I Will Remember Him Always

What will I remember about my Leif? Everything.

I will remember the beautiful child that none of us realized was as vulnerable as he was. I will remember the tall, strong boy and his wonderful smile. I will remember how frustrated he could get when he wasn't able to make his hands do what his mind envisioned.

I will remember the brilliant mind and incredible memory my son had, and how we recognized it when he was so young.

I will remember the soccer player who could boot the ball three-fourths of the way down the field.

I will remember the teen who was tall and slim, a black belt in judo, a guitar player, a singer. I will remember his as Kenicke in "Grease," with all the girls screaming for him. I will remember him graduating from high school.

I will remember the handsome young man who married when he was only twenty years old and the devastated man who nearly took his life when his marriage failed.

I will remember the proud, tall soldier who graduated from infantry basic training and who was proud of his ability with a machine gun, and the broken soldier who was medically retired from the army when he was only twenty-six years old.

I will remember the recovering man who graduated from college and was proud of his new car.

I remember how happy he was when he fell in love again, and how utterly devastated he was when she left him, how I was worried he would not survive.

I remember him on his motorcycles, the three different ones he owned in his lifetime, the ones he drove far too fast, and I remember him in the hospital after the accident he had.

I remember how he loved cars and his RX-7s and RX-8, especially the RX-8, how he drove like a race car driver, what he really always wanted to be.

I remember him helping us with the house and yard, helping us move. I remember him helping my mother with her computer.

I remember him playing chess with Madeleine and being silly with Aly.

I remember him being in debt and spending money foolishly.

I remember him being in dark moods and fearing for him.

I remember his guns, his music collection, his passion for technology and science fiction.

I remember his hugs, his smiles.

I remember how desperately he needed and searched for love.

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

I remember bringing him into the world full of hope for him. 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 again tease me about driving like an old lady.

it will always be hard to know and remember 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 remember that in many ways, he lived a life rich in experience, and we tried hard to provide some of those riches of experience, but I also remember that his life was drowned in depression and loneliness.In the end, he was overwhelmed.

I remember how he wanted to be a hero, wanted to be needed, wanted to be strong. I rememberhow, 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. I will remember how he bore that burden until the end.

Most of all, I remember how much I loved him. I love him still. I will always love him.
-----------------------------------

This photo was taken of Leif on Bellows Beach on the island of Oahu in Hawaii, one of his favorite places. It was in August 1989 when he was fourteen-and-a-half. It was then he was reading Orson Scott Card's "Ender's Game" with such deep and avid interest.

Leif and Football

During this fall season of football madness I'm reminded how little interest either of my sons had in the game. Even their dad didn't show much interest in it until we moved back to Manhattan, Kansas in 1992 and the Wildcats had a winning team. It seems that we always had a football, and periodically their dad would suggest that they go throw it around to each other, but that was about the extent of football at our house. We didn't watch games much, either.

Thus this is kind of a rare photo of Leif, with the green Nerf football. There were about three shots taken during that same afternoon, and I can only think of one other picture of him with a football in his hands. This picture was taken in our yard at Am Römer 9 in Sachsen bei Ansbach, Germany. You can tell it was already pretty chilly that October as Leif was wearing a warm jacket. He was four-and-a-half years old.

Even as a high school student and as an adult, Leif showed practically zero interest in football, and although he knew who some of the well-known players were, he couldn't really discuss the games, players or the season with any real background or enthusiasm.

I've often wondered why this was so. He was enthusiastic about soccer, but never showed any interest in playing football, basketball (despite his height), or baseball, or any other games involving a ball. Aside from soccer, about the only sports he participated in were discus and javelin throwing in junior high school, swimming (primarily because we taught him and took him to the pools and beaches). The two giant exceptions to this were judo, in which he earned his first degree black belt at the age of fourteen, and the sport of fighting in the SCA.

As an adult, it would have been good for him to have some physical sport outlet to help keep him in shape and raise his endorphins, but he preferred riding a motorcycle and playing computer and online video games. He did have a set of weights but I have no idea whether he used them.

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

Peter W. tells me that Leif used to play touch football in the yard across the street from us with some of the neighborhood kids when he was in junior high, but I have no memory of this whatsoever. I know he never went to games or talked about it. I know he played volleyball at times, but that and soccer are the only ball games I remember him playing.

Leif's Theme About Earning His Black Belt in Judo - Written in 1990 when he was 15 years old

Leif began taking judo at Fort Shafter in Hawaii when he was ten years old. He enjoyed it thoroughly and became profient quickly. When we moved to Fort Sheridan, Illinois in August 1986, we found that a sensei named Andy was teaching a class at Great Lakes Naval Center and Leif signed up.

Andy was an excellent sensei and Leif flourished in his class. Remember that during those four years that we lived at Fort Sheridan, when Leif was eleven to fifteen years old, he grew to be 6' 1" by the time he was only thirteen. He shot up like Jack's beanstalk while he was in Andy's class. A lot of maturity was required of him, because this was not a class of children. Most of the other students were adults and some were quite mature adults. There was no one under the age of thirteen and I can't remember and other kids.

Leif took judo seriously and it was a source of pride and accomplishment for him. On January 6, 1989, just three weeks before his fourteenth birthday, he took the test for his first degree black belt and passed. Later, when he had to write a theme for an English class at Antilles High School in Puerto Rico, he wrote about the experience of taking the test. He wrote it in October 1990. By that time he was fifteen.

Unfortunately, there weren't any classes we could find for Leif to continue judo in Puerto Rico and after two years there, when we moved back to Kansas, he felt so out of practice that he said he would be embarrassed to show up on a mat with a black belt on. I have always felt that if he had gone back to martial arts, it would have done him a world of good, for the physical activity, the companionship, the skills, and the sense of accomplishment. However, he got interested in other things like the SCA and role playing games, and dating, and he never returned to judo.

However, it always meant something special to him. Although he was ruthless about getting rid of clothes that no longer fit him, among his things we found his judo gi and his black belt, and of course the bokken (wooden practice sword) that Andy had given him as a special farewell gift.

The photos were ones I took of him during and after the test, holding his certificate. You can see in the one where he is the fellow "underneath" demonstrating a judo throw, that the other man is considerably older with graying hair. In judo, technique and balance are what's important, not age, gender or even superior strength.

Here is Leif's theme:
---------------------

"Shodan" by Alex Garretson 10/17/90

As I entered the gym it dawned on me that the time had come to face the challenge. I had been avoiding this event with good reason. For some time my judo sensei had been pestering me to take the test that would allow him to promote me to the rank of Shodan (first degree blackbelt) but I had declined.

The reason for my reluctance was a good one. I was still recovering from a very bad case of influenza that had caused me to miss some twelve days of school and over three weeks of judo. This put me at an incredible disadvantage for the test because I was very out of practice, having participated in only one ron dori (match) since my return. I still hadn't regained my strength, and with some of the competition I had to face I needed all the strength and speed I could get. To help compound the problem there was the fact that to fail a test for an advanced belt is a very embarrassing and degrading experience. But that night I felt like I was as ready as I could be.

The time had come. I approached the mat and informed my sensei that I was ready. He then called the class to attention and began the testing.

The actual test consisted of four basic parts, each very damanding to a certain aspect of judo. The first was the most physically demanding. For this portion I had to fight each of the members of the class (some more than once). These matches are very tiring and left me quite exhausted. For the second I had to perform a kata, a choreographed fight involving one tori, me, and eight yukis (dummies). This tested my style and technique (and my memory, for I was the only one present who had worked on the katas and I hadn't done that in months). The third was simple. I had to take a volunteer and demonstrate ten throws. I did quite well on this since I had been practicing these moves for a year and a half.

The final test was probably the most difficult. It required me to explain to the class what judo means to me both personally and philosophically. After explaining the meaning of judo and martial arts in general I was asked to run laps around the gym while they discussed with the sensei what I had told them and he asked them their opinions of my performance.

When I returned my sensei told me that I had earned my black belt and I was then repeatedly congratulated by my students and fellow classmates. When this was over my sensei lined us up, dismissed us and told us to pick up the mats. I then left exhausted and pondering the fact that this rank of shodan, which I had worked so hard for, in Japanese literally means beginner.

Leif at Judo - Fort Shafter, Hawaii - June 30, 1984 - Age 9

Leif first started judo at Fort Shafter, Hawaii when we were living in Honolulu. He loved it! His sensei, Curtis, was terrific with the boys. Leif stayed with judo from the summer of 1984 to the summer of 1990, in Hawaii and Illinois, until we moved to Puerto Rico where he didn't have the same opportunities. He earned his black belt in Illinois at the age of 14.

This photo was taken in a tent at Fort Shafter when they were having a competition. I have a lot of photos of Leif in action but I don't know whether the other boys in the photos would want them posted. I don't even know their names.

Part of this competition that really impressed Leif (and me) was the demonstration put on by some visiting senseis. One was a woman, not a very big one, who managed to lift Curtis (who was hefty) over her head and carry him around.

I always felt bad that Leif didn't continue with judo. He was very good at it and he enjoyed it. When we moved from Puerto Rico to Manhattan, Kansas, there was an active judo group at the university that Leif could have worked with. However, after two years without any practice, he felt self conscious about showing up with a black belt, thinking his skills were not at that level any longer. He could have gone and started back at a lower rank, but he didn't feel quite right about that, either. Ironically, the sensei at Kansas State University was the same one that I took judo from when I was thirteen and fourteen years old, but I never had the guts to compete and earn any rank.

Leif really needed to have some physical activity but he hadn't cultivated anything he enjoyed that he could do throughout his life, except judo, and that he had given up. I think he would have progressed in rank and been a fine teacher if he had gone back to it in 1992 or later.

Leif's 9th Birthday - Honolulu, Hawaii - January 28, 1984 - Age 9

No broken arm in this one. :) This was Leif's first birthday in Hawaii. He was in third grade at Red Hill Elementary School and had a couple of good friends, Michael, who was a terrific artist, and Joey, with whom he could play GI Joe stuff. He was growing up fast.

He was in a special, very small class for gifted underachieving boys. Leif never liked academics. He could just listen and get it all, and could see little reason to bother with exerting himself to prove it in written work. The young man who taught this special weekly class did a fantastic job with those boys. He had them designing board games and writing the rules for them . . . and they had to be actually playable.

Leif took judo classes for the first time, tried a pottery class, and enjoyed going to the beach. We went to many different beaches in Hawaii, but our favorite was Bellows Beach. Later I'll post some photos taken there.

I have to smile when I see this cake. Another example of my less than expert cake decorating ability, but I think I had some Leif help with this one, which features some kind of space ship, something he spent a lot of time drawing then. At that age, he liked doing this kind of thing. Remember the giant R2D2 cookie he made and decorated at about the same age, that I posted before.

You can see that he is growing and changing, not a little boy any more (though he was always tall), and there is a sort of seriousness and tentativeness about him.

Happy Birthday, Leif!

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.

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

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.

Leif earned black belt in judo

Just before his 14th birthday, Leif took the test to earn his blackbelt in judo. This photo is taken of him throwing a much older man during that test. Leif was very good at judo, and it's a shame he didn't stay with the practice of that martial art when we moved away from the Chicago area. It wasn't readily available in Puerto Rico and by the time we returned to the US mainland two years later, he felt his skills were rusty and he didn't feel right wearing that belt at the local dojo. He had a very good sensei (instructor) in the Chicago area, Andy, who gave Leif a special wooden practice sword. It was a special gift and meant a lot to Leif, but I don't know what happened to it. I didn't find it among his belongings.

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

We were living at Fort Sheridan, Illinois at the time. I later did find the bokken, which is the name for the wooden practice sword. As I recall, Andy had received it from another sensei and it had a special history for him as well.