He Dreamed a Dream

Leif was a dreamer who dreamed of being a hero, a warrior. Someone who discovered him on Facebook or in this blog and asked to befriend him after death wrote to me that Leif would have liked this blog, that Vikings wanted the songs of their deeds and lives to be sung, to be remembered.

Leif's persona in the Society for Creative Anachronism, SCA, was a Viking pirate. For years SCA was an important part of his life, and he reveled in dressing in his garb, improving his armor and weaponry over the years. He made rattan weapons to fight with and fought many a Sunday battle in the Manhattan City Park (in Manhattan, Kansas), wearing an incredible amount of weight, especially toward this end of the time he lived there when he had the fifty-pound chain mail shirt he made. Several times I went to watch him and take pictures.

He dreamed of being the kind of hero he could perhaps have been in an earlier age, and surrounded himself with both ancient and thoroughly modern weaponry.

I was looking online for information about the Viking songs and sagas and was surprised to discover that they have fragments of ancient Viking songs written in a kind of musical notation using runes, and one site showed both the old runic notation and a modern translation of it. The title of the songs was so completely appropriate, "I Dreamed a Dream," so I decided to try to record it with GarageBand. I wish I had the time and talent to add accompaniment to it, though I have no idea what the Viking sound would have been, beyond the tune. I wonder, too, what the rest of the words were, and whether they, too, would have fit Leif.

The photos I put with the song are ones Leif took of himself on August 7, 2003 when he had just purchased his new armor. He was posing in the living room of the house at 710 N. Ninth Street in Manhattan, Kansas, where he was living at the time. It was a good time for him. I think he had at least somewhat recovered from the breakup of his marriage, he had graduated from Kansas State University that May, and was looking forward to a brighter future. He has just gotten a job at Sykes, which no longer has a call center in Manhattan. Little did he know how his life was about to change, first for the better, as he was so ecstatically in love beginning a couple of months later, and then dashed to pieces when the she left him. I think the period from about May 2003 to February 2004 was one of the happiest of his life, and it shows in his looks. He was so handsome then.

So, my Viking son, although I do not sing your exploits, I do write them and give them to the world.

His Body Betrayed Him Again and Again

Tall, powerful, seemingly athletic and "indestructible," Leif looked like a formidably fit young man, but sadly his body seemed destined to betray him and ruin his sports and career choices.

It began with his eyes, and finding out that he was nearsighted and could not pass a flight physical so that he could aim for a career as a military pilot. I've posted the essay he wrote about that when he was fourteen.

Next he had to quit playing soccer, a game he had loved for ten years, when he couldn't immediately deal with the heat and humidity in Puerto Rico and then sprained his ankle.

I think those were big disappointments for him, but he recovered and pressed on. The next disappointment was when he gave up his dream of becoming an Air Force officer when he pulled a muscle in his groin and couldn't do the situps to pass the physical fitness test at ROTC summer camp.

Again he switched gears and tried something else. He enlisted in the infantry and had to complete basic training with a broken foot after another cadet fell on it during first aid training.

He might have made it, though, had not something he was exposed to caused him to develop asthma, which made it very hard for him to run with his huge and heavy pack and weapon. Ultimately, he was medically retired from the army at the age of 25. That diagnosis also meant he had to give up his other chosen careers that required him to have a fitness level and ability to run . . . law enforcement careers. I think he also lost something important to him, the ability to serve his country.

I think he had resigned himself to the loss of those options, but he never really found a substitute, nothing he felt committed to and willing to really sink himself into. He wanted to be a hero, but his body failed him.

I still have his army boots in my closet. He walked and ran a long way in those boots, even with his asthma, trying desperately to do it. After he got out of the army and came back to Kansas, I remember one day when he wore those boots to walk all the way out to Tuttle Creek Lake, a distance of over five miles each way. He left the army in May 2001 and many of the clothes and shoes he'd had were long gone, discarded, but his combat boots were still there when he died seven years later, and so were his uniforms. Despite the misery of his last year in the army, they must have held a sentimental attachment for him. Leif wasn't one to keep things unless he wanted them around.

I look at this photo of him in December 1992, when he was halfway through his senior year of high school, and see a very slender and rather brooding young man, though that wasn't his usual aspect at that time. What was he thinking?

In one of his online dating profiles, he was asked what he thought his best feature was. He answered, his lips, and I think you can see why in this photo, although since he isn't smiling, you can't see the cute dimples that charmed everyone. He's wearing two earrings in this photo. In those days, he enjoyed wearing earrings and necklaces.

There was still so much hope in 1992, for him, for all of us. He turned 18 a month later.
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The photo was taken in our old stone house.

Leif Garretson - Farewell to My Gentle Giant

Today is my birthday. This is the first birthday in my life that Leif will not be there, in 33 years. He only missed the three while he was in the army, far away. Today he will not be driving up in his Mazda RX-8, the car he loved. Instead, today I will witness the repossession of that beautiful car, and realize anew that I will never see him in it again.

Today I decided to post the reading I wrote and read for Leif's Memorial Service on April 29th, and add a photo that is probably the closest one I have of him looking like Adrian Paul in The Highlander. It was taken in 1992 or 1993, when we lived in Fort Buchanan, Puerto Rico. He was a junior in high school then.

Note the pierced ear and earring. He had his ear pierced by a neighbor, and wore an earring most of the time until he enlisted in the army in January 1998.

I mention the song, "Who Wants to Live Forever?" by Queen because that it is a song that held a lot of meaning for Leif. We had talked about it at length, and it was played as a part of his memorial service.

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Farewell to my Gentle Giant - My Reading at Leif’s Memorial Service

“Who Wants to Live Forever?” by Queen.

I can't listen to that sad, poignant song without crying. It is so quintessentially Leif. He loved the movie, “The Highlander,” and there was a time people said he looked like Adrian Paul. He loved swords, was a romantic at heart, and was devastated when loved died. He wanted to be a hero, wanted to be needed, wanted to be strong. Through so many disappointments and crises, he held his head high and did not let others see his pain and frustration. Finally, it was too much.

From the day he was born, Leif was, in a sense, larger than life. He was such a large newborn that the nurses at the hospital where he was born joked that I was supposed to raise my kids after I had them, and teased me about what college he was going to.

He dwarfed the other babies there. I thought it was a fluke, that he would slow down to the family average size, but Leif was always the tallest in his class, even taller than his first grade teacher, and was 6' 1" by the time he was only in 7th grade.

He also had a piercingly smart mind. His teacher at the Montessori school he attended in Nurnberg, Germany when he was two years old told me at a conference that initially she thought Leif paid no attention to anything, didn't join the circle time, and wasn't getting anything out of it because he was puttering around by himself. Then, when they did their learning assessments, she was amazed to discover that Leif knew everything that had been taught to the class while he was silently working on his own.

Leif had a nearly photographic memory, and an amazing auditory memory that allowed him to quote movie lines, not bother with note-taking in school, and recall even how people spoke, not just what they said.

He was a beautiful child, so beautiful that people would literally stop us on the street and tell us that, but I don't think he ever that sensed and would have been embarrassed it he had. By the time he was an adolescent, reaching puberty long before the other boys in his class, and spent years with a bad case of acne that he was teased about, he didn't believe he was attractive.

I don't know what kind of perspective a child growing up like that gains on the world, how it feels to be the giant, both physically and mentally, but I know he felt a kind of distance from others and an inner conflict that probably lasted all his life. He was only partly at home in the world of his peers, whether as a child, an adolescent, or an adult.

I called him my gentle giant, for with his size and enormous strength, it would have been all to easy for Leif to be a bully or use his body and mind to dominate or torment others, but he never did, not after the day in kindergarten when he lost his temper, threw toys at other children, and then was so mortified and ashamed of himself that he crawled under a table and would not come out. It was clear he had made a decision that would not happen again, that he would not hurt anyone.

Leif became in some ways a very traditional man From babyhood he loved vehicles of all kinds, and became an expert on cars and motorcycles, driving either as though he were in the Monte Carlo Grand Prix. He could never have enough gadgets and even built his own computer. He loved guns and was a certified armorer and a passionate believer in the Second Amendment.

He practiced martial arts and earned a black belt in judo, and loved fighting in medieval armor in the SCA, even wearing a 50 pound chain mail shirt he made himself. He loved movies about superheroes, men who saved the planet, the universe.
He joined the infantry to fight for his country, to defend his beloved Constitution.

Leif needed a focus for his intellect and his emotions, a defining purpose and a lofty goal, but unfortunately, he never really found them. He yearned achingly for someone to love, but a lasting relationship was not meant to be. He was deeply hurt, but he always forgave.

Yes, Leif wanted to be the hero, the gentle giant who would fight to defend his family, his friends, his country. His personal code was to never show weakness, and he kept his deep and towering emotions inside. He wanted to be needed, to be respected and loved.

Leif made many mistakes and he often lived life on the edge. He seemed to need and crave strong sensations, speed, danger, everything larger than life, as if life had to be over the top to be worthwhile, and yet he could patiently explain and teach almost any concept in a way the listener could understand, to an adult or a child.

I have been touched by the comments posted on my Remembering Leif blog, and I've asked one of Leif's friends for permission to quote her post because it captures some of how people saw him. Lorelei Siddall wrote:

“I met Leif in 2001 at the KSU Computer store where we were both employed. The computer store was a dim and humorless place at first, but then came Leif, a bright spot. I was intimidated at first since he was such a rambunctious person... full of ideas and interesting facts, philosophies, and an overwhelming presence that was almost bigger than the tiny alcove the store was tucked into.

“He quickly became the most interesting person in the store to talk to and work with, and soon my boyfriend at the time was coming up to the store specifically to talk to him as well. He spawned a sort of viral effect... whereas one person could meet him, then tell other people about this guy 'you just have to meet', and a sort of legend develops.

“I cherish the time I (had). You and your husband raised an amazing person, a person who has had a profound and global impact on the lives he had touched. He was a natural teacher, although this last lesson is the hardest one I think.”

It is indeed a hard one, one I don't want to learn. I don't want to learn to live without Leif, but I know I must. I don't want to miss his presence, his intellect, his humor, his dimpled smile, and most of all, his love.

As parents, we brought our sons into the world full of hope for them, and it is hard to accept that our dreams for Leif will never be realized, that he will never find his purpose and defeat his demons, that he will never have a family, that he will never be there for a birthday or a Christmas, never be there to teach us about the latest technology and set things up for us, never tease me about driving like an old lady.

It is hardest of all to know that our love was not enough to save him, that no matter what I tried, I could not help him be happy, or take away his pain. I knew it was there, but he would not admit to me how bad it was.

In many ways, he lived a life rich in experience, though it was also drowned in depression and loneliness. In many ways he engaged the world and wanted much from life, but he was also bitterly disappointed. In the end, he was overwhelmed.

I can't really talk to you about my deepest feelings about Leif, or I would be overwhelmed. I brought him into with world with hope and love; how I wish he would have had the hope I had for him. He was and always will be larger than life, my gentle giant, a tragic would-be hero, and I will be grateful for the 33 years of memories I have of him, the things he taught me, the bear hugs he gave me. I will miss him every day of my life.