He talked with his hands, too.

How fast the days, months and years pass. It's been nine and a half years since Leif died, and over four months since I posted anything on this blog. I think about it often, just as I think of him, but I don't want to post the same things again, and I want new photos, new to me, at least. Photos I either haven't seen before, or that I haven't seen is so long i can't remember them. Today I found one. This photo of him in his classy purple suit was taken at a wedding in January 1993. He was explaining something to someone, talking with his hands like I do.

He was a senior in high school then, with long dark hair which he usually wore in a ponytail. He wore earrings in those days. His ears had been pierced, at his request, by Jennifer, our neighbor in Puerto Rico. He was tall, slim, and had his first job with a call center in Manhattan, Kansas, a rotten sort of job that seemed to keep coming back to him in other iterations wherever he went. He was good at it, but it was mind-numbing and, to use his word, "sucked."

Leif was a natural teacher, not necessarily the academic kind, though I think he would have been good at that if he had the inclination, but at explaining almost anything in such a way that whoever was his listener would get what he was conmunicating. He had an incredible memory and remembered practically verbatim just about everything he heard and saw, even when he didn't appear to be paying attention. He absorbed information and ideas like a sponge absorbs water, and he was able to figure things out and provide solutions to problems. He loved to "hold forth" on topics that interested him, and would amaze any listeners with the depth of his knowledge and understanding on a wide variety of topics, particularly because he never seems to make any effort to acquire the knowledge.

He was passionate about the U.S. Constitution, politics, beer, and guns, hated cruelty to animals, and liked to play pool and computer games.

I wonder what he was talking about in this photo. I will just have to imagine it. 

Our Fourth Thanksgiving Without Leif

I am grateful today for my family and friends, for the life I have, for my home and my country, and to be fortunate to have enough to live well. I am thankful for my husband and best friend, my sons and my grandchildren, especially.

Today is our fourth Thanksgiving without Leif, a holiday he shared with us most of the years of his life. It will never seen right or complete without him, and even with the gratitude I feel there will always be sadness that he is not with us.

I am thankful he was our son, is our son, that we had him for 33 years. It's hard to say that and not add, "but it was not enough." I can't do it. It wasn't enough. I miss him.

Like all parents who have lived through the death of a beloved child, that longing never goes away. After a time, for many hours, many days, the pain subsides. Life seems normal, until something opens the door and lets the longing and sadness out.

Holidays are such a mixed blessing. They are still a time to celebrate, to be thankful, to enjoy our families and friends. They are still a time for traditions and love. They are still a time to treasure.

But they will always be bittersweet, tinged with loss.

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This photo of Leif was taken when we lived in Japan, probably in 1981 when he was six years old. The USA patch on his blazer is so appropriate. He grew up to be passionate about his country, served it in the army, studied its Constitution at the university. The thoughtful pose is appropriate, too. When Leif was young, he wasn't a talker like his brother. He was a quiet one, a thinker, and we usually didn't know what was going on in his bright mind. Later, once Peter A. left home, the floodgates opened and he began to talk and talk and talk, as though he had stored it up for the opportunity when he didn't have to "compete" for the "floor," but I also think during those years, when he was close to his brother, he spent a lot of time carefully listening, learning and absorbing what his brother (and the rest of us) were saying.

Leif had an incredible memory for just about everything he heard, and a special talent for being able to multitask, even as a very small child, where he appeared to be absorbed in doing something on his own but was very intently also listening to everything that was going on around him. Later, after he had thought about it and formed his own ideas, he could not only "parrot" back just about word for word what he had heard, even imitating the inflection of the speaker, but explain it accurately and add his own conclusions or further thoughts.

This photo must have been taken around or on Thanksgiving, I think, because I don't have Christmas photos of him wearing this blazer. We always took Christmas photos, but for some reason, rarely or if ever took photos at Thanksgiving. Peter W. says he took this picture. Perhaps he did, but it looks like a professional print to me, and I don't think he ever posed any of us when he took photos. Leif's elbow is resting on what appears to be an upholstered stool, and that curled fist under the chin, while beautiful in this photo, is not a typical pose for Leif. We both love this picture, and it's one of few we have framed and displayed in our house.

While I was writing this, Peter W. came into my office and said he wished we could go back to that time, the time of the photo, but that he didn't know what we could have done differently to help Leif find a better outcome in his life.

That's the trouble. No matter how often we go over it all in our minds, there's no resolution. We can't go back, and if we did, how would we do things differently? We will never know. That's one of the things that continues to eat away at people like us, even on this day of celebration.

Yet we will celebrate, and we will be thankful, just not with unalloyed joy.

Thinking of Leif

Last week we went to the Sarasota Classic Car Museum. We couldn't help but say repeatedly how much Leif would have enjoyed seeing those cars, some truly exotic ones he would have appreciated, like a Maserati, and this DiTomaso Pantera. I'd never seen on of these before, but I remember Leif talking about them. Beautiful sports cars will always be associated with Leif in our minds. I'll never see one without wishing I could share the experience with him.

Every once in awhile I see a silver RX-8 on a road near here and I do a double-take. My subconscious brain can't help but wonder if it's Leif, even though my conscious mind knows it can't be.

The associations in our minds linger on. They don't sever or go away when someone dies.

Today Leif has been dead for three years and three months. I still miss him every day.

Will They Remember Him?

Leif's nieces and nephew found him irresistible. They would climb all over him, touch his beard, play with him, act silly, make cell phone videos together, play chess together, and generally horse around. He was good with the kids, gentle and tolerant, and amused, my gentle giant. I wondered how he felt about being with them, whether he wished he had children of his own to go home to, though he never really voiced that sentiment.

I wonder, now, whether they will really remember him. I know they will remember that he lived, that they had an uncle that died, but they were so young when he left them that I imagine they will only remember him from photos or stories we tell.

I have a lot of photos of him with them, but I don't post photos of them online. This one is an exception because it was taken six and a half years ago and their faces aren't shown. That night in July 2004, all three of them were climbing all over him and having a great time. He was pretending to roar and flex his muscles like some kind of giant and they loved it. I loved watching it. That was a happy evening with all of us together, and Leif seemed relaxed and happy. It's a good memory.

The photo was taken in our old stone house in Manhattan, Kansas. Now neither Leif nor the house is still on this earth.

Forever Changed

It is proving far harder than I thought it would be to give up writing this blog regularly. I knew I had a lot of emotion invested in it, and I thought I was ready to let it go, but now that I am at that point, I am finding it to be heart wrenching. I know I am not forgetting Leif or really letting him go, but in some deep emotional way it feels as though I am abandoning him, and that makes me terribly sad. It feels like the day of his memorial service, like when it was over and we all walked away from his niche at the cemetery leaving him behind in the place of no life or future. I know that I will never forget him, will think of him every day of my life, but who else will?

Of the 630 posts I've written in the past two years, this is one of the hardest to write, and certainly the hardest one to publish, to click that little "button" that says, "Publish," because it marks an end to an emotional journey that really has no end, and so is hard to give up. It has meant a lot to me to be able to tell Leif's story and to write about my feelings.

Memory is fleeting. Life goes on. I know that's as it should be, but it is also sad. And yet, I will be able to come back here to visit, just as I can go to the cemetery, though as Peter always points out, Leif is not there. It's not really visiting HIM. It's visiting memory and love. It's a kind of symbolic pilgrimage. Although we are often sad at cemeteries, I don't see them as frightening or sad places. They are monuments to love and memory just as this blog is.

I think of my father and I wonder who remembers him and how often they think of him. Like Leif, he lived. He had a life and contributed to the world. At least he left four children behind who, though some were too young to remember much, were a part of him that lived on. There is no blog about his life, no book, and no burial place. There is no place of pilgrimage except in my mind.

Leif had no children. What survives but memory? And how long will that survive? Not long for most people, I suspect, except if some reminder evokes a thought of him. This blog was my way to keep that memory alive, though of course I had no idea who would read it or if anyone but Peter and I would. That didn't matter so much as the preservation and the continuance, and now that I am ending it, it feels like I am again walking away and leaving him behind in that place of no life or future, which of course is what death is, and what we don't want to face.

I have always felt emotions deeply and strongly, and Leif's death has brought me torrents of tears and sadness, and I can say, like the Tin Woodman in the "Wizard of Oz," "Now I know I have a heart because it is breaking."

Yesterday I saw another reference to that saying, "When life gives you lemons, make lemonade." Like many sayings and platitudes, it has a valuable message, but some lemons are beyond the possibility of lemonade. Some things life dishes out you just have to endure and survive. How does one "make lemonade" out of the suicide death of a cherished son?

When Leif died, he not only erased his future and his pain, but he changed our lives forever, not only our lives, but the lives of his family and friends, and all who knew him. For some of them, the changes were likely temporary without live-changing consequences, but for those who loved him, the changes are not only enormous and emotionally wrenching, they are quite literally life changing.

There are so many things we will not do with Leif or because of Leif now. We will never have grandchildren from him. He will not be there to help us or see us through our old age. We will not have the joy of his company. Our focus and identity is changed forever. Our emotions will never be the same, and there will always be the undercurrent of sadness, loss and grief no matter what else our future holds. This is not the retirement and old age we envisioned for ourselves, but what it now is has in part been created by Leif's act.

We must not forget, though, all the wonderful ways in which our lives were changed by having him as our son, the years we did enjoy his company, his help, his laughter, his intellect, his love.

We must not forget all the things we did with him, all the experiences of the thirty-three years of his life.

I have chosen the last images of the main blog to be all of Leif on beaches. Somehow, even though he seldom actually went to the beach once he moved to Florida (because even the beach isn't as attractive when you go alone), I will always associate Leif with beaches.

Partly this is because as our sons were growing up, we planned a beach vacation every year. Leif had wonderful times on beaches in so many places; Virginia, South Carolina, Florida, California, Mexico, Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands, Japan, Hawaii, Thailand, Italy, France, England, Texas and more places I can't think of to name right now. I remember him glorying in the waves when he was just a tiny tot, and how he loved sailing in the British Virgin Islands and SCUBA diving in Puerto Rico. Somehow for me, beaches will always be associated with Leif's happiness, the places he felt alive and free . . . beaches and motorcycles and cars.

I wish I could have a picture in my mind of Leif walking on a sunset beach with someone he truly loved who was the guardian of his heart that he so deeply desired. That would be the photo I would like to cherish for the rest of my life, but that does not exist and is a big part of the reason he is no longer here.

So, I will have to keep in my mind a picture of my tall lonely son alone on a sunset beach, as though the sun of his life was setting, and remember the beauty that once was.

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The photo was taken by Peter W. Garretson in Puerto Rico in 1992. Leif was 17 years old. Who would have thought, seeing that tall, handsome young man, that half his life was already over?

At this time, the blog has 630 posts, 977 photos, and has been visited 10,127 times since May 15, 2008.

Memories of Leif at Siesta Key Beach

So many places we go are associated with memories of Leif. Sometimes it just feels good to remember them. Other times, the sense of loss is painful.

Today we went to Siesta Key Beach just before sunset and stayed until the sun was down and it was dark. It's a lovely time to be there and we were remembering the last time Leif joined us there. We were at the beach with Peter A. and his family, and Leif road his motorcycle down to join us. He gave Darlene a ride on the cycle and they told me that when I wasn't there to see, he did wheelies in the parking lot. He was enjoying riding so much then.

It was good to remember him having a good time, being with all of us.

How I wish he could have ridden his cycle down again today.

Rambling Memories

There are nights when I don't know what to write, when my mind seems to go off in too many different directions, or when I can't find the right photo to go with what I want to say. I started out looking at more of the things Leif wrote in high school and college, and wishing I had more of them, but realized that wasn't really what was on my mind.

I thought this evening about how many years of my life were influenced by Leif; eighteen years raising him to adulthood, and another two while he was still living at home and going to college before he moved out to live with Nikko and eventually get married in October 1995 at the age of twenty. I thought about all the experiences we had together, how I taught him, and eventually, how he taught me. I thought about the things he loved, and the things he hated. I thought about all the times we took him on trips, both as a child and as an adult, and what good company he could be, and usually was . . . unless he was in one of his uncommunicative moods, but luckily those were not frequent.

I thought about all the talents he had that he never had the desire to pursue and all the ideas he had and loved to talk about. I thought about how he would spend hours trying to make a report or paper as short and concise as possible so that it would only barely fulfill the length requirements set by the professor or teacher, not because he lacked the information or knowledge to make it longer but because he didn't want to be verbose. He could have been done with them far quicker if he hadn't continued to condense and condense.

I thought about tutoring him in algebra, Spanish and German, the first two in both high school and college, because he was used to things coming easily to him that he hated to study and didn't really know how.

I thought about listening to him play his electric guitars, trying to emulate the sounds of his favorite guitarists.

I thought about him singing the part of Kenicke in "Grease" with all the girls going wild.

I remember the day he brought me my Nokia cell phone in a cute little bag and proceeded to set it up for me. And the time he got my mother her first cell phone (with my financial help) and surprised her with it for Christmas,

There are so many memories, thirty-three years of them, mostly good, some frustrating, some dismaying, but all-in-all, how much he enriched our lives (not financially, but emotionally and intellectually), and even with much humor and fun. I look around this room alone and see the office furniture that he and Peter W. put together for me, the computer he left behind, the monitor he set up for me, his photo albums, the flag case from Melissa with his casket flag and military awards, the book he posed for the cover for, and so much more.

Our lives were intertwined, as all close families are, and even now that he is gone, there is no day, no part of a day, that we don't think of him.

I wonder if he had any idea how important he was to us, how deep an impact he had on our lives, what a tremendous hole his death has left, how much we will always love him. Surely he could not have known that and left us like that . . . or was his life just too miserable to endure despite it? I cry for him, that it was so.
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This photo of Leif was taken at a lake in Japan in 1980 when he was five 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.

Nostalgia, Remembrance, Gratitude, Wishing

Finding Leif's photo albums, the two he actually put together (as opposed to a bunch of loose photos from his army days, mostly of people we don't know) not only brings back a lot of memories but shows me new things about Leif and what he chose to photograph. Even as a young teen he was photographing himself, though not as much as he did in the last few years of his life. I don't know for sure whether he placed his camera on something and used the timer on these two or whether he had someone there with him who took them, but I'm pretty sure neither Peter W. nor I took them, or even saw them before.

These were taken the the back yard of our house (army quarters) in Puerto Rico, and I probably should have known about them and scanned them to post when I was writing about that house and yard. Now they'll have to stand on their own.

These were taken around February 1991, or at least that's when the roll of film was developed, so Leif was sixteen years old in these photos. In the one where he is far from the camera, it looks like he is swinging the machete he used to help keep the jungle under control around there. In the one where he is posing leaning back against a palm tree, you can see the same outfit closer up. He dressed in fashion and in fashion fads in those days, with his purple shirt and deliberately ragged jeans, the kind with narrow ankles.

Tonight Peter W. and I were having dinner in Brandon and he said he felt very nostalgic for all the times we have shared, and that he wondered whether we would ever have dinner in Brandon without remembering the times we did so with Leif. I said I didn't think so, and that I think of him in every room of our house. Even the car we were driving was hand-picked for us by Leif. We talked about the years and times in so many places and how fortunate we were to have each other and our sons. He said that when we are young, we don't really appreciate what we have because we are so busy trying to get ahead, make a secure future for our family and ourselves, and that he wishes we could go back and do it over.

I suppose in a sense we don't really appreciate everyday life because it is everyday. We don't know how special it is until it's gone. I can share the nostalgia with him, and and looking at photos of Leif or photos he took, and thinking about all this every day for the blog certainly brings home to me how much we had and what a great loss we have suffered. Yet we are still fortunate to have had so many good years, to have had two brilliant and handsome sons, to have each other, to have seen so much of the world.

In another sense, though, I did know how good I had it, how special our lives were. That's why I took so many pictures, trying to save all those memories, trying to preserve something of those feelings, and I am so immensely grateful not only for the experiences and the family, but for the photos and the memories.

It is both joyous and sad to remember it all, joyous because it was so good, sad because Leif is gone. Tonight Peter said it still doesn't seem real or possible that he's dead. We know it is true, but it seems as though it just can't be so.

I wish, oh how I wish, he were still here!

Leif's Fifth Home - Sagamihara, Japan - Summer 1980 to Summer 1983

With all the photos I've posted of Leif in Japan and all I've written about life there with him, it's hard to believe that I can't find a single photo of the quarters we lived in there. There were so many fascinating things to photograph in Japan, and so many interesting people, but our quarters were pretty dull and apparently I didn't think they were worth a photo. This is the closest thing I've found and it only shows a little bit of the front of the building. I posted a cropped version of this photo when I was writing about Halloween, since this one was taken of the "ghost" that Peter A. and Leif were trying to scare people with on Halloween in 1982. Leif is on the roof over the front door area dangling the ghost over trick-or-treaters and he and Peter A. (wth their dad's help) were making plenty of scary noises. Of course, it was a lot darker than this photo shows.

The townhouse type quarters were in the Sagamihara Army Family Housing Area in Sagamihara, Japan. Our building was the last one, farthest away from the entry gate, all the way around by the back gate. There were three townhouse sets of quarters in a row and we were in the middle unit. The front door opened into the living room, with a stairway going up to the second floor right ahead of the doorway. We had a dining room and a kitchen also on the first floor, and four bedrooms on the second floor. One was very tiny, scarcely big enough for even a bed, and I had some things stored in there along with our digital keyboard that we would go in and play.

It was all very simply furnished with quartermaster furniture (belonged to the army, for you civilians) and we hadn't shipped much over to Japan as there is a weight limit that controls how much can be shipped. However, we had a great time acquiring things during our three years in Japan . . . all of us. The boys enjoyed the Japanese toys, our computer, which we got in 1982, and we got some lovely pieces of porcelain, prints, and rugs.

Our set of quarters faced a large grass area as we were set back off the street. There was another set of four quarters along on side, and the other side had a small wooded area, plenty of space for the neighborhood kids to play.

Behind our house was the fence dividing our American housing area from part of the Japanese residential area. We didn't have any way through the fence or know any of the Japanese on the other side, but there was one family named Tanaka who had two boys that were roughly the same ages as our sons. Once in awhile the Tanaka boys would climb over the fence and come to visit. It was always a challenge because they didn't speak English and our sons didn't speak Japanese, and my Japanese was extremely rudimentary, but they had fun. The older Tanaka boy could solve the Rubik's Cube amazingly fast, something we never learned.

The three years in Japan were a wonderful time for us, as a family, culturally, and in many other ways.

While we were there, Leif learned to ride a bike, played t-ball and soccer, completed kindergarten, first and second grade at the John O, Arnn Elementary School, was in his first stage production, went to Thailand and Hong Kong, did a lot of sightseeing and hiking, and was in his first earthquakes. His best friends were Anil and Atul Phull.

One thing that happened that showed me his truly amazing memory was then when he was in only first grade, his class took a field trip to a silk worm farm. It was a LONG trip with many, many turns on small Japanese roads. He memorized the entire route and was able to tell me exactly how to get there.

Life in Japan had a profound influence on both our sons which lasted all Leif's life.

Leif - City of Refuge, Hawaii - July 1980 - Age 5

It still amazes me, and probably will for the rest of my life, how most of the time I can talk about Leif and his life easily and then something unexpected will trigger a bout of sadness and tears. Today, Peter W. had a Transformers movie on television. I was busy and wasn't watching it, but then I heard the words "Optimus Prime." I said, "Leif had an Optimus Prime transformer toy when we were in Japan, and had kept it. It was with all Leif's Japanese toys that he gave to his nephew, Marcus. I had saved them in case Leif had a little boy to give them to someday."

It was that last sentence that brought the sadness and tears. I was never one of those mothers who would pressure her children into having kids so I could have grandchildren. I firmly believe that people should only have children if they really want them, not for someone else. However, until this moment I never realized how much I had, in my heart, wanted those grandchildren, and counted on them. Now I feel the loss of the grandchildren I never had, Leif's children who will never live. I realize all the things I collected or saved for them, the photos, Leif's toys, the things from his childhood, his school records and achievements, the books I bought for them. I even have his baby teeth. Somewhere in my mind I was counting on him having at least one child, even though he had protested nearly all his adult life that he didn't want children. I was preparing for them just as I had with Peter Anthony.

It was hard to imagine Leif as a parent for most of his adult life. Not only were his lifestyle and spending habits unlikely to mesh well with responsible fatherhood, but he hadn't shown a real affinity for kids until the last years of his life, when he clearly enjoyed being with his nieces and nephew and some of his friends' children, and came to love J's little girl when he was with her. It wasn't until he was over 30 when he wistfully said one evening at dinner at our house that he used to think he didn't want children but now he felt he did and might not ever have them. In one of his online dating profiles, he said he was interested in a relationship with a woman young enough to have children, so I know that was something he was looking forward to. I wonder still whether having a child depending upon him might have given him the purpose he so badly needed, and some of the love he sought.

And for my part, today I realized that I had far more invested in the children I hoped he would have than I had ever thought. I realized how sad I am that I will never hold them, play with them, read to them, teach them, take them on trips or to Disney World, all the wonderful things I am fortunate to be able to do with Peter Anthony's beautiful children. I am so grateful for them, but I would so have loved to have a grandchild from Leif, not only for the relationship with me, with us, but someone to carry on Leif's name, to remember him, to value him, to have someone to give all the memories of his life, his special things like his high school class ring, his swords, his bokken, his military uniforms and boots.

He would have had beautiful children, beautiful and brilliant, like he was. They would have enjoyed their cousins.

Who will remember him when I am gone? Half of my children are gone. Half of my grandchildren will never be.

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This photo of Leif was taken at the City of Refuge on the Big Island of Hawaii in July 1980 when Leif was five-and-a-half years old.

Thankful for Comfort, Thankful for Love

Going back over Leif's memorial services brought back so many sad memories but also brought a chance to look at the ceremonies again and really hear all the words and ponder them, think again about why we said them, about a more distilled view of who Leif was. Each day when I watched a video, I cried . . . and I smiled. I cried for our loss, for Leif's loss, for all the unhappy days of missing him. I smiled at the memories of his life, the people who cared about him, the years we shared together.

Last night Peter and I went to the German American Club May Dance. Peter was beaming, smiling and happy, the happiest I've seen him since before Leif died. It was so wonderful to see him like that, enjoying life, really having a great time, for the first time in 399 days. We've had moments, even hours, of happiness here and there since Leif died, but not this kind of joy, and I was happy basking in his smiles.

I know it's only a start, and that there will still be many hours and days of sadness. There is still much to face about Leif's life and death, and still a lifetime to miss him, but it's good to know that I can look forward to joy on Peter's face again, too.

It was so different than the New Year's dance we went to, the one at which this photo was taken. We were feeling so fragile, so vulnerable, so unready to face a new year without Leif and yet still wishing we could face it with hope. We danced, but there were tears in my eyes several times. We went outside into the night to look at the stars and talk about Leif. We closed our eyes and danced, holding our grief between us in our arms.

It's so important that we have each other for comfort. I can't even imagine how much harder it would be to live through this without Peter and the comfort of his love. The importance of our relationship to us makes me realize all the more how hard Leif's loneliness and need for the comfort of love was for him. I am thankful I have not had to live my life alone.

Leif's Memorial Service at St. Petersburg Unitarian Universalist Church - April 29, 2008 -Memories of Alex by his Father, Peter W. Garretson(Video)

When we planned Leif's memorial services, his father wasn't sure he wanted to stand up in front of those attending and express his feelings. It is a very daunting thing to do as a bereaved parent. So, I didn't put him on the format program for the Celebration of Life ceremony at the St. Petersburg Unitarian Universalist Church. Everyone who attended was invited to speak during the candle lighting part of the ceremony, if they wished, and two people who weren't scheduled to speak did so, Peter W., Leif's father, and Leif's best friend, Michael Mauldin. The camera was on a tripod and pointed at the pulpit, so it caught Peter W.'s speech, but Michael spoke down in front of the pews and although his voice was picked up by the camera, he was not. Both had very personal and touching things to say. I posted a photo of Michael speaking when I was doing all the still photos of the ceremonies, but I won't post the video, which shows and empty pulpit with Michael's voice off to the side. I wish we had video of him, too.

The speakers were Rev. Misha, who gave a homily about Leif's life, and Darlene, who read the Twenty-Third Psalm. Unfortunately, the video ran out in the middle of Rev. Mishra's homily and so we have lost that portion as well as Darlene's reading. I have posted photos of them.

Rev. Mishra never met Leif, but he met with us for several hours to learn about his life and wrote and delivered a very honest and open account of his life and death. That was what we wanted, truthfulness, not eulogies, and we were glad for his forthrightness and his kindness to us.

I had never had to plan a memorial service before and I learned a lot planning and carrying these out. I had been to many funerals that seemed to have so little to do with the deceased and so much to do with Christian dogma, and they left me feeling as though the person we were there to remember and honor was almost left out. There was one funeral of a very dear friend who planned her own service that was wonderful, uplifting, truthful and beautiful, and it featured friends and family talking about her and her life. It was so wonderfully true to Betty that although we were all sad to have lost her, we were enriched by that service. The circumstances of Leif's death were tragic and terrible, and his adult life had much less that was happy and uplifting in it, but I wanted the memorials for him to be just as truthful about who he was and why and how he died. I wanted music that represented him and our feelings. I wanted readings that did the same. I think we were successful.

A memorial service is for those left behind. It is supposed to help them achieve some closure and say goodbye. I can't speak for the others who came, though I did hear from them that they felt the services were right for Leif, but although I am glad we had them, glad for every spoken word, glad for the flag, glad he received military honors, none of that represented closure to me, and I still cannot really say goodbye. I some sense, I am trying to keep him alive with this blog. I know in reality that isnt possible, but I am not ready to let him go.

The church ceremony concluded with a unison reading of the Christina Rosseti poem, "Remember," the benediction and extinguishing of the flaming chalice, and the piano music of "Think of Me" from "Phantom of the Opera" by Andrew Lloyd Webber, played by Dorothy Byrne.
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"Remember" by Christina Rosseti

Remember me when I am gone away,
Gone far away into the silent land;
When you can no more hold me by the hand,
Nor I half turn to go, yet turning stay.
Remember me when no more day by day
You tell me of our future that you plann'd:
Only remember me; you understand
It will be late to counsel then or pray.
Yet if you should forget me for a while
And afterwards remember, do not grieve:
For if the darkness and corruption leave
A vestige of the thoughts that once I had,
Better by far you should forget and smile
Than that you should remember and be sad.

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Thank you for celebrating Leif's life with us
May we all walk in the light
And find joy in the life we live.
For his sake, for our sakes,
May we all find friendship, purpose,
And above all, love.

All I Really Wanted in This World - Peter W., Peter A. & Leif - Hong Kong - April 1983 - Age 8

I was brought up to be a career woman, an unusual thing in the 1950s and early 1960s. I had planned to have a PhD before I considered marriage. It was a big surprise to me when I fell in love and married at 18 and an even bigger surprise when I found myself desperately wanting to have children. Peter W. was and is my romantic sweetheart. He's my best friend, and he has been a wonderful father. Leif used to say that we (Peter and I) "won the marriage lottery" and he was right.

Peter Anthony is my Christmas baby, born December 25, 1968. He was a bright, fascinating, creatively gifted child, questioning and questing all of his life. He was outgoing, gregarious, like his father, and not intimidated by people at all.

Leif was brilliant, analytical, athletic, tall from the beginning, and inherited my shyness and reticence. Once he knew you, he was a blast, but until then, he would hang back and quietly assess the situation.

I loved being their mother. I loved being Peter's wife, and I still do. They were all I really wanted out of life. As I've written, all the rest was gravy. I had a lot of "gravy," travel, living in interesting places around the world, the chance for meaningful work, the chance to write, friends. I had a close, supportive and loving family.

This blog is about Leif, about his life and our love for him and what his loss means to us. Although it is a good picture of those things, in order to stay focused it leaves out the rest of our lives, and this picture is meant to restore just a little perspective.

Although Leif is gone and I will probably never get over that; although the sadness and grief is there, we also have memories we treasure, of him, of his brother, of our family's past. We are glad he was part of our lives for 33 years. I would never give that up.

And I will also remember and be thankful that I still have Peter W. and Peter Anthony. I still have the future with them. I have three beautiful, intelligent, healthy grandchildren. I still have my loving, supportive family. I am thankful I still have much of what I really wanted in this world. That doesn't take away the hurt of losing Leif, but it does make life worth living. It does make life good. I don't ever want to lose sight of what I have in my sadness over Leif's death.

That is one of the paradoxes of life. We can be happy and sad at virtually the same time.

The Passing of Time - The Shaping of a Life - Leif - Japan - October 1982 - Age 7

I've been thinking again tonight about time, about how we measure time, our human perception of it and how it shapes our thinking. How time exists without human thought, on earth measured in days, months, years dependent upon the motion of the earth and moon, but the meaning of those measurements is assigned only by us. Some anniversaries are happy occasions. Some are sad or even tragic. We are approaching the first anniversary of Leif's death, and the details are still so raw and fresh in my mind. How much of the truth do I tell? How many details? Why is that anniversary so significant? Why is marking one year, and then another, so fraught with emotion? It's just another day . . . and yet that day signifies that a boundary, an emotional and temporal boundary, has been crossed.

Remember how we looked forward to birthdays when we were children, anxious to grow another year older, craving the status we thought came with being older and more mature, the added privileges. Remember as parents how we celebrated our children's birthdays, made the day special and memorable with parties, gifts, friends, photos. How different it is to anticipate the arrival of the anniversary of a loved one's death. To know you've been without that person for a year. There are no traditions to make those anniversaries unless we make our own.

In 16 days, that anniversary will arrive, sixteen days until we've been a whole year without Leif. Yet he was such a Colossus in our lives that he towers over us still. There isn't a day we don't talk about him, think about him, wish we had him back. Not a day we don't remember some detail of his life, many details of it, not a day I don't picture him walking in my door. Not a day I don't remember his hugs, his voice, his laugh.

When I started this blog nearly a year ago, I said it was to remember the good times. That was what I thought I was going to do and I have, in words and pictures, but that was not enough, and was not true to his life and death. I've also bared my feelings, revealed my grief, and even tried to let Leif's words speak for him. I can't pretend that memories are all good, or that they are enough to sustain me or relieve the sadness. It's not enough to have memories. It's not enough to have photos. It's not enough to have a few paltry keepsakes, or to have some of his gadgets. None of it fills the hole his death made in our lives.

And yet, that is all we have, that and our love, with nowhere to put it, so we must be grateful for every photo, every memory, each a gift to preserve his life as long as we can see them and remember. Every day of his life was a gift. Leif lived. Thirty-three years, far too short, and without the measure of happiness he deserved. But he lived, and I want his memory to go on.

So where does this blog go from here? For how long? I feel as though on the coming anniversaries of his death and memorial services, I need to tell those stories, the ones I couldn't tell last year. And after that? Memories are still with me, so for a time, the blog will go on, past the first year, as long as I can. Will the day come when I have no more to say? Will the day come when I forget the sound of his voice? Will the day come when I no longer see his smile? Will the day come when I can let go?
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The photo above was taken somewhere in Japan in October 1982. Leif was seven years old. He always loved climbing in trees.

A Trip Down Memory Lane in Honor of Leif's Birthday

How can you celebrate the birthday of someone who is dead? And how can you not remember and mark the day? Today, Leif's first birthday since he died, I wanted to honor and remember him. Since he couldn't come to visit us, I wanted to go to him. Visiting him is a poor term. I know there are people who derive comfort from visiting their deceased loved ones at a cemetery, but for me, it isn't a comfort. It's a way of honoring a memory, of going to the only place where any of my son's physical remains on earth still exist. I know that Leif isn't there, but it's a symbol, a place that has ceremonial and emotional connections.

But to just go to the cemetery is too sad.

The first time we came to the Tampa Bay area, on one of our many trips to Florida looking for the place we wanted to move, we stayed in a hotel in Clearwater. It was our first glimpse of the Gulf and the beaches on that side of Florida, too. We came during KSU's Spring Break in March 2002. Leif was so happy to have a spring break in warm Florida and get out of the raw, cold March weather in Kansas. Undoubtedly, he would have had a better time if he had been able to go with a wife or girlfriend, or with friends his own age rather than with his parents, but he was happy to go and we were happy to take him, as we had always taken him on those trips.

He didn't have much money as a student, but he saved up enough so that he could rent a white Mustang convertible for a day. He spent the day driving all over the bay area, and as I've written before, particularly loved driving over the Sunshine Skyway Bridge. We drove over that today, too, on our way down the memory lane, and thought of him and how he loved going over it on his motorcycle.

That evening, in March 2002, he drove us to dinner at Guppy's on the Beach in Indian Rocks Beach, south of Clearwater. I remember being in the back seat of the convertible with the cool evening wind blowing my hair all over the place, and Leif sounding so happy.

I don't remember how we found out about Guppy's, but later that week when we met my friend Liz, she said that was one of her family's favorites and she was so pleased we had found it.

We had a great dinner that evening with Leif. We sat outside on the porch, just as we did today. The food and animated conversation were excellent. It was there that Leif introduced us to Newcastle beer. I had Guppy's terrific "Angels on Horseback," broiled oysters topped with Applewood smoked bacon. Leif liked those, too. I think he and Peter had tuna.

After dinner, we walked on Bellaire Beach at sundown. You can see photos of Leif in the Mustang and on Bellaire Beach in this post. I don't think we took any photos of us at Guppy's.

We had all three talked about going back to Guppy's ever since then, and somehow, nearly seven years have gone by and we never did. I don't know whether Leif ever got back there after he moved to the bay area in March 2005, but we didn't, because it was so far north of where we now live, about a 60 mile drive, too long just to go to dinner.

But today, I wanted to visit Leif's grave (in reality it's a niche, but do you say you are visiting a niche?) on his birthday, and it is only ten miles from Guppy's. I thought it would be good to drive north on Gulf Blvd. and remember what we saw in 2002, remember what Leif experienced, have lunch at Guppy's, before going to his grave.

It's amazing how much came back to us, even seven years later, landmarks, streets. I could imagine Leif driving there, in the white Mustang, maybe, if he went later, in his silver RX8. Our waiter took a photo of us. When we were there with Leif, we sat at a table directly behind where I'm standing. It was evening, and the place was full of people enjoying the cool evening air and delicious food.

After lunch, we took a quick look at the beach across the street, and a kind man from New York offered to take our picture. I am wearing the double-headed battleaxe necklace I brought Leif from Greece, the one I've written about before, in his honor. When we walked back across the street to our car in the Guppy's lot, I did a double take. Parked next to our car was a silver Mazda that, from the back end, looked just like Leif's RX8. It turned out to be a Mazda 6 sedan, but for that one moment, it seemed uncannily as though he had driven up and parked beside us.

We had a good time reminiscing about the good times, just wishing that life would have been good for Leif after that.

After lunch we went to the cemetery, where I sobbed my heart out for half an hour, pressed against his stone. No matter how I try, I still cannot fathom why he is not here. Most of the time each day, I function, but the tears come at most unexpected moments and when I look in the mirror, I can see that I have changed. There is a different and sadder look in my eyes. An older look.

I was thinking how people say you shouldn't put all your eggs in one basket, but when it comes to family, there is only one. Only one basket, and that's where the eggs belong, but no matter how hard you try to protect them, you really can't. When one breaks, your heart breaks with it.

It was a bittersweet day. Sweet memories, sad memories, a good time with Peter, a sad time with him, together on memory lane, together in the loss of our son, together, on his birthday.

Missing Leif for Nine Months

Today it is nine months since we found Leif's lifeless body in his apartment and we are no closer to answers about why it happened or how. We miss him terribly and never know what will trigger tears. People say to live in the memories and hope only good ones will be left, but how could the memory of his death be wiped out? It invades the good memories, colors our lives with sadness. There is so much lost, and none of it fades away. No matter how many times I go over all the difficulties and problems he had, all the disappointments, even knowing he had been suicidal in 2001, I still can't really fathom it.

People say there must have been some indication, but men don't show it. They hide it. They put up a good front. My father did. Others who have had a male member of the family say those men did, too, gave no indication of what they were planning. Did things like telling their wives they were going to work and instead went into the basement and hung themselves. Do they become in some way detached? Do they look at it like some kind of ledger sheet, deciding this is the solution to the unbalanced rewards and punishments of life? A rational solution? I can imagine Leif doing that.

And yet, looking back over his life as I write this blog, looking at the photos of a lifetime in chronological order, remembering the things he said, I see a pattern of denial of much of the hurt and pain he felt, because the evidence is there in other ways. I see a vulnerability he denied and hid. I see a deep need for love and companionship that was always thwarted and left him in despair. I see a strange combination of cynicism and almost unreasoning optimism that next time things would turn out right . . . until the end.

I see a moodiness, even as a child, that didn't seem pathological, but may have been deeper even then than he showed. I see highs and lows that deepened as an adult and now I wonder whether he either suffered from bipolar syndrome or PTSD. He certainly had experiences that could have caused PTSD, and I found an information pamphlet about it in his apartment after he died. And, months after his death, had a surprise correspondence with someone he never actually met but spoke with and corresponded with who said he speculated to her that he had PTSD. Did he take a dive into the deep low of bipolar disorder in the early hours of April 9th?

In researching bipolar disorder to find out more, I discovered that it seems to have a genetic component, like chronic depression, and is a physical disease caused by chemical imbalances in the brain that distort thinking and that those suffering from it are at high risk for suicide. The onset of the disease seems to be caused by trauma and once set in motion is very difficult to treat. Did Leif get that genetic component through my father, for either chronic depression or bipolar disorder? It seems heartbreakingly likely.

Leif, the student of psychology, the observer of life, who tried so hard to help others who were suffering from bipolar disorder, depression and sadness, and made sure they got professional help and medication, never (as far as we know) revealed his own depression to a professional or took medication for it. Instead, he tried to "treat" or self-medicate his depression with alcohol and shopping. His "show no weakness" code probably prevented him from seeking help. I wish he had.

I asked him many times about depression, sent him online self-evaluations for it, but until November 2007 he denied it completely. He new enough about psychology and testing that he could easily fool those tests, and would report to me that he was fine. I think he wanted to believe that.

Whenever a loved one dies, we try to think whether there was anything we could have done to prevent it, to help, but it's far worse with a suicide. Even if you know it's not your fault, you ache to think of their pain and agonize over whether you missed the signs or didn't do what you should have to help.

Leif is gone and the days pass. Most things are normal, but he's never far from our thoughts and the sadness is always just under the surface, waiting to express itself.

This photo was taken the fall of 1992 during his senior year in high school by Blaker's Studio Royal in Manhattan, Kansas. He was 17 years old.

Who Are We?

Who are We?

In the grand, infinite sweep of the universe
We are nothing,
Not so much as a grain of sand.

But in the constellation of our shared lives
We are everything that matters;
Love, identity, meaning, memory.

In the end, that is all we have.
Memory.
It is who we are.

- Geraldine A. Garretson ©2008


I am reading Stephen King's DUMA KEY, which I highly recommend. He deals with these themes as well, and I found the passage I'm quoting below (from page 442) significant and profound.

"...a person's memory is everything, really. Memory is identity. It's YOU."

I remember Leif. Part of my identity is destroyed with his death, but not all. Not all because of memory.

The Reality of Grief

Honesty about grief is hard. I want to remember the good times of our life with Leif. I want to focus on the handsome young man, the brilliant mind, the power and presence he projected, the beautiful child he was, the talents he had, but no matter how we try to do this, for now, at least, it is overshadowed by the terrible reality of his death.

The death of someone we love is always hard, harder when the death is by the loved one's own hand and choice. Leif left us no explanation, though he did leave us clues. Those of us who loved him have figured out in our own minds what went wrong and why he did what he did, but to us, there is no reason great enough to warrant his death. We can never feel what he felt.

Although I can explain it, it's like explaining why a flower grows. We can describe it, in botanical detail, but we still can't really explain the why of it. What makes it happen? The growth of a flower is something beautiful. Choosing death is not.

People ask how we are doing. They are concerned, and rightly so. This is a terrible process to go through, and it will be a long time before it is any easier and life becomes at all normal or happy. Others seem to think we should be over it. It's been over five weeks now. How long can we mourn? I pray they never have to deal with such a loss and find out.

There are so many reasons for such grief. Everyone understands the obvious, that we are grieving because we have lost our son and miss him. But there is so much more. We grieve because it is hard to know how unhappy he must have been. Hard to know we could not help him, though we tried. Hard to know he did not come to us with his misery and problems so that we could help him more. Hard to know he never found the love he needed. Hard to know he will never have children.

Hard to know he will never see the sun, the moon, the stars. Will never ride his beloved motorcycle or drive his car. Hard to know he never found a career that provided satisfaction. Hard to know he felt he had not lived up to his potential. Hard to know he was so alone, despite the friends and family who cared deeply for him. Hard to know how much misery he dealt with in the past few years, whether disappointment in love or accidents with car and motorcycle, whether robberies or not getting promotions or new jobs he applied for, whether financial difficulties or health problems. He had too much for his broad shoulders to bear.

For us, there is more. There is a loss of identity. It is as though a limb were cut off and a piece of us is missing. It hurts not just emotionally, but physically. There is the loss of his future, the loss of the time we would spend with him. He died just days before his father's 65th birthday, and he was always there for birthdays. He will never be there for birthdays, Mother's Day, Father's Day, Christmas, Thanksgiving. None of those days will ever be the same.

There is the sadness of taking his life apart piece by piece. Two of the hardest days for us were this past week. Simple things that surprised us with their emotional impact. On Monday, we turned in his military ID card at MacDill AFB. On Friday, we finally picked up a box of his belongings from his workplace. So simple, but so hard. It feels as though we are erasing his identity piece by piece.

In our hearts, we know that his identity from now on will be our memories, the photos, the few personal possessions we have of his, but all the rest will be gone from us. Although his military identity will be preserved in his resting place, and in photos, and in the beautiful flag case given to us by his friend Melissa, there was still something expressibly sad about turning in his ID card. It's the finality of it.

I was surprised how hard it was to get his belongings from work. He worked in a secure environment and we never saw the phone center cubicle where he worked. His supervisor brought his belongings out to our car in a box. I had a hard time opening it to see what was there. Nothing really surprising, not much at all, but again, it was like erasing one more piece of his life. Apparently, he had a puzzle on his desk that he was working on, and it is still there. His team members didn't want it disturbed.

Yesterday was also hard because we were talking to his bank about the loan on his Mazda RX-8 sports car, a gorgeous car he loved. It's hard to see it in our garage because it reminds me so of him, and how happy I always was to see him drive up in that car, but it will probably be even harder to see it taken away, and yet another important piece of the identity he built for himself gone.

For the gathering at our house the evening of his memorial services, I made a slide show of over 400 photos of his life from birth to his 33rd birthday. Seeing all of them at once made me realize that because Leif was always so big for his age, and a big man, and because he had always kept his emotions inside, even as a child, none of us had really seen his vulnerability. He carefully cultivated his code of "never show weakness," and he was very successful at it. Only by seeing all of these photos together did we see the vulnerability in the child and the man.

We knew that the problems and disappointments in his adult life had led to some very bad times for him, times when he was deeply depressed and fought with suicidal thoughts, but until this time, he had gotten past them and gone on with his life. It's hard to know that this time, he let no one in. I was worried about him, very worried, beginning last fall. He first denied depression, but at the end of November, he admitted to me in an email message that life was "very dark" and he was searching for a reason to exist. I was so alarmed that I tried to keep in close contact, tried to suggest he get help, but he brushed me off.

I felt better when he showed a keen interest in the Obama campaign, politics, a new computer, the game Mass Effect, and most of all, a new love interest. But apparently, his hopes came crashing down when he was unable to solve his financial problems and didn't want to turn to anyone else and admit he was in trouble. It's hard for his family and friends to forgive him for that. For me, I think it was the last straw in a chain of unbearable experiences that made him feel life would never be better for him. And that's the hardest thing of all, to know he had no hope.

We bring our children into the world with such hope for them, and Leif came into the world with so much good fortune, a family who loved him and could provide not only a good material life, but experiences around the world, good looks, a soaring, intelligent mind. We had such hopes for him. But he lacked a sense of purpose, and he needed someone to love. He never was able to handle finances and the paperwork details of life, and he had no direction for a real career. We will never know why. He may have inherited depressive tendencies. He certainly cultivated the identity he chose, the cool guy with the cool "toys," computers, fancy cell phones, motorcycle, guns, the infantry soldier, the gamer, and much more.

But in the end, none of that could bring him happiness or a purpose in life. We mourn for all that could have been, all we have lost, our own loss of identity as his parents, the hole in our lives where Leif always lived large. Most of all, we mourn for his unhappiness, for the sadness of his adult life and the end he felt he must make of it.