. I have spent years trying to forget that moment in my car where I looked at you sneezing in the sun and knew I loved you. I have spent countless hours trying to move on, to find other more rational choices. I have tried so hard to ignore what I felt for you or at least not to think about it. But it is all for naught. In 33 years I have only once known what the word love could mean. All else is facsimile. All else is make believe. Even as I go though the motions of mating with other women in a vain attempt at self glorification and distraction I am only reminded of the brief magic I knew with you. My Mind reels against this idea as My cold rational Machiavellian realism tries to reconcile your unfettered optimism. Yet I can see that this is why I love you. You are so unlike me. So countervailing in your purpose as to balance me. As a cold hard realist your optimistic idealism represents everything which is lacking in me. All the goodness which I might neglect in favor of the practical and realistic. By contrast I would ground you in your noble but often unrealistically idyllic dreams.

"I really think we are a better match than might be readily apparent. I am grounded in the dark reality of existence and long for one to give me home and inspiration. Perhaps if I may speculate you are frustrated by the difficulties of translating your idyllic visions into reality in tangible form.

"But enough analysis. I do too much of that.

"I have known few things in my life. Of the things I have known I have been able to rationalize most of them. If I tried I might be able to do so with this but I don't want to. I just know. I just know that you are the only woman I have ever loved. And Increasingly I am coming to believe that you are the only woman I will ever love.

"I have made lists, looked at criteria, analyzed to no end. But nothing changes the fact that you are still the face I picture when I think of love. All others are stand-ins. Substitutes, facsimiles.

"How I wish I could convince myself not to love you."

I think there is a lot in this letter that makes one pause. The sad truth of unrequited love, the terribly loneliness and emptiness, but I also think there is some self delusion. He loved J. deeply and with all his heart, but in a sense, he could continue to love her like that because he never had to make it work. He could always pine away for what he didn't have. He didn't have the cold realities of the relationships he'd had that didn't work out. This one ended so quickly, just five months after he met her. It was the symbol for all he wanted in life, in a woman, and never had to pass the test of reality, of living together long term. He says she was the only woman he ever loved like that, but there were others, and he had talked about them to me. He liked to convince himself with his cold rationalizations that he didn't really miss those he lost, like Nikko and D., but he did miss them, terribly. And he stayed in contact, always. He could see some things clearly, but not completely, and some he could not really see at all.

But one thing is true. Leif died of a broken and lonely heart as much as he did from anything else. In his lonely male code, he was shut up in a tower of alone-ness, seeking for one woman to release him, and he never found her. I'm not sure the woman he needed really ever existed. I'm not sure any woman could have lived up to what he needed from her. Never-the-less, I wish he had found her. How fervently I wish it.

Fairy Tales & the End of a Marriage - Friendship Endures

If Leif and Nikko's marriage had survived, and he were still alive, October 20th would have been their 13th anniversary. Sadly, that was not meant to be.

They only had three years together before he went into the army, some months during the summer of 1998 at Fort Drum, New York, and a few months in the late spring and summer of 1999 after he returned from service in Bosnia together.

All marriages face challenges, and unfortunately, love does not conquer all. We bring our children up on fairy tales about living happily ever after. All that has to happen, the stories show, is that two young people meet, fall in love, get married, and the future will be bright and beautiful.

We also feed them lovely stories about princes and knights rescuing damsels in distress. This is appealing to both men and women (not all of them, but many). A young woman can look forward to being chosen and "rescued" (taken away to a wonderful future of love) by her prince, and the young man glories in the prospect of shining in her eyes as the rescuer.

But these lovely fairy tales that so permeate our culture do nothing to help young lovers survive the very real trials of life.

Nikko and Leif faced those trials from the beginning, and only one of them was money. That was compounded by others, being far from family and friends for the first time in a place they hated, in a climate that was terrible for Leif's health. The final blow, though, was being separated. Many military marriages founder on separation, and although it wasn't the only factor, it was the decisive one for them, I think.

When Leif returned from Bosnia in the spring of 2000, with his health ruined by asthma, they also were faced with financial problems and difficulties adjusting to being together again. They were miserable.

Leif wrote to me in June that Nikko was going back to Kansas. She took the bus back late in the summer of 2000 and they were never together again.

Leif took the separation hard. He was extremely depressed, not only at losing Nikko, but at being alone in the army at Fort Drum, dealing with a sergeant who did not believe he had the health problems he did and treated him like dirt, and trying to deal with the army about both his health and eventually his boarding out of the service due to the asthma, and trying to keep up the household and clear it out when he left the service in May 2001. He contemplated suicide but ultimately overcame it, though he was a very sad and depressed man when he came home from the army, medically retired, in May 2001.

It was a sad time, and we ached for him. Nikko had been very unhappy, too, and it was so hard to see those two young lovers grown so far apart.

I remember telling Nikko when they got engaged (and told the same to Leif) that the very qualities that she found attracted her to him would be the hardest to live with. She found his strength and masculinity appealing, his superior aloofness, his knowledge and intelligence. He loved her volatility, her need for a strong man, her beauty and whimsicalness.

No one outside of a relationship can ever really know what goes on inside it, how two people help or hurt each other, how they make it work or how it falls apart, but Nikko told me she was leaving Leif because she wanted them to "stop hurting each other."

On March 23, 2008, just 17 days before he died, Leif wrote this to me in email:

"I find that first of all, sadly, most women have had very poor experiences with men. Many women are happy just to have a man that doesn't hit them and think that is a find. That is tragic but compared to most men I am a prince. I treat them well and am a gentleman. I am also very honest and I don't play games and women tend to trust me readily and I don't betray that trust. . . . They THINK they are in love with me. They feel more comfortable and secure with me than ever before . . . and they are sure they are in love with me.

"Then later....

"Once the euphoria of the beginning wears off they start to look at day to day life with Leif, then they see my flaws. I am independent. I am aloof. I am often insensitive. I also am usually stronger and need them a lot less than they need me. It turns out she realizes that I do not engage her like she wants me to. Then they realize I am not what they really need."

This is a rather dry analysis, but it's accurate. Leif could be very uncommunicative and withdrawn, aloof, as he puts it. He could be inconsiderate and blunt. He was reckless with money.

Nikko and Leif stayed in contact, saw each other, and remained friends. They were divorced on October 7, 2002. Legally, they were married almost exactly seven years, though they only spent a little over half of that time together.

Nikko surprised Leif and all of us by enlisting in the army in the spring of 2003. She wrote to him from basic training, and visited him when she returned to Kansas after basic. He was proud of her and saluted her when they said goodbye.

Nikko has made a career of the army, and Leif continued to be proud of her promotions and her progress. This photo of her was taken on April 29, 2008, when she had come all the way from Germany for Leif's Memorial Services to say goodbye to her friend. We were glad to see her, and touched that she wanted to be there.

We will always be sad that her marriage to Leif didn't last and provide them both with the happiness and emotional sustenance they needed, but we are proud of them for remaining friends.

We wish Sergeant "Nikko" (who no longer goes by that nickname) well in her life, her career, motherhood, and her marriage.

"'I am,' I said, to no one there . . . "

Today was one of those steps-back days. We went to see a Neil Diamond tribute show, and found ourselves overcome with nostalgia, sadness and longing for Leif. Many of the songs seemed to have words and themes that expressed either how we felt, or how we think Leif felt. We hadn't expected to go to a Neil Diamond concert (put on by Jack Berrios and his band and singers) and be overwhelmed with emotion about Leif and our loss.

Leif was not a Neil Diamond fan. In his huge iTunes collection of music, and CDs, there isn't a single Diamond song. I know he heard us play Diamond's music often while he was growing up, but I don't think it spoke to him then. The themes were probably too grown up for him when he was younger, and by the time he was in his thirties, he had other avid musical tastes. However, I think that if he has listened to these songs, he would have appreciated them in his thirties.

The song that particularly affected us was "'I am,' I said," especially the refrain:

"I am," I said
To no one there
An no one heard at all
Not even the chair
"I am," I cried
"I am," said I
And I am lost, and I can't even say why
Leavin' me lonely still

We enjoyed the music, but we were sad, and the sadness continued throughout the rest of the afternoon and evening, dissolving into bitter tears. We talked, again, as we have so many times, about Leif's life, his death, and why it happened, wishing again that we knew why, and knowing we will never know for sure what precipitated him putting the gun to his head that particular night, even if we can surmise the reasons behind it. Wishing again we could have helped him, that we could have him back.

Thinking about this reminded me of a Yahoo IM chat he and I had on October 27, 2005. What he had to say speaks directly to the theme of loneliness and why men are lonely.

I have edited out most of my comments (prairiejerri) and left his intact. He was chatting under his Graeloch identity. He said:

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Honestly, I think that there is a reason that women tend to outlive their husbands and that you hear of old men losing their wives and dying of a broken heart. The bottom line is that men are lucky to have one lifelong friend in their lives and that is their wives.

Men can't have women friends because sex always gets in the way. We can't have male friends because sex gets in the way. So the only friend a man can ever have is a person that is both the lover and a friend or a mate.

It comes down to the primate pecking order. Men can't be friends. PERIOD. Comrades, yes. Buddies, yes. But not friends. A man can't open up to another man because that is to reveal weakness which can never be done to another man. You can only reveal weakness to someone that is not part of the game, e.g. a woman.

It's both kind of inspiring and kind of sad. Lonely, too. It is both triumphant and tragic. Men are solitary, sad lonely creatures; strong and proud and lonely. All we really want is a woman. Just one woman to love us.

prairiejerri: You'll make me cry. (Now there's another thing I don't like about myself -- tears, which your Dad seems to think I just turn on at will but it's completely beyond my control.)

I would be flattered if I invoked a woman's tears. More than anything a man wants to be appreciated by a woman for the trials and tribulations he endures to be a man, and worthy of a woman's love.

For men there are two differnt things. Genetically it is an advantage for men to mate with as many women as possible. Simple and period. Not the same for women. Well, here is the deal - Men don't know they want intimacy until they have experienced it.

prairiejerri: What if they never do?

They may eventually feel a need they can't explain.

The cliche is that men don't understand women but the bigger and more damaging truth is women don't understand men. Men are beasts. Brilliant, evolved beasts, but beasts none the less.

prairiejerri: Beauty and the Beast wasn't so far off, eh?

No, it wasn't. Men are noble beasts and nothing more. A great allegory and one men love. The poetic idea of fighting of a pack of wolves for our woman is romantic beyond belief. The only thing sweeter then the victory is the nursing we receive from the woman afterwards.

----------------------------------------------------

Leif repeated these things to me at other times, and expanded upon it in an essay about the sexes that I will post here some day.

I think his loneliness was also reflected in the many, many photos he took of himself. He took very few of others, except when he was in a ralationship with a woman. When I see all the photos he took of himself, it seems to me that he is saying, "I am," I said . .

The photo above is one he took while living in Manhattan, Kansas on April 26, 2003.