Douglas Adams Quote on the Afterlife

Leif was a huge fan of Douglas Adams, as I've posted before. Today I saw a Douglas Adams quote that Leif would have found profoundly amusing, at least in the time before he decided to kill himself, and knowing Leif, probably even then. He had a wonderful sense of humor and irony.

"He hoped and prayed that there wasn't an afterlife. Then he realized there was a contradiction involved here and merely hoped that there wasn't an afterlife."

About this quote, Leif would have probably speculated about why the person quoted hoped there wasn't an afterlife . . . but more likely he would have known just what book it came from and why. Leif himself was an agnostic. Sometimes he said he was an atheist, but then would say he really was an agnostic. He said he liked to hope that there was a benevolent deity, but that he saw no evidence for it. There were quite a few women he dated who tried to convert him to fundamentalist Christianity and he did not appreciate their efforts to "save" him. He felt that if there was such a deity, he would not condemn people to eternal misery. Another one of his favorite quotes, which I've written about before, one that he used as a sig line on Zaon, was, "Maybe this planet is another planet's hell." by Aldous Huxley. I think Leif had some tiny hope that there was an afterlife, but not a belief.

I chose this photo of the family because it was taken about the time Leif became enamored of Douglas Adams, when he was in junior high school. Peter Anthony was a cadet at the Air Force Academy and took a science fiction literature class, where he was introduced to Douglas Adams. He was so taken with Adams work that he insisted the whole family had to read at least "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy," and we all did. All of us except Peter W. read the entire series and we had a lot of fun talking about all the absurdity in the books.

The photo was taken in September 1987, right after Peter Anthony's first cadet summer, at the home of his Air Force sponsor, virtually the first time he was allowed off the Academy grounds to have a "normal" meal without all the cadet constraints. It was actually a little before he took the sci fi course, but the only photo I have of all of us together around that time. It was a good visit.

Another Movie Leif Would Have Loved

I just saw another movie Leif would have enjoyed, as much for the brilliant religious satire as for the humor and the interesting social commentary, as much for the characterization of truth and gullibility as the message about the social importance of some kinds of lying and the enriching qualities of fiction. "The Invention of Lying" would have engendered of of those great, lively discussions our family always loved. How I wish we could have shared that with him!

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This photo of Leif was taken in Thailand in December 1981. It just seems to go with the funny themes of the movie.

Leif - Bosnia - Fall 1999 - Spring 2000 - Age 25

Leif was deployed for duty in Bosnia Herzegovina from Fall 1999 - Spring 2000. He was on sentry duty and on patrol in the machine gun turret of a vehicle, and was stationed in (I believe) three different camps during the period he was there.

Leif had a receding hairline which kept getting worse, and while he was in Bosnia, he decided to just shave his head. He never went back to having hair and said that when it started to grow, it felt "dirty" to him once he was used to the clean-shaven head.

Seeing Bosnia and what hatred for another religion or ethnic group had caused there had a profound effect on Leif. As a student of history, he already had opinions about religion causing so many problems and wars in the world, but when he saw the damage first hand, it solidified his belief that religion was too often a force of terrible evils.

Leif said there was no home or building that wasn't damaged by the war there, that many were in shambles, completely destroyed, and those that were standing and in use were marked by bullet holes and other damage. He said that Bosnia was a beautiful country, and would have been a delightful place to visit had it not been for the circumstances of the war and the peacekeeping effort.

The American troops were not supposed to have anything to do with the local populace, which he also thought was a shame, but he understood the reason for it. He recounted a story in which some of his unit managed to go to a local place for a pizza, and really enjoyed it, but said they could have gotten into a lot of trouble.

He also told a story about a time when he was on patrol when they nearly shot at other Americans who were in a restricted area and hadn't let the patrols know they were there.

Leif made some videos of the camps there, explaining where things were, a kind of tour, but so far, I don't have anything to play them with, because of the format.

Leif had been very unhappy at Fort Drum, partly because he felt that soldiers in his unit were not being treated well (and sometimes very cruelly and humiliatingly) by a particular sergeant, partly because he felt they were wasting a lot of time, were kept past retreat (time to go home) without reason (just waiting in the day room for dismissal), and because he had developed cold weather asthma the previous winter at Fort Drum after having been to Uzbekistan and "eating and breathing sand for two weeks." However, he found his time in Bosnia to be far more interesting and rewarding because, as he put it, "we finally had a mission."

Leif contended that it is hard to be an infantry soldier in peacetime because there is no real mission. Yes, they have to train and be prepared to fight, but that training doesn't go on eight hours a day, five or more days a week, so there are "make work" projects and a lot of wasted time. Leif hated boredom and hated having his time wasted.

But in Bosnia, he could see a clear reason for their mission. Leif said that he felt that if the US and NATO troops left, the war would resume and people would start killing each other again. Despite the fact that he knew the USA could not police the world, he did feel a sense of pride and accomplishment at his service in Bosnia, and a sense of comradeship in arms that was much more pronounced that he had felt in the USA.

The photo of Leif above was taken while he was on patrol in Bosnia but I don't know the date. I found it in an album he had. He had never shown those photos to us.

The three certificates are from his time in Bosnia.

Certificate of Appreciation
This Certificate is Presented to
SPC Leif A. Garretson
C Col, 2nd Battalion, 87th Infantry Regiment
For dedication to duty, and service to the
2nd Brigade Task Force, while assigned
as part of SFOR-6 in Bosnia Herzegovina.

Comanche Base
Operation Joint Forge
Certificate of Achievement
Presented to SPC Leif A. Garretson
3rd Platton, C Co., 2/87 Infantry Regiment
For exemplary performance of duty while assigned as a Sentry at Comanche Base, Bosnia-Herzegovina during Operation Joint Forge from 26 December 1999 to 26 January 2000. Your dedication and willingness to put forth the extra effort in all that you do is indicative of your professionalism and desire to be the best. This achievement is in keeping with the highest traditions of military service. Fly to Glory!

The third certificate is in the language used in Bosnia. It came with a small badge or lapel pin that looks like the one on the certificate, oval, red, with crossed rifles. It reads, as nearly as I can translate it:

SPC Garretson
has earned
The Military Sharpshooter Medallion
In Bronse
Bosnia, 3 December 1999

I wish I knew how that kind of competition took place. Leif's normal weapon was the machine gun, but this was evidently for a rifle competition or qualification.

I found these certificates and the Bosnian sharpshooter medallion in Leif's things.

Leif was promoted from Private First Class to Specialist sometime between when we saw him in July 1999 and December 1999 when he got the sharpshooter award, but I don't recall that he told us about it.

We had limited contact with Leif while he was in Bosnia, just a few emails. I'm going to try to see whether they are still on my computer and whether there are any interesting details in them. It would be unusual, since Leif didn't often write much.

Wishing Upon a Star

When I was a child, we often played outside until or even after dark, all year around, and enjoyed watching the "stars come out." We didn't have all the light pollution in Manhattan, Kansas then that's there now, and we could see a stupendous number of stars and the glorious Milky Way. I remember lying on my back and watching the stars in the summer, along with the fireflies that were numerous then.

I had a Little Golden Guide for Stars and in those days, I was fascinated with the heavens. I learned to find many of the constellations and planets and loved to watch for "shooting stars." One of the highlights of my childhood was seeing the beautiful Northern Lights twice, once in Canada and once an amazing display of red Northern Lights that came as far south as Manhattan, Kansas.

When I was in the fifth grade and had to do a report, I chose to do one on astronomy and called the university to find out if there was anyone who could help me. It turned out that just the person I needed lived all of one block from me. I called him up and "invited myself over." As an adult, I now wonder what he thought of some little fifth grade girl calling him up like that. I'm no longer sure, but I think his name was Jack Robinson. I wish I knew for sure, because he was great. He not only answered my questions but revealed that there was a small telescope on the roof of the chemistry building, which was where my father taught organic chemistry.

Between the two of us, we engineered a field trip for my whole fifth grade class to go up to the roof of Willard Hall at Kansas State University and look through that telescope at the heavens. I remember seeing the craters on the moon, the rings of Saturn, four of Jupiter's moons. To children today, having grown up in the Space Age with incredible photos from the Hubble telescope and space missions, seeing what we saw would be less than stellar, but for us, it was the window to other worlds and it was a highlight of my childhood.

Both my sons took after me in their interest in the stars, but their interest wasn't in identifying them. They were interested in the future, in science fiction, in colonizing the universe, in space travel.

Friends of Leif's have said they think he must be traveling in space now, maybe hanging onto a comet with his hair on fire.

Leif did not believe in God or an afterlife. He was an agnostic, primarily, I think because the orthodox beliefs of organized religion did not make any sense to him and because he fervently believed that our religions have caused so much death, destruction and hatred in the world that they deserve to be destroyed. He could not conceive how a god that could create the universe could be the god of those religions, and saying that he "believed in God" would allow people to think he believed in the god of those religions. He did appreciate many of the teachings of inspired religious leaders, but felt their followers had perverted their vision and misused their words.

Regardless of that, I think he wished he could believe in some kind of divine creator, one not defined by our human failings and beliefs.

I don't know if there is an afterlife, but if there is, I think Leif must be mighty surprised. If there is one, I hope it is a good one for him, better than the crushing load of disappointments, problems and health issues he faced as an adult in this one.

I will never look at the sky the same way again since Leif's death. I have always loved the sky, the sun, the clouds, the everchanging beauty of the sunrises, sunsets, storms building, cloud shapes and colors. I have loved the heavens at night. Now, I think because we associate death and heaven with the sky, whenever I look at the sky, I think of Leif. I wonder whether there is anything left of that powerful mind, that imposing personality. Like him, I doubt that there is. I haven't felt his presence, though I suspect that if there were an afterlife for Leif, he would not spend it here trying to contact those of us still alive.

When I look at the night sky, I will always, always, think of him and say that childhood wish poem:

Star light, star bright,
First star I see tonight,
I wish I may, I wish I might
Have the wish I wish tonight.

I will never get my wish, for I wish for Leif back, alive and happy. I will never get it, but I will never, ever stop wishing.

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The photo I've posted is one from the NASA Jet Propulsion Lab site.