Leif and a Canadian Cannon

Here's Leif in Canada, August 1989, age 14, already six feet tall, wearing his snappy gray outfit with his Member's Only jacket. I think this was taken in Quebec City, but unfortunately, the slide wasn't labeled.

He always loved guns of any kind, climbed on every cannon he saw from the time he was very small. I wonder, now, how many he clambered around. He was curious about how the mechanisms worked, and from a very young age could figure out how machinery operated.

He had a quick mind for anything mechanical and could figure out how to fix things. When he died, for an apartment dweller, he had an amazingly good collection of tools. He worked on his cars and his motorcycles, and on some of our cars, too.

It's too bad that we don't foster all the kinds of intelligence there are in this world. We seem to think academic learning is the only way to go, and often don't understand or respect other kinds of intelligence and talents that don't require "book learning." I think someone like Leif might have been a lot happier if he hadn't thought it necessary to go to college, but could have found another path to use his mind. He was certainly not averse to learning . . . but he liked things like the real-time collaboration he found in online games requiring strategic thinking, the hands-on use of skills and mechanical understanding, the mental repartee of ideas he seldom found in classes (with a few outstanding exceptions).

He would have made a good Viking. His name fit him.

Four Years Have Passed

This morning at 7:30 a.m., Peter Anthony called to express love and the wish that we would remember today all the good and positive things that Leif brought into our lives. We are grateful for them, and for all that Peter has brought into our lives!

How different this morning is, four years past the day we found Leif's body in his apartment. At 7:30 that morning, Michael called, we got up full of dread at what the day might bring. I wrote all about that day on the one-year anniversary, April 10, 2009. (This is a link to that post.)

The journey through grief is a long one, and it is full of ebb and flow. Change comes gradually, so gradually it is hard to see the progress unless you are far enough along the road to look way back and see how far you have come.

This morning, these past days, have shown me how far we have come. I have been happy! Not happy because these are the anniversary days of Leif's last day of life and communications with me, the day of his death, the day we found him, not happy because of the remembered dread, shock, and misery, but happy because the depths of grief have mostly passed. Yes, the questions remain. Yes, we miss him, but this year, for the first time, I could wake up each of those days and appreciate the sunshine, the mockingbird singing, the wonder of Peter's arms around me, and look forward to the day. This time, I am finally experiencing a renewal of my interest in writing something besides this blog, to turn my energies to some creative writing of another kind.

I know there will be days or moments of sadness ahead, perhaps even today there will be moments when I acutely feel the loss of my son and the misery we felt four years ago, but in these three days I have been, as Peter Anthony put it, glad to remember how much he brought to our lives. I have been motivated to continue making writing notes.

This morning I put on my "Find Joy" t-shirt, and I do find joy in my day.

Because it IS this anniversary, I also find myself wondering, once again, about all those unanswered questions. When Leif's ex-wife, Nikko, was here visiting us in February, she asked me whether I thought his death could have been an accident. I still don't think so, but the question will always be open. I've examined that question in depth since she asked it, though I've done so many times before. I've been thinking of this topic for about two months and decided to save it for today.

The thing is, we somehow expect to be able to analyze people's actions logically, and that doesn't work, or at least normal logic doesn't work, when you are dealing with the state of mind of someone who is either taking their own life or playing with guns. You can't get into that mindset with logic, though a mind in pain or under the influence of alcohol can have a very different logic of its own.

When I look at Leif's life, and his actions leading up to April 9th, I don't see any evidence of planning to kill himself. I see the opposite. He was in love. He was planning to move. He was looking for music. He put gas in his car and motorcycle. He wouldn't have needed that if he weren't going anywhere. He paid his rent. He bought a new computer game, which was still in his laptop CD drive when he died. He bought a new gun he had ordered some months before and showed off proudly.

He bought expensive new shoes, which he was wearing when he died. He wasn't dressed up. He was wearing jeans and a nondescript shirt. No one buys expensive shoes to wear in death along with those clothes. He was out with friends and with them at his apartment until 3:00 a.m. None of those things point to a man considering suicide.

However, Leif had been suicidal before, and he had recently had several huge blows. He had lost his GI Bill funding, which was keeping him relatively afloat financially. He hadn't gotten jobs or promotions he had applied for. He hadn't gotten a personal loan for which he had applied because of his high debt, and he was probably counting on that to help him out of his financial woes. The woman he had fallen in love with had virtually disappeared from his life due to family needs of her own. Until he met her, he had been despondent, discouraged, depressed, and admitted to me that he had more pain than pleasure in his life and nothing to live for. So, perhaps he felt that way again.

The detective who investigated his death on the morning of April 10, 2008 said she felt the scene had all the earmarks of an accident. She did not think it was a suicide. We did. The doctor who did the autopsy ruled it a suicide because he said it was a "contact wound," meaning that the gun barrel was against Leif's forehead.

Leif was an expert on guns, an trained military armorer. He knew guns well enough to write a dissertation on them. He would certainly have known the danger of putting a loaded gun to his head. At least two people have told me that they had seen him do it in jest several times, or even scratch his head with the gun barrel. Yet that wee morning of April 9, 2008, when Michael and Jaime were with him and they had all the guns out examining them and Jaime pointed one at one of them, Leif had a fit and told him never to do that, that he always had loaded guns in his house and you should never point a gun at anyone unless you intended it for protection. So, even under the influence of alcohol that night, he was aware of the danger.

However, all that doesn't mean that he didn't at some point decide to play with a gun himself and maybe go just a little too far. I can't persuade myself to believe that, but it's possible. Alcohol impairs judgement. He could have been "experimenting" with the idea of what it would be like to actually pull that trigger and gone too far . . . . but even if that happened, would that really have been an accident?

I don't know what Leif did after Michael and Jaime left, but I think he must have taken out the trash since there was only one beer bottle in the place. Knowing Leif, even though he had to get up and go to work in the morning, he probably either watched something on television or played a computer game, even though it was past 3:00 a.m. I doubt that he ever even went to bed.

I still come back to my original hypothesis. At some point the effects of alcohol and exhaustion set in and he hated the idea of having to show up for work or call in sick. He felt he was just working to pay his debts and had nothing else in his life. I think he set up the philosophy essay and photo on his laptop as a message to us. I can't see any other reason why he would have had those two things there.

But what happened then, I don't know. Why the kitchen? He wasn't going to go out and drive somewhere in that state. That would have risked getting arrested for drunken driving. The living room and bedroom were carpeted. That left the bathroom and kitchen. I have no idea whether he thought about that logically, or if he just walked around into the kitchen with the gun and a bottle of beer, ate some carrots, and thought, "What the sh___t. What the point? I might was well get it over with," and put the gun to his head. We will never know what he thought.

I hope, if he looked back over his life before he did it, that he remembered some happy times, that he knew he was loved.

I am glad I have so many other, better, happier memories of him. I am glad for every photo I have of him. I am glad I even have the sound of his laugh on a silly little video he made of Aly on his cell phone. I am glad he was our son.

And I am glad that after four years, this day is no longer as sad as it was in the past three years. I am glad I have Peter Walter and Peter Anthony. I am glad I have my sisters and brother, my mother, my grandchildren, my friends. I am glad I feel purpose and worth in my life. I am glad I can find joy again.
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The photo is one Leif took of himself with the built-in camera on his computer, and the solarization effect was one he chose to apply. It's a thoughtful shot, and he was an introspective man given to much thought. It was taken during that bleak period in November 2007. I never understood why someone as smart and potentially creative as Leif could have the power of a computer and not use it to be creative. Perhaps he would have had he not been depressed.

Was It An Accident?

Today I was talking to a friend whose son also committed suicide by shooting himself with a gun. Unlike Leif, this young man had grown up with real guns and liked to go shooting with his dad. He told me that he was glad his son hadn't used a gun he had given to him. I understand how he feels.

He asked me, "Do you ever think it could have been an accident?"

The answer is no . . . and yet, there is always the tiniest hint of a question.

When we first told Leif's brother about his death, he could not accept it as a suicide. He thought it had to be a murder. When we and the law enforcement officials believed there was no chance of that, he wanted to know if it was an accident. I remember asking him whether he would feel better if he lost his brother to a stupid and preventable accident because he was mishandling or playing with a gun under the influence of alcohol, or to a the deliberate and chosen act of suicide. How can one answer that?

We tend to want people to be logical, to follow a pattern we can discern and figure out, but life is seldom neat a tidy in that way. Human beings aren't always, or even mostly, logical. There are many contradictions at the end of Leif's life. He had been depressed for a long time. He hadn't been successful i finding a job he liked better. He was suffering from pain caused by the motorcycle accident, broken collarbone and surgery. He had been dealt a financial blow when his GI Bill was discontinued due to a misunderstanding, and he couldn't keep up with his bills. His asthma was worse.

And yet, just three weeks before his death he had a wonderful date with a woman he had been corresponding and texting with, and with whom he'd had many long phone conversations. He was falling in love again. He was hoping to see her on his day off, the day before he died. He was talking to me about taking it slow and getting the relationship right.

A few days before he died, he paid his rent. The day before, he filled his car with gas, bought a new pair of shoes, a new computer game and a new gun he had ordered and been waiting for, the gun he used to kill himself. The night he died, he went out with friends, brought them back to his apartment, drank, and got out and displayed all of his weapons. He was participating in an online discussion about the most perfect watch and a German band whose music he wanted to get. He did not sound like a man planning to kill himself that night. He did not act like it.

But how does such a man sound? How does he act? Do we know? Does he hide it? Even from himself? The night my father died, he acted normal, yet he had planned it.

Was Leif planning it? Was it a sudden decision? Or could it have been a horrible accident? Not according to the coroner. Even under the influence of alcohol, it's hard to imagine that Leif would have pressed a gun barrel to his head (pointed it at it, yes; he'd done that before in jest, foolish as it was) and pulled a heavy trigger hard enough to shoot it. Not only would it have been difficult to accidentally shoot that gun, Leif was so well trained in weaponry that it's hard to imagine him doing that without intent.

But you see, today was another one of those days when the questions don't go away, not for me, not for my friend who lost his son two years before we lost ours.

Today I could discuss it quite calmly with him. Today was so different than the days leading up to Thanksgiving when I felt so sad that Leif would not be with us. I couldn't have done it then. The anticipation of holidays is always hard, for me, harder than the holiday itself.

I wish he'd been here to have some of his beloved pie.

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The photo above was taken at the City of Refuge on the Big Island of Hawaii, probably in 1985 when Leif was ten years old.

Another James Bond Father and Son Photo

Yesterday I wrote about Leif's fascination with guns and James Bond. He shared the James Bond interest with his dad, who took him to the Bond films starting when he was very young. Here's another photo of them posing together in May 1987 when we were living at Fort Sheridan. Leif was twelve years old. He was wearing his dad's white dinner jacket, which was of course too big for him, but not as big as it would have been on most twelve-year-olds.

The guns are toys. We did not own any real guns and never had any in our home when we were raising children.

On the day I took this, I took a series of photos of the two of them posing with these toy guns, together and separately. It seems to run in the family to enjoy posing and pretending.

It was all in good fun then, whether the posing was with guns or something else, often silly, but after Leif's death, the photos with the guns took on another aspect we could never have predicted . . . and how glad I am that we could not.

His Lifelong Love of Guns

As I've written before, Leif displayed an amazingly consistent set of interests throughout his life. So many kids go through fads of interest and drop them. He didn't. From a very early age he was captivated by vehicles and speed, all kinds of vehicles. He always loved them. He collected toy cars, boats, planes, rockets. He built models of them. He drew them. And, when he was older, he test drove them and photographed them.

As he got a little older as a child, he became interested in science fiction moves, James Bond movies, and the weaponry that both used. Most little boys who are allowed to have toy guns play with them, and those that aren't allowed to have them often pretend with a "hand" gun or improvised toy guns made of sticks and other materials. Leif had toy guns, but by the time he was in the primary grades he was also making his own, and that's another thing he continued off and on throughout his life. He drew them, and then constructed them out of wood. Sometimes, when he was a kid, his dad helped him.

When we lived in Japan, they sold very realistic "toy" pellet guns. Our boys each had one or two, and they enjoyed pretending they were action heroes. Sometimes they'd get dressed up and pose, and even their dad enjoyed doing that with them. This was much more a pastime of Leif's than his brother's, though.

I think Leif loved both the design and mechanical beauty of guns, not just the power and glamor he saw in them (the glamor coming from the James Bond movies, of course). He must have had fantasies of being the gun-toting hero.

This photo is one of a series that Peter W. took of Leif posing on the lanai of our townhouse in Hawaii. I think it was probably taken in 1984 or 1985. He's holding two "guns." The larger one in his right hand is one of the guns he and his dad made, and the one in his left hand looks like it might have been a pellet gun. He's wearing his beloved black Members Only jacket, black pants, black gloves, and his cool sunglasses.

Leif started wearing "cool" sunglasses at an early age, here about 9 or 10, and graduated to Gargoyles and then Oakleys, which he saved up for and paid for himself. I would never have spent that kind of money on sunglasses! But the cool factor was always important to him, and he would gladly pay for it.

I like his hair the way it is in this picture, but it was combed over and styled like this just for the picture. On a daily basis, he wasn't interested in bothering with that.

It's hard for me to know how to think about Leif's lifelong love affair with guns because he used one to shoot himself, but I know he was passionate about them, enjoyed them, loved shooting them, and was incredibly knowledgeable about them. If I had known what would happen to him, would I have prevented him from having toy guns as a child? I don't know. I doubt that it would have done much good. We never had real guns in our home, and he was brought up with a very strong anti-violence ethic. He never had real guns until he was grown and had left home, and he wasn't irresponsible with them. So many millions of American own guns and don't misuse them. He was passionate about the Second Amendment, too. There was no way to know or predict that he would turn one on himself. Even though we worried so much about him, even though we knew the possibility of suicide with a gun existed, we worried far more about the possibility of a terrible car or motorcycle accident.

I wondered, when he died, whether I would be able to look at these photos and enjoy them, knowing what eventually happened, but I have come to the point where I can remember his posing like this and be glad he enjoyed himself and that he never turned a gun on anyone else.

Thoughts on Leif's Anger and Hurt

Leif died three and a half years ago. It's taken me that long to be able to write this post and to face these photos on the blog rather than just on my computer. During that time, I've examined his life and his death from every angle I can find, with every bit of knowledge I have about his life. I've agonized over his death. I've cried rivers of tears.

All of us who lose loved ones to death, especially our children, have a beautiful fantasy in our minds, I think. We somehow believe that if we could just have saved them, it would have been different. Things would have turned out all right. With a second chance, they would heal and do better. They would thrive the way we always wished they would, and we would be happy together. Our dreams for their future would come true, and we would rejoice in their lives.

Perhaps for some, that fantasy is a reality, if the suicide hotline helps, if therapy succeeds, if medical intervention saves them. We always seem to think that if we had just done the right thing, been there at the right time, we might have saved them and the future would be good, maybe wonderful. 

But what if that weren't true?

What if we saved them only to have things continue to go wrong, 

continue to give them misery and pain? What if their lives did not improve? What if they were too ill, emotionally or physically or both, to ever really recover? What if life continued to deal them blow after blow of disappointment and grief? What if their anger turned outward?

At various times since Leif's death, his dad and I have said to each other how thankful we are that Leif maintained his self control, that he maintained enough moral equilibrium that he did not do as some others and turn his guns on those who hurt him, or on innocent people who happened to be in the way when he was feeling the depth of anger and despair. 

Leif certainly had the capability, both in weaponry and skills, to have created a tremendous amount of death and destruction. I am so thankful that he did not! 

What might have happened if he had lived and not gotten well, not thrived, not found love? Might he have lashed outward? Might he have deteriorated, become mentally unstable, unable to work, gone further into too much drinking or using drugs? Where might he have ended up?

In all my searching, I have had to ask myself, did he ask that question, too? Did he ask himself where he was going, how he was going to find a way forward that did not spiral further downhill?

Some people who attempt or think of committing suicide are in an acute state of depression, anger or misery and if prevented from going through with it, get beyond that low point and find a new path. Others harbor thoughts of suicide continually until one day they finally go through with it, or find another way to act out their pain.

Did Leif, in his own, inimical introspective way, take stock or himself and his life and decide that the right thing to do was to end it before it got worse? Before he felt he had created worse consequences for himself and us? While I will never know, I can conceive of that, of a rational thought process, at least rational from his point of view. That is supported by the essay he left open on his laptop that night. It fits with the philosophy he wrote, his pronouncements about happiness and moral values. If appled to his decision to kill himself, it basically says that he chose a path that others may consider wrong and immoral, but that it served a higher morality he chose.

It's very hard to look at this as a mother, a parent. It's a terrible thing to consider that your son may have really believed that suicide was the right and rational choice for him because he saw his life spiraling downward and perhaps he was ashamed.

I have thought aboout posting these photos for three and a half years, but I never had the right words to post with them, never had to courage to put them on a public blog until now. It's with this realization that I think I can see them, still with pain, but also with understanding.

The first photo was one a a series of many he took of himself with an assault rifle he owned back in Kansas,. (It was stolen in his apartment burglary here in Florida, so heaven knows who has it now.) He had just gotten out of the army and missed his M-16. He loved guns and this expensive rifle was a pride and joy of his. He was posing for the camera in the stances he learned in the army and probably fantasizing about how he could save the day or rescue someone. He did have such thoughts of being a hero.

The second photo he took with his computer camera, a series of photos of him using a variety of filters, a variety of expressions, with and without his pistols. They were taken on November 22, 20007, in the wee hours of the morning. He had been up all night, probably playing online games and drinking. It was the same time he had written email to me about how hopeless he felt, how purposeless and lonely. It was early in the morning of Thanksgiving. He would come to our house many hours later that day and share Thanksgiving with us, putting on a good front, acting as though everything were all right.

Some of the photos he took then just look like a man playing with a new camera toy. Others are striking in their pose of anger or hurt. Whether he was acting or showing his real feelings we will never know for sure, but I believe those feelings are real, and I am thankful he did not act on them against others.

I will never know whether Leif could have recovered and had the good life we wished for him. I know I want him back and miss him terribly every day of my life, but I am also realistic enough to openly say now that I don't know whether, if he had lived, it would have been a good life, whether things might not have gotten worse.

So, I am left with being grateful I had him for 33 years, that he never showed that angry, bitter side to us, that he never turned against those who hurt him or innocent others, that he kept that much of his moral compass. And, in the end, whether I like it or not, I have to accept his choice.

How Much Did Heredity Play a Part?

When I saw this photo of my father when he was about eight years old, I was struck once again by the resemblance to Leif at the same age. My dad's home haircut was a bit more jagged than Leif's, and the color photo of Leif makes it harder to compare the two, but I still see such a similarity. They both are beautiful children, and both have a certain vulnerability about them, a certain tenderness.

Were there any signs, in either of them, at this young age, that their adult lives would end in suicide?

Beyond that, what else did they have in common? Both were extremely intelligent. Both had only one sibling, another brother, six years apart, though my father had a younger brother and Leif had an older one. Both were dreamers and described as moody. Both liked to take photos when they were teens. Both liked music, though their musical tastes only overlapped in a few areas. Both liked pie, good food, stage plays and movies. But most of those things are superficial, things many people share and they aren't connected to suicide.

Leif had a harder and sadder adulthood than my father did, from a repeatedly broken heart to financial difficulties he couldn't solve, from being robbed to being injured in a motorcycle accident. He served in the army, which my father never did. He was divorced, which my father never was. He had no children. My father had four. He had no faith. My father was a professed Christian, though I think some of his views were less than properly doctrinaire.

But despite the lack of some strong and obvious characteristic that linked their fate, I believe there was a link. Was it genetic? Was it example? Was it both?

I will never know, but it is so hard to look at these beautiful and hopeful young faces and know that despair ended their lives. Grandfather and grandson who never knew each other but shared a common fate.

I miss them both. My father has been dead for 51 years now, and I don't associate him with Florida and my adult life, so I don't miss him acutely and daily, but I do still miss him and deep down in my heart, when I open that door, I grieve for him. He was only a part of my life for twelve years. Leif was mine for thirty-three, and though he has been dead for over three years now, there is no day that goes by without us talking about him, remembering him, no day that I don't miss him, no day that I don't still ask why.

What was the link? Why did they both take their lives? No matter how many reasons we can give, it is still no explanation. It still doesn't reveal how a man can consciously decide to drink cyanide, or knowingly put a gun to his head and pull the trigger.

Brandy in a glass "gun" bottle

Another thing that made both of us think of Leif in Russia was this gun-shaped bottle of liquor. Leif would have been able to identify the gun, which I think is a Kalashnikov AK-47, Russian army rifle, and probably figure out what's in it. I think it's probably brandy from Armenia. Leif would have thought a rifle-shaped bottle a lot of fun and would have kept it as a souvenir if he'd been there. The cost is about $31. Leif loved both guns and alcohol, both to his detriment. They brought him a lot of pleasure, but in the end, also harmed his health and the combination most certainly brought about his death, so it's a bittersweet thing for me to see something like this I know he would have found a delight and amusement.

The Signs One Does Not See

I really debated about posting this photo. It's shocking and dramatic and disturbing, but in the end, I decided that's why I should post it. I was thinking once again about how we all look back and try to see the signs we might have missed, the ones that might have alerted us to the danger a loved one was in, that he was thinking of suicide. We could find small clues, very small ones, but they weren't things that would have alerted us at the time. I came across this article online, "How to Help Someone Who Is Thinking About Committing Suicide," on Wikihow, and it brought things into a different focus.

The article talks about hints someone contemplating suicide might give. I only remember one email that Leif sent to me in the same month he took this photo of himself, and it did alert me and make me very worried, but when I tried to engage him about his depression and loss of purpose, he insisted he was all right. I think this is a common reaction of men, and this article, helpful as it is, doesn't give you anything to go on if the person denies depression, denies suicidal thinking, and you have no other direct evidence. You certainly don't want to take precipitative steps if someone ISN'T contemplating suicide.

Had I seen the photos Leif took of himself using the PhotoBook program on his computer at the time he took them, I would have been even more worried and confronted him about then, but he would most assuredly have insisted that he was just playing with the program and his guns and it was all just a fun experiment . . . though it doesn't look like that to me. All of the photos look like an angry, depressed, sick man either giving the "camera" the finger or pointing a gun at it, or making nasty grimaces. There are no smiles, nothing "fun," nothing he would ever want to show the world. There is a series of photos using the various effects that PhotoBooth offers, sepia, negative (like this one), and others, but the poses are all in the same vein.

The thing that makes it all the more disturbing was that they were taken in the wee hours of the morning of Thanksgiving, November 22, 2007, less than five months before he died, and he had Thanksgiving dinner with us that night, seeming a little detached and depressed but mostly himself, conversational, pretty normal.

He started out taking some pictures at about 1:38 that morning. those were serious, thoughtful and maybe slightly sad. Then there was a break of about 4 hours and he took the rest between 5:48 and 6:08 a.m., and those were the ones I'm writing about. I think he may have used some of them to help model the face of one of his Mass Effect characters to look like him (I've posted photos of that character), but most of what he was doing was what appears to me to be a sort of documentation of how he was feeling, and that feeling was terrible, angry, hurt, sad, lonely, depressed.

None of the photos had him pointing the gun at himself. He sighted it toward the camera several times, held it sideways in front of his face, but not at himself. There were two different pistols in the photos, and neither was the one he used to kill himself. That one he had purchased only the day before he shot himself.

It's hard to imagine that only 12 hours after taking these photos, during which he probably spent a good part of the day sleeping, he drove to our house and acted normal for Thanksgiving dinner, and probably felt he had very little to be thankful for.

How does one help someone who is thinking about suicide if you can't tell, or they won't admit it, or insists they are handling things all right? And even if you try, will it help? It might. It's worth trying. There are many stories of people who have been saved or stopped from suicide and gone on to live a happier life and been grateful for the chance. We tried with Leif but we weren't able to help him. We cannot get inside the mind of someone in this condition. And we can only help as much as they will allow.

Leif did not call for help, didn't call a suicide hotline, didn't reach out, didn't tell his friends or his family. I still wonder how long the decision had been coming, whether he planned it or decided on the spur of the moment. Surely he had enough depression and disappointments and problems in his life to bring him to that.

However, now I am also beginning to wonder if there was yet another influence that might have tipped the scales. I knew that I'd seen things about the asthma medication Singulair causing depression and suicide. I even remember asking him about that in the fall of 2007. He said that was interesting because he had used Singulair at one time but wasn't on it then and hadn't been in quite awhile. I didn't think to examine further, but due to some other research I was doing online, it occurred to me to find out whether other asthma medications possibly caused depression, and I found that they do. It is a well-known side effect of the steroid inhalers and other medications. Leif's asthma was getting worse and he was using them more often. We will never know, but now I wonder whether that might have been the thing that put him over the edge.

If you have someone in your family who is depressed or despondent, consider their medications as possibly contributing to that state of mind.

On April 10th, it will be three years since we found Leif's body, and we are no closer to knowing why than before, but I think I am more able to take a balanced view. I'm more able to smile at the photos of him that I treasure. I will never smile at this one, but it's part of the truth of who he was and how he felt before he died, and maybe someone seeing this might see signs in someone they love that look like this and find it possible to talk with them and help them. I did not see these photos until months after Leif died.

Doomed by a Gene for Depression?

Today is the 51st anniversary of my father's death. Donald Gerald Kundiger took his life by swallowing cyanide around 2:00 a.m. on February 10, 1960, in the bathroom of his home. I heard him fall and found him on the floor.

Forty-eight years later, my son, Leif Ashley Garretson, somewhere in the wee hours of the morning of April 9, 2008, put a gun to his head and took his life. I found him the next day.

Were both these men doomed from the start by a gene for depression? Or did they have it and it was "activated" by some trauma? so many unanswered questions, but some things they both had in common include brilliant intelligence, the ability to concentrate piercingly, excellent memories, winning smiles, thinning hair, brown eyes, an interest in music and world politics, a fascination with science . . . and death.

Do you think they resemble each other? I do. I think the resemblance is striking. It's hard to find them in a similar pose at the same age so that the comparison is easy, but these two photos show it. Leif would even more like him if he hadn't started shaving his head when his hair got thin on top. The one of my dad was taken on February 27 1954 when he was 41 years old. You would not believe that in six years he would be dead. The one of Leif was taken on May 31, 2003, when he was 28 years old. He would be dead five years later.

They each chose a method they knew a lot about. My dad was an organic chemistry professor and poisoned himself with a deadly chemical to which he had access. My son was a trained military armorer who had many guns and know how to choose a weapon and a type of bullet which would accomplish his task fully.

But there are startling differences. My father lived 13 years longer than Leif. Was it because he had a real career in a field he loved, a wife and four children, a home? Leif had none of those things. Yet in the end, they did not keep my father happy, healthy and alive. In the end, he chose to exit this life.

I wonder, sometimes, if all these years later anyone but me remembers the day of my father's death. His birth family members and cousins are no longer living. His other children were so young when he died they don't remember him, only the stories we tell about him. There are people who remember who he was, but I think I may be the only one who, in my heart, thinks of him on this day and on his birthday and still wonders why, even though, like in the case of Leif, I can name and tick off reasons. They are not sufficient for me.

I wonder if they would have liked each other. How sad they never had a chance to get to know each other. The surely could have matched their wits against each other.

I miss them both, these two men who were closest to me. I will always miss them and wonder why they could not live.

And I am thankful I did not inherit whatever terrible gene that took the joy from their lives, made them say they felt dead inside, made them want to end it all. How sad that I passed it on to my son.

The Right to Bear Arms

On Monday, June 28, 2010, the Supreme Court affirmed the fundamental right to bear arms (article from the New York Times). When I heard about that decision, I immediately thought of Leif and how fervently he would have approved. A paragraph he would have liked, from the article,

The decision extended the court's 2008 ruling in District of Columbia v. Heller that "the Second Amendment protects a personal right to keep and bear arms for lawful purposes, most notably for self-defense within the home.

Leif long maintained that police do not protect us, they react after a crime has been committed, and that it is up to us to protect ourselves. He also maintained that gun ownership was critical to keeping our civil liberties, and over time, although I never wanted to own guns, he convinced me of the value of those arguments.

I have often wondered, since his death, whether he would have any different opinions if he could come back and talk to me now. Would he still maintain his beliefs, or would he feel that if it hadn't been so easy for him to have guns, he might still be alive, for another chance at life?

I've thought long and hard about that, and I think Leif would still say that people should have the right to have guns . . . and, as he had before, the obligation to use them responsibly . . . AND, that they also have the right to take their own lives.

Although I will never know what the real state of his mind was when he decided to pull the trigger, or whether he thought much about how it would affect those he left behind, I know he had thought about it earlier in his life when he considered suicide and decided against it. I think he would say it was his choice and he made it, and that such a choice does not mean that the right to own a weapon should be abridged.

That will always be a problem for us, that people will use them, and make their own decisions about how to do so. I am only thankful Leif never used a gun on anyone else!

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The photo is one Leif took of himself in 2002 and used as his avatar on the ZAON website.

Two Years Since Leif Died

I was always worried about Leif having guns, worried about some accident happening, worried about his depression. He laughed at my fears and tried to teach me about guns. He got his concealed carry license here in Florida, which scared me still further, but my concern was primarily about accidents. I worried about his fast motorcycle and car driving, too.

I had never liked my sons playing with guns and never bought toy guns for them, but like most boys, they were fascinated with them, particularly Leif. He had some Japanese air guns he loved as a kid, and his father liked posing like James Bond with those "toy" guns. Leif did, too. The image was something they both appreciated, debonair, powerful.

But Leif had always liked guns, toys or real, and this photo is of him playing with one and pretending when he was in Tokyo, Japan on October 1982. He was seven years old. Little did I know when I took this photo that someday he would shoot himself in the head, that guns would no longer be fun, but the instrument of his death.

He died in the wee hours of April 9, 2008, two years ago, alone in his kitchen, drunk, after spending the evening with his friend Michael and another fellow. He gave no hint that he was thinking of killing himself and we will never know whether he was planning it or whether it was a spur of the moment decision.

We will never know whether he might still be alive but for the terrible combination of a new pistol and too much rum and Coke.

We will never know what made him unhappy or desperate enough to do it.

We will never even know whether it could have been some terrible, stupid accident (though I doubt that).

We will never know what his life could have become had he lived.

We will miss him all our days.

Leif and Weaponry

This photo of Leif was taken in our living room in Hawaii on Thanksgiving Day 1985. We had taken the family photos I already posted. I imagine he was probably watching television when I took this photo, and he is holding a wooden gun he made. I think he made it with his dad. From the time he was very young he was fascinated with guns and all kinds of weaponry. Even as an adult he designed and made wooden guns as prototypes of guns he wanted to see and use in role gaming like Cyberpunk and Zaon. Perhaps he was born in the wrong age. Maybe at some other time he would have been a great military strategist or weapons designer. In our world, especially once his hoped-for military career didn't work out, his passion was mostly out of place and had little use except in the gaming world.

And yet I always called him my "gentle giant." He could so easily have harmed others, either with his own strong arms and legs or with all his swords and guns, yet he didn't. It's fortunate that as an older child he had gained control of his temper or things might have turned out very badly for him and others. I'm thankful he had that self control.

Who knows what kind of dreams he had of being the hero with those weapons, or whether they served to make him feel safer in a world that was not so friendly to him as an adult. They must also have been a part of that large persona he cultivated and presented to the world, the tough and capable weapons expert armed to the max. He talked a tough game and posed looking dangerous but lived a quiet life not harming others and even rescuing animals. A complex man. We will never know all the depths.

The Destruction of One's Life's Work

I've been thinking for sixteen months about why the loss of a child is so devastating. When my father died I was twelve, a death I witnessed; it was traumatic and terribly sad. I missed him. I questioned why. It was as though the foundation of my life had been destroyed, washed right out from under me.

I was afraid to believe, to trust, to love, for fear whatever I believed in or trusted or loved would be taken away from me. It took me years to get beyond that and give myself fully to relationships. And yet, that loss was nowhere near as hard for me as Leif's death has been. I have questioned why many times.

There are many reasons I could cite. I only knew my father for twelve years. I knew Leif for thirty-three. I was closer to Leif than I was to my father. We have the expectation (though not the certainty) of our children outliving us and not having to deal with their deaths. We have such hopes for their future. We miss the relationship and seeing the unfolding of their lives. Their death changes our identity, changes our lives, changes the future.

And yet, there was always something more that I couldn't quite grasp, couldn't figure out a way to explain. Now I think I can try.

For someone like me, whose deepest and most important emphasis as an adult has been my family, my children are my life's work. They are, more than anything else, what my life is all about. There is nothing I have done or will ever do that is as important as raising my children. They are the legacy I will leave behind.

There is no analogy that is adequate, but it is rather as though a sculptor has spent years creating a beautiful and meaningful sculpture, and that sculpture represents her life's work, the sum of who she is and her creations, but this sculpture goes beyond the inanimate smoothness of stone . . . it is alive, has volition, intellect, talents, consciousness. It is a child who talks, lives, breathes. It is the ultimate creation for someone like me. It creates itself as well.

It is a delight, a privilege, an honor, and yes, it is frustrating, sometimes infuriating; it is expensive and sometimes contrary. It is not easy to spend eighteen years molding this sculpture, assisting in its creation. It isn't easy to help continue to mold it after it has grown and left one's home and arms, but that process never ends.

So much of who I am is wrapped up in my sons and who they are, who I helped them to become. Nothing else I have done or will ever do will matter as much, be as rewarding, or as heartbreaking.

And that is why, one of the deepest reasons why, Leif's death is so hard. He was a beautiful sculpture, one of only two I created and helped to learn and grow, and now that part of my life's work is destroyed and gone forever. As though someone took a wrecking ball to a beautiful marble statue and crushed it to dust. Half of my legacy to the future is gone. Half of my life's work is destroyed.

And there is the added sadness that somehow I wasn't able to form and create his life so that he could either make better choices or continue to withstand the consequences of the choices he made, that I was unable to give him better luck in life or help him to find a purpose worth living for.

There is both the sadness of losing my beautiful son, my life's work, and the sadness of knowing that I somehow did not give him the tools to continue to create his own life, one in which he could prosper and be happy.

It is a terrible loss and a profound failure.

I know that there may have been no way I could help him achieve that sense of purpose and meaning in life; there may have been no way I could have influenced his misfortunes for the better, though I tried, but it will still feel like a failure. What can be more tragic than to throw away the gift of life? What can be sadder than to have decided to die at 33?

I brought him into this world with love and hopes and tried my best to give him all the tools he needed for a good life. He blew that life away with a 45. All my life I will remember not only all the good times, all the photos, all the conversations, the love, the embraces, but also that horrifying picture in my mind of him lying there in a pool of blood, dead and still, the gun on the kitchen counter.

How thankful I am that Leif was not my only child. How thankful I am that I have Peter Anthony, my first-born son.

And it will always be true that nothing I will ever do will be as important or as all-absorbing as raising my sons.

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The photo of Leif was taken in Kamakura, Japan in May 1981. He was six years old.

What would he think of this?

Last night after I went to bed and wasn't falling asleep, it suddenly occurred to me to wonder what Leif would think of this blog. Of course, I wouldn't be doing this if he were alive, so he would never be confronted with it in that way, but if he were to know about it somehow, after death, what would he think of it?

Would he be surprised? Touched? Pleased? Would he appreciate my memories and monument to him? Would he be glad to see so many people visiting the blog and reading about him and us?

Or would he be upset that his life was set before the world in detail for anyone to read?

Would he think I was an obsessed mother who couldn't let go of her son? Or would he see me as a loving mother who wants to keep his memory alive?

Would he wish he could tell me more, so that the picture of him would be more accurate and well-rounded? Or would he wish to keep things private?

I try not to post things that would be hurtful or embarrassing to others, or even to Leif, were he able to read them, but I wonder whether he would agree with my judgement.

I also wonder how I, a person who never wanted a gun in my house and who drank alcohol sparingly, managed to raise a son so deeply interested in and devoted to guns and beer, and though he never "converted" me to his beliefs, he taught me a great deal about them.

It is in the nature of death, especially a sudden death, that those left behind are destined to find out a lot of things about their deceased loved one they may not have known, or known fully, before. And that there will also always be many mysteries for which there will never be answers. The blog allows me to explore both sides of Leif's life and death.

For me, just knowing I have posted something is important, and I regret each day that I miss. I never knew when I started this on April 10, 2008 that I would still be writing it sixteen months later, would still have more to say, would find it so meaningful and necessary to my day.

As I was driving home tonight I was thinking about this again, thinking how when Leif was alive I spent so much time with him and helping him with problems in his life, and now I am still spending time, only I don't get to spend it WITH him or to help him any longer.

Yet he does not seem distant, not yet. Peter W. said the other day that it doesn't seem real that Leif is dead, that it seems like we should still be able to just meet him in Tampa for dinner or stop by his apartment. Intellectually we know we can't, but emotionally, it seems as though he should still be there. I know just what he means.

Probably the blog helps us keep that kind of feeling, for we see his pictures daily, and I write about him. The memories are refreshed, new again, savored. I am thankful for ever one of them.
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This photo of Leif was taken sometime in 1989. I'm not sure where, perhaps on a playground at Fort Sheridan, though I don;t remember one like this there. It's one that captures his vulnerable side, as few do. I don't know who took the photo. It was in his album and must have been taken with his camera by someone else in the family, most likely me . . . and yet I don't remember ever having seen this photo until I acquired Leif's albums after his death. He was fourteen years old.

Leif on the Drinking Age, Gun Laws, the Patriot Act, and American Freedoms

Leif received an email reply to his passionate letter about the drinking age to Senator Brownback. He immediately sent it out, with this even longer and more impassioned reply, to most of the people in his email address book. After dismissing the drinking age views in a couple of paragraphs, he addressed gun control, American freedoms and the Patriot Act.

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From: "Leif Garretson"
Date: Thu Feb 12, 2004 23:16:59 US/Central
Subject: correspondence with Senator Brownback.

Below is a letter I received from our Senator Brownback (Republican) of Kansas. What follows is my response. Please read.

February 12, 2004

Mr. Leif Garretson
804 Moro
Manhattan, KS 66502

Dear Leif:

Thank you for your letter regarding lowering the drinking age. I genuinely appreciate you taking the time to share your thoughts on this important issue. There is no better guide to making tough decisions than hearing from the people whom I serve.

Safety should be the first priority when it comes to alcohol. It frustrates me to hear stories involving irresponsible drinking, especially when it involves driving.

As a father of five I am personally concerned about safety; not only the safety of my children, but the safety of all children and all others using our streets and highways. I strongly support educating all citizens about the dangers associated with consuming and abusing alcohol. Education is the key to stopping underage drinking and driving.

In addition to fears for the safety of passengers and pedestrians, I have to say that the drinking age has had a positive impact on the number of teens drinking. According to the U.S. Census, in 1974, thirty-four percent of teens between twelve and seventeen reported being regular users of alcohol. In 1994, only sixteen percent reported using it regularly. Death rates from alcohol-related accidents have decreased by almost two percent. Drinking has serious consequences for young people.

That having been said, the rules and regulations governing the drinking age are under the jurisdiction of the state of Kansas. I recommend you contact your representatives in the Kansas State Legislature with your concerns. They would best be able to help you.

Thank you for giving me the chance to explain my position on the drinking age and underage drinking and driving. I know this question is on a lot of young people's minds. Please do not hesitate to contact me again in the future.

Sincerely,

Sam Brownback
United States Senator
SB:jc
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Leif's reply:

Dear Senator Brownback,

Aside from various arguments I could make about the injustice of allowing men and women to serve and die overseas when they are not trusted to drink, I will make 2 points.

First is that any good scientist knows that correlation does no equal causation. Simply put, that means that just becuase the number of teens drinking has decreased since the drinking age was raised does NOT mean they are drinking less BECAUSE of the drinking age. It is quite likely that the factors you mentioned such as education and societal attitude had more impact on teens drinking than the legal age did.

Also the drinking age may be 21, but society clearly tolerates drinking at 18 -- but not at 17 or younger. I would be challenged to find a student at K-State or KU that had made it though their freshman year without having a drink at a party or two. The activity is going on regardless of its legality and honestly I think it is a misdirection of resources. I found it a bit insulting when after my car had been burglarized for the second time, I was again told that the police did not have the time or money to investigate such a minor matter. Yet they do have the time and money pay a cop $35,000 a year to write speeding tickets and to break up college parties so they can issue M.I.Ps. I think the resources used to stop underage drinking could be better spent. How many of my tax dollars have been wasted on the enforcement of this law, I wonder?

Secondly, your point that the drinking age is set by the Kansas State Legislature is an interesting one, isn't it? I am well aware of the fact that this is a state law. What I am also aware of, which many are not, is that the state governments were coerced into compliance with the federal mandate for a drinking age of 21. How were they coerced? With money, of course, or rather the threat of losing it. Specifically, federal funds for highways. Any state that did not raise its drinking age lost 40% of its highway funding. Not surprisingly it wasn't long before every state was in compliance. The only place that did not was Puerto Rico. I used to live in Puerto Rico and I must say the roads are terrible as a result.

So while you are right that the law is set at the state level, if the states are blackmailed into making that law by the federal
government, as they were, it becomes a federal issue. In fact, it actually bring us to an ever larger and more offensive issue; the
issue of the corruption or errosion of federalism. The separation of state and federal governments is a great thing. The fact that if you don't care for the laws in one state, you may move to another that better suits you is a good thing. But if those states are coerced by the federal goverment into compliance then federalism is in jeopardy.

I must say that in the last year or two I have become extremely troubled by the amount of power that the federal government has been grabbing up. I grew up always thinking that I was mostly Republican, though lately I am finding less and less in common with the GOP. I have always believed that the less government interference in our lives there was, was the better, and the Republican party was the most likely to guarantee that. Particular issues like gun control which particularly should be left to state or even municipal governments kept me away from the Democratic Party. In particular I was very troubled by the 1994 crime bill and the included ban on assault weapons which is one of the most ill-conceived and poorly written pieces of legislation there is, directed at the wrong weapons for the wrong reasons with definitions that can be easily circumvented.

For example, an AK-47 is considered an "assault weapon" becasue it has a large magazine, a pistol grip, and a bayonet lug. If it has only 2 of these features, it is not an "assault weapon," so all one must do to sell the very same weapon legally under the ban is to remove the two pieces of wood that make up the stock and pistol grip and replace them with one piece of wood that forms a thumb hole stock. It is now NOT an "assault weapon."

Similarly, I own an AR-15 rifle that I bought legally with my driver's license at a local gun store. This is a civilian model of the M-16 I carried in the army, which I purchased to keep my skills up. The only difference between the two rifles, other than the lack of full auto fire capability, is that my rifle does not have the flash suppressor, bayonet lug, or the optional telesoping stock. Now lets look at these one by one.

The bayonet lug: I challenge anyone to tell me when the last time was that an America civilian was killed in a drive by bayoneting. I didn't spend $1400 on a rfile to use it as a spear. Could have gotten a spear alot cheaper. Nevertheless, this has been made illegal and required the redesign of hundreds of weapons costing the consumer more money.

The Flash Supressor: Flash supressors serve only one function; to obscure the position of a camouflaged soldier from enemy view by preventing a muzzle flash. This is of little or no concern to crime. Not many criminals are sneaking around camouflaged in the woods like Rambo, killing civilians.

The Pistol grip: This was added to the list because it supposedly made it easier to operate the weapon by shooting from the hip, which supposedly criminals like to do. This is completley inaccurate. As a former armorer and expert marksman I can speak as an expert on the subject and tell you that the addition of the pistol grip by Eugene Stoner, who designed the M-16, was done to make the weapon easier to fire from the prone positon, not the hip. Firing a pistol grip weapon from the hip is more difficult and less comfortable than firing a conventional stocked rifle or shotgun. And firing from the hip is the least desireable, least accurate, and therefore least lethal method, so this makes no sense.

Lastly the folding or telescoping stock: This is the only one that has any bearing on crime, and only because it speaks to the idea of concealability. However, this is a useless and uneeded law. It takes less then 5 minutes to swap a stock on a rifle like an AR-15, so a criminal can simply remove the folding stock when not in use and the weapon is perfectly legal. It is an uneeded law because the concealment of a weapon is already a crime. Whether it is an illegal "assault weapon" or a perfectly legal revolver, carrying a concealed firearm without a permit is a felony. If one is already willfully commiting a felony by carrying the weapon, do you really think they are going to care if the weapon they are carrying is legal or not? Whether they are carrying a revolver or a folded AK-47 the charge is the same. So what good does this law do? All it does is restrict the freedoms of those that obey the law.

Bottom line is, If I am going to use a gun to commit a felony such as robbery or murder, and am already risking 30 years to life, do you really think I am gonna care if the weapon is illegal or not? What is 2 years tacked onto 20 or 50? In fact, in most cases, these offenses are not even bothered with as establishing the crime of carry is a waste of time that only bores the juries, so few prosecutors bother with them unless it is all they have.

These gun control measures are ineffective for the simple reason that criminals by definition don't obey the law. Only non-criminals obey the law and non-criminals having guns is not a problem.

Another thing that really irritates me is politicians making comments such as, "I don't think you need an AK-47 to hunt deer." That is true; you don't. But that is not why we have those weapons or have the right to such weapons. Also, laws which ban weapons that "do not have a legitimate sporting or hunting use" are misguided. We don't have the Second Amendment so that we can go out on the weekends and shoot Bambi and beer cans. We have the Second Amendment because this country won its independance from tyranny because we had armed citizens that used their own weapons against their oppressors and the wise men that wrote the Constitution realized that despite their best efforts the Constitution might fail to prevent tyranny. The Second Amendment is the final check and balance in the Constitution, ensuring that should our worst nightmares come true and our government becomes a tyranny, the people have the means to fight that tyranny.

We don't have the right to bear arms so that we can shoot dear. We have the right to bear arms so that if necessary, as an absolute last resort, we can wage war against our own government.

Now I am no radical militant. I am no anarchist. I believe in the Constitution and in our government. I belive that the system will ultimately work and come back into balance. However, I also believe that nothing can be trusted or taken for granted. So if someone asks me, "Why do you need and assault rifle?" I answer, "Because the soldiers and policemen that are the instruments of our government have assault rifles and worse. And should the day ever come that those men no longer serve us, but rather serve to oppress us, then the men and women of this country will meet them with equal force and superior conviction. That is why I need and assault rifle."

I hope with all my heart that that day never comes. But I am a student of history and I also believe the saying that, "The price of liberty is eternal vigilance."

Now I am not suggesting that there should be no control what so ever. I have no problem with the idea of the County of Los Angeles passing a law making it lllegal to have such weapons within the city limits to prevent crime. That is reasonable. But why should a person in Manhattan, Kansas have his rights restricted and infringed because of a situation in Los Angeles? Federal gun control laws are inappropriate and unconstitutional. If California thinks they need a BAN to keep LA safe, let them ban it and leave me alone. There are no drive-bys in my neighborhood. No drug turf wars. So why must I live under legislation that was passed solely to address an isolated and local problem? The federal government has no business putting its nose in this issue. It is a Local issue and should be handled locally.

But I digress.

However while I am venting my opinons to you, I may as well continue on to the thing that scares me and many Americans more than anything since the threat of Nuclear War. And that is the Patriot Act. I think "The Facist Act" would have been a more appropriate name. America, the land of the free, is in danger of becoming America, the land of the surveilled and held without due process. We have gone TOO far in the wake of 9/11 and are now treading hard on the very freedoms we sought to protect.

A great American once said, "Give me liberty or give me death." Now it seems more like, "to hell with liberty as long as we have safety." This trend is very disturbing and must be turned around NOW. I am not afraid of terrorists. An enemy without is not nearly as dangerous as an enemy within, and the enemy within is our own fear and paranoia. As the memory of 9/11 fades, I find myself and many other Americans fearing less and less about the terrorists and more an more about our government.

We do not worry about terrorists attacks. They don't keep me up at night. What makes me worry at night is the day that I have to fear the police. That getting pulled over night might mean 60 days in jail without being charged instead of a $60 fine. What makes me afraid is the day when I can't voice my opinions without risking interrogation and imprisonment by agents of the Office of Homeland Security without access to a lawyer or even being charged. What I fear is that we are on a trend that will make concepts like "Big Brother" and the Gestapo seem all to familiar.

Closer to home, I worry about the ability of the Executive Branch to influence our Senators and Congressman with information that they can now obtain legally through surveillance. Say, for example, that surveillance tools like the "carnivore program" dug up some skeleton from your closet. Something that could cost you reelection, and you were threatened with the release of that information if you did not vote for the President's legislation. Now I might be concerned or upset by whatever scandal about you might be exposed, but I am MUCH more concerned that my senator might NOT vote his conscience and NOT represent my interests because he knew his career was on the line.

I am not suggesting that you have any such skeleton in your closet nor that this President would abuse this power this way. However, laws must never be written under the assumption that only good men will hold the reigns of power, and if we do not have the foresight to see how they could be abused then that hypothetical scenario I described might not be so hyothetical.

We are not there yet and some say it will never go that far. That may be true, but that will be because we stop it right here and now by repealing the Patriot Act in favor of more sober and less panicked legislation that does not endanger our rights as free citizens. Enemies of the death penalty have the saying that it is better to let 10 murderers go free than to kill one innocent man. I would make the same argument. Better to let 10 terrorists escape justice than to abuse the civil rights of one American.

Benjamin Franklin once said that, "A man that trades a piece of his liberty for safety deserves neither." I, for one, am a man that will never willingly trade away my liberty, and I would appreciate it if you and your colleagues did not trade it away on my behalf.

Sincerely
Leif A. Garretson
Manhattan Kansas

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The photo of Leif was taken July 29, 2004 in Manhattan, Kansas. five months after he wrote this. He was 29 years old.

Children, Happiness, Parables, Poems and Life

When I was in graduate school at the University of Hawaii, one of my professors told me that I would have a hard time with the empty nest syndrome when my sons left home because I was so close to them and involved in their lives. They were then ten and sixteen. I told him I didn't think so, that I had raised them to become independent, that I wanted them to lead their own lives, that I had much to do in my life, too. All of that was true, but it was also predicated on the assumption that we would always have a close relationship with our sons throughout our lives.

For 23 years, I was basically right, though the details took on different hues. First Peter Anthony left home to go to the Air Force Academy. At first he came home for breaks and spent time with us and his high school friends, but he quickly pulled away into his own sphere, and though I realized I had lost the close intellectual exchange and camaraderie we had before, it seemed natural that he was finding new companions for both friendship and mental challenges, new horizons to pursue, and we rejoiced in his successes, as we have continued to do in all the years since he graduated from high school and left home the summer of 1987.

At the same time, we were seeing Leif blossom and come into his own as a young man with his older brother away and I continued to have a close relationship with him. It was a joy seeing them both develop into interesting, intelligent adults. My "empty nest" was delayed when Leif decided to live at home and attend KSU rather than go away to school, a decision influenced by his father's willingness to buy him a used RX-7 if he stayed there and saved the cost of a dorm or apartment, but not one I felt was best for Leif. For me, it was great. I loved having him there.

Even when he moved out with Nikko, and got married, he was still close by and in frequent contact, so my "empty nest" was delayed again. It wasn't until he enlisted in the army in January 1998 that he left and went far away for three and a half years and began to pull away from the closeness we'd always had, and I think it was partly the lack of the contact and closeness that kept me unaware of just how bad things really were for him in the army, though he did tell us what happened, and expressed anger, but didn't let us know of his despair.

At the time he left, I was just beginning my publishing venture and a year later began working on a graphic arts degree, writing more, and being creative in ways I never had time for when I was a "mom" and working, so I was happy in my own new life and didn't feel as much the lack of my sons' presence, though I loved the contact we had. I think I adjusted pretty well to their adulthood and I enjoyed my time with Peter W.

I can't say it never occurred to me that we might be without either of our sons. We worried a lot about Leif because of his penchant for fast driving, with either his car or motorcycle, and his ownership of guns. Once we found out he had been suicidal the last months he was in the army, and he was so depressed when he came back to Kansas, we worried about the possibility of suicide, too. We worried about Peter A. as an Air Force pilot flying into potentially dangerous areas, and of course, we were acutely aware that other possibilities for disaster always exist, but worrying about possibilities is not the same as dealing with them. There is no way you can feel something you haven't yet experienced. Despite our worries I don't think either of us envisioned our future without our sons there for the rest of our lives. We counted on them being there the way a child counts on his parents being there. It wasn't that we ever took them for granted. We took them for integral parts of our lives.

Today we took our granddaughters, Madeleine and Aly, to the airport to fly back home and after spending four weeks with us. We loved having them here and we had so much fun together. I found myself thinking and realizing that this was how I felt when I had my two sons all those years ago, only they were my children, and I was bound to them in an even deeper way. I realized again how happy I had been then. I knew I was happy then, but I don't think I knew HOW happy, because I didn't have a way to measure it, something to measure it against. Having the girls here gave me a measure of depth, how wonderful it was to hold them in my arms, to have a conversation with them at the dinner table, to read to them, to show them new things and teach them how to do something, to have fun together at the pool or beach, to share our lives. It made me remember and realize anew how much I loved those days, those years, with our sons.

It made me think of Khalil GIbran's poem "On Children," and how well it expressed some of my feelings. I first read that poem when I was in high school, and I have remembered it all these years. I reread it again tonight to see if I remembered it well, and it is so poignant and so prescient.

Your children are not your children.
They are the sons and daughters of Life's longing for itself.
They come through you but not from you,
And though they are with you yet they belong not to you.

You may give them your love but not your thoughts,
For they have their own thoughts.
You may house their bodies but not their souls,
For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow,
which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.
You may strive to be like them,
but seek not to make them like you.
For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.

You are the bows from which your children
as living arrows are sent forth.
The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite,
and He bends you with His might
that His arrows may go swift and far.
Let our bending in the archer's hand be for gladness;
For even as He loves the arrow that flies,
so He loves also the bow that is stable.

Now that Leif is gone and can no longer be the arrow shot into the future, but instead an arrow that somehow fell to earth, I mourn for him, but I rejoice that Peter Anthony is truly of the future, a futurist, who has and is projecting himself far beyond my aim.

Then I thought of the parable of the Prodigal Son. In some ways it parallels our family story, with the older son steady, stable, reliable, and the younger one wanting to take his inheritance and head for other lands, wasting it, working at menial jobs, and eventually coming home humbled . . . but received with rejoicing and open arms. Leif was received home again with joy an open arms more than once, but our story doesn't have that final happy ending. We will never be able to rejoice that he has come home again. He was never "lost" during his lifetime, not to us, and he could always come to us, but in the end, he didn't. I will always be sad that he did not. Was it pride? Was it shame? What kept him from seeking help, from us, from anyone? I suppose he would say he did, in that he tried to use his GI Bill benefits to improve his finances . . . but then spent it unwisely and eventually lost the stipend because he didn't get proper advising about what classes to take . . . and by applying for personal loans to try to cover his debts when he finally realized he couldn't pay them. Was it the loan rejections that finally discouraged him? Was he just completely unwilling to come to us again? What about all the other things he needed help with, his loneliness?

The rest of my life I will go over and over every detail about the his life, especially the last years, trying to understand, trying to find a clue to what made him come to the decision to take his life.

And through it all I will be missing him. Through it all I will be loving him.

Through it all I will continue to realize, day after day, how happy I was when my sons were young and in my care, how fortunate I was, and am, to be their mother. I will shed tears because I miss those days that will never come again, and tears because Leif is dead. I will remember those days and all the days since that we were together.

I had another realization today. I miss Peter Anthony. I miss the relationship we once had where "mom" was a "good reference book." I don't think I let myself realize how much I missed him all these years since he left home, because I wasn't "supposed to." I wasn't going to be one of those obsessive mothers who hover over their children, or one of those demanding mothers who expect attention all the time. I wasn't going to be one of those needy mothers who pile guilt on their kids. I wasn't going to be one of those mothers who mopes around an empty nest when her kid grow up and leave home. And I don't think I have been any of those things. But, I still miss him. And I found out the truth by missing Leif. I need to rejoice in Peter Anthony's life and family. They are here. They will help keep our lives full.

But there will always be two intermingling streams, the lively one of son and grandchildren, the dark, sad one of loss and grief.
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The photo is of Peter Anthony and Leif on December 25, 1981 in Sagamihara, Japan. It was Peter Anthony's thirteenth birthday.

Disney World "Lights, Motors, Action: Extreme Stunt Show

We saw the "Lights, Motors, Action: Extreme Stunt Show" at Disney World Hollywood Studios yesterday and had seen it last month when we were in Orlando. It immediately struck me as something Leif would not only have loved, but he would have loved to be IN it. Fast cars sliding around and burning rubber, accelerating fast and doing maneuvers that required tremendous driving skills, fast motorcycles doing the same, and jet skis, too. Combine that with explosives, guns (t was the making of a spy movie in a village in southern France), fire and fireworks and it couldn't have been more quintessentially something Leif would have appreciated. He would have been asking where he could apply for job. Finding out that the stripped down interiors of the cars contained a motorcycle engine would have excited him. He was fond of pointing out that no car could accelerate like a bike. As Peter A. said, the only thing missing was a redhead. I wish he had been there to watch it with us!

The photo of Leif on his super fast Suzuki motorcycle was taken in Sun City Center, Florida on November 7, 2005 and the photo of him behind the week of his silver RX-8 was taken in the same location on January 4, 2006. He was almost 31 years old.

The Grandfather He Never Knew - Donald G. Kundiger

Leif never met my father, who died by taking cyanide at the age of 46 when I was only 12 years old, and yet Dad may have passed on several characteristics and propensities to the grandson he never saw. My father was brilliant, as was Leif. He taught himself chemistry, eventually studying organic chemistry at the University of Wisconsin and earning his PhD. He had tremendous musical ability and had studied the piano, playing complex concert pieces. He had the receding hairline that Leif inherited, and that glowing smile. At the time he died, after a couple of years of severe depression, none of us knew back in those days that a propensity for chronic, clinical depression could be inherited, or that the genes for it could be "switched on" by trauma.

Since he died when I was twelve, fifteen years before Leif was born, and I never saw them together, it didn't dawn on me until last fall how much Leif looked like his grandfather. I didn't realize it until I was visiting my nephew, Rick, and saw a photo of him on the wall that reminded me strongly of both Leif (his first cousin) and my dad. Then I suddenly saw the resemblance that Leif bore to his grandfather.

I wish they could have known each other. Leif craved the company of smart people with whom he could discuss ideas. He would have enjoyed my father, though they would likely have disagreed on some things. It's sad that my father never saw his children grow up (my brother and sisters were younger than I was) and never saw any of his grandchildren or great-grandchildren. Sad that he couldn't find joy in life any more, despite his family of four kids and his "American dream" lifestyle owning his own home, a car, and working as an assistant professor of organic chemistry at Kansas State University. By the time he died, he had patented 28 compounds, though the rights to use them were owned by Dow Chemical Company because they had given him grants to do the research.

Dad used to say, way back in the 1950s, that one day we would discover that mental illness is caused by chemical imbalances in the brain. We are finding that out these days. His prediction is coming true, but that didn't save his grandson. Leif didn't ask for help, didn't try medication, as far as we know.

People have often asked me why am interested in genealogy, family history, saying they aren't interested in birth and death dates and a bunch of dead people, but what they don't understand is that family history is the stories, who these people were, the lives they led . . . and how that impacts or influences us. I am more and more sure that they do, in more ways that we can ever know. After all, we are made from their genes. What have they passed on to us?

I have noticed in looking at generations of photos that often there will be startling resemblances between people who are separated by two or three generations, like Leif and my father, but I never dreamed that one of my son's would commit suicide as he did.

Leif grew up knowing about my father's death, knowing how it had affected me. That was one reason that he didn't kill himself at Fort Drum, New York when he was so devastated, because he knew it would hurt me. I told him always to remember that, and that if he ever felt that way again, to remember it and do whatever it took to stay alive. That was not to be. I don't know, and never will know, what tipped the balance and made him decide to put his new pistol to his head and pull the trigger on April 9, 2008. Even though I know of all the problems and disappointments, heartaches, he'd had, what was it that made death seem like the only way out? Was the depression and the decision to die programmed into his genes, passed down from his grandfather, and set in motion by all the trauma he experienced?
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The top photo is of my father on his wedding day, June 13, 1943 when he was 30 years old, just three years younger than Leif was when he died. The second one, one of the very rare color photos of him, was taken in 1959 when he was 46 years old, less than a year before he died.