Leif and Two of His Cousins

 This is the Leif that enjoyed kids, loved his younger cousins, and was strong as an ox. I'd never seen these photos until my sister, Lannay, brought them to me last summer. They were taken in July 1993, when he was 18 years old, slim, and handsome and having a good time with his young cousins Corinne and Jacquie. Kids always loved him. They gravitated to him. There was something about this giant of a guy that was just FUN. He had a warmth about him and liked to joke with them. You can see how happy the girls look.

It must have been hard for him to be that tall and strong  and have his body betray him so badly with the asthma and pain from his neck and collarbone, and his shin splints. I suspect he had other medical problems he didn't confide in us, probably at the least a bad case of acid reflux, since I found medication for that.

It must have been hard for him to feel that he was getting older and not finding anyone to share his life, that he had no children.

But here in these photos he was still healthy and optimistic, still had his long hair, though his hairline was already receding, still had that wonderful smile.

He is wearing a chain mail necklace he made himself, even the links.

It's hard to believe these photos were taken twenty years ago. Where did the years go? How did they go so fast?

Whimsical

Leif was funny. He was whimsical. He was silly. He was a cut-up. At least, he was all of those things when he wasn't morose, withdrawn or depressed. How well I remember the times when he was enjoying himself and having fun acting silly.

These days, I seem to alternate between sadness and missing him, and smiling over memories like this one.

He graduated from Kansas State University in May 2003, ten years after he graduated from high school. It took him that long because he spent a part of those years in the U.S. Army.

He came home from the army in 2001 a depressed and broken man, but by the time he graduated from KSU, he was so much healthier in mind and body. He was looking good, feeling good, felt he had a future. I think he was at his handsomest in that year of 2003, and my favorite photos of him are from that year.

It was also the year in which he met J. and was so very much in love, and I'm sure that also helped account for his happiness and glowing good looks that fall, though in this cute picture, he had not yet met her.

It was taken in the back yard of our old stone house. He was acting silly with the tassel on his graduation cap, blowing on it and letting it settle on and tickle his nose. I love the look on his face, looking at the tassel as he gently blows on it, the ends of it splayed around his nose, and that hint of a smile with the cute dimples just showing. How I WISH he could have continued to be that happy, whimsical, silly man. 

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.