Fifteen Years Ago

Fifteen years ago we approached Leif's apartment entrance with great trepidation. We were terrified about what we might find, but it was far worse than we imagined. The day before, we received a call from his work supervisor, who called us as his emergency contacts, because Leif had not shown up for work, or called in. He had tried to contact Leif without success and said that Leif never just skipped out on work. He was concerned.

So were we! But we hoped that maybe he was depressed and hiding out, or had gone to Orlando to see the woman he was dating, or thought he had changed his work schedule, or gotten drunk and was sleeping it off. We tried repeatedly throughout the day to contact him via phone and text messages but got no response. Then I tried calling the hospitals to see if he had been admitted after an accident or something. I did not find him. I tried calling his friend Michael, who said he had been with him the night before, but hadn't heard from him that day, April 9th. He lived an hour and a half away, so he couldn't just go over the Leif's apartment to check on him. We should have. 

But, he was an adult. It seemed intrusive to burst in on him if he didn't want to talk, so we waited. We had no idea he was already dead. 

The next morning, with no contact, we decided we had to go to his apartment and see him. Peter W. was too wrought to drive, so I drove there. We discussed that if both his vehicles, his car and motorcycle, were in the parking lot, it was a bad sign....and they were. 

The apartment door was locked. Calling, knocking, nothing got an answer, so we went to the apartment complex office and asked the manager on duty to let us into his apartment because we were worried something had happened to him. To my surprise, she agreed to do so without an argument. 

We went in, looking into the first rooms, the bedroom and bathroom, and didn't see him. Then we looked in the kitchen and he was there on the floor surrounded by a large and thick pool of blood and tissue, his head and upper back against the refrigerator door, his feet under the edge of the cabinet. A gun was on the counter. At first glance, it looked to me like he had shot himself in they eye, but I quickly saw the gunshot wound in the center of his forehead. I remember the two of us saying, "No, no no!" 

Peter W. was in agony and I told him not to look. I got him out of the kitchen and called the sheriff's office. I knew we could not touch Leif, or anything in that kitchen, because there would be an investigation, when the only think I wanted to do was hold my son. I will always regret that I couldn't, and didn't. 

The detective came. She found the bullet casings. We asked her personnel to be sure all his guns had no ammo in them. He had several more. She said to get everything of value out of there or it would be stolen. We had to get help to get his car and motorcycle to our home, and we packed up the computers, guns, guitars, and anything else of value we could in a neighbor's pickup truck. He and his wife were kind enough to drop what they were doing and drive to Tampa to help us.

I called the insurance company. We drove home. I called family members. All of this sounds so dry and matter-of-fact, but our hearts were broken. There weren't enough tears to every cry it out. 

He had been dead a day, but his death certificate says "Found April 10, 2008." The autopsy says it was a suicide and I talked to the pathologist who did the autopsy and asked how he knew that. He said it was a contact wound, meaning the gun was against his head....the gun he bought the day before.

Fifteen years and I still miss him every day of my life. 

 

Thirteen years

Thirteen years ago today we got a call from Leif's boss. He was concerned. Leif had not showed up for work, nor had he called in sick. His boss told us that this was not like Leif, that he was completely reliable, and he was worried because, he said, "He rides that motorcycle."

I tried to call Leif. I tried to text message him. I sent him email. At first, I wasn't terribly worried. I thought perhaps he was ill, or asleep with a hangover....not like him, but I wasn't ready to think something terrible had happened to him. Maybe he had gone to see the woman he was interested in, in Orlando. He had planned to see her earlier in the week .

As the afternoon wore on, I started wondering if something had happened to him.. I worried that he had a motorcycle accident and might be in a hospital either in Tampa or on the way or, or in, Orlando. I started calling hospitals all through this area. No one had a patient by his name.

Leif was an excellent driver...wanted to be a race car driver, and that was the problem. He drove like a bat our of hell, to use my mother's expression. I wondered if he had been arrested for speeding or some other offense and was in jail but didn't want us to know. The county arrest records are online. I checked them. Nothing

I continued to call him, text him, email him. Nothing. I wondered if he was very ill and wasn't responding. But by evening, surely he would have responded to multiple messages or calls from his mother. He had never ignored communications from me before. 

He was a grown man. He was entitled to his privacy and his own business. I didn't want to anger or embarrass him by showing up at his door with all my fears, and yet, I was becoming more and more afraid.

Peter thought we should wait until morning and if we still hadn't heard from him, drive to Tampa. We heard nothing. I put on my pink "Worrier's Manifesto" shirt, one I had designed as a joke, thinking that if we found him, I would try to make light of my concerns. But Peter was too nervous to drive, so I drove the half hour to his Tampa apartment.

On the way, we talked about what could have happened. We agreed that if we got there and one of his vehicles (he had a motorcycle and a Mazda RX8) was gone, he must have left. If both were there, he had to be in his apartment.

As we drove up, we could see both vehicles were there and didn't know whether to be relieved or more scared. If he was there and okay, would he be upset with us for showing up? But there was no answer when we knocked and rang the doorbell, over and over.

Finally, I went to the apartment building office and explained our fears, that something had happened to him, that we were his parents, that we wanted them to let us into his apartment. I was afraid they would refuse, but the young woman escorted us back to the building and used her master key to let us in, asking us to let her know what we found.

We came in and called his name. No answer. We passed the doorway to the bathroom and bedroom, and saw that he was not in either of them. We came into the dining area where he had his computers set up. Everything on his desk was neat. His billfold and keys were there. 

And then we looked to the right into the kitchen. There he was in a pool of blood, brains and bones on the floor, slumped against the lower end of the refrigerator door, fingers turning blue. The gun was on the kitchen counter. 

I will spare you our emotional reaction. I still want to cry out, "NO, NO, NO!!! 

I knew we could not touch anything. At that point, I felt certain it was a suicide, but the police and coroner would want to determine that. It was potentially a crime scene. I called 911. Then I found his iPhone and used it to call his insurance company about his vehicles and belongings and report his death. We waited for the police. 

When they came, we were told we could not stay inside while they did their investigation. The detective (a woman) was working the scene and she had others with her that went to neighbors to see if they had heard anything or knew what happened. When she finished, she told us she thought it was an accidental shooting. She had worried about the possibility of a murder or homicide, but the evidence did not support that. Two men came and brought Leif out in a body bag. I still wonder how they got his heavy, large body into that body bag, with the mess on the kitchen floor, and down from the second floor. I wanted them to open the body back so I could hold him and say goodbye. None of them wanted to do it. They didn't think it was good for me to see him, and I knew it wasn't good for Peter, so I didn't fight them about it, and I have regretted it ever since. I just put my hands on the body bag and that was as close as I got to holding my son. They took him to the county morgue. It was a violent death and required an autopsy. 

They told us we needed to take all his valuables out of the apartment right then, and take his vehicles, or they feared they would be stolen. We went back inside and started gathering things, and realizing we could not drive his vehicles to our house. Neither of us was capable of driving a motorcycle. His car was a stick shift. I can't drive one of those, and Peter hadn't driven one in years, and was in no shape to drive. I called a neighbor who had a pickup truck and asked if one of them knew how to drive a stick shift. To this day, I don't know what their plans were for that day, but they dropped them and came. They helped us take belongings and drove his car to our house. We found someone with a trailer to load up the motorcycle and drive it to our place. We took the rest of his keys, went to the apartment office and told them about his death, what had transpired with the police, and that we would be back to clean out his apartment. 

We were in shock. Luckily we made it home safely. On the way, we called my mother. Through the evening, we were calling family members to let them know. 

It was the saddest, most horrifying day of my life. 

I miss him every day of my life.

I never wore my pink "Worrier's Anonymous" shirt again. I couldn't bear it.

The photo above was taken almost exactly 28 years ago, in April 1993. He is dressed as the "GQ Pirate" for the Society for Creative Anachronism.  

 

Did the head injuries and asthma push him over the edge?

I have always wondered whether Leif's head injuries played a part in his suicide. I don't know how many he had, but I do know at least two of them. The first was when he was a small boy in first grade. He was whacked in the head by a golf club swung by another boy. It knocked him flat.

The last time was his July 2007 motorcycle accident when he wasn't wearing a helmet and his head hit and scraped the pavement. That's the picture at left. He was lucky it wasn't a lot worse.

But that luck may have been only partial. We have been hearing a lot lately about the concussions that damage the brains of football players. Today I read an article in Scientific American that says that even mild concussions raise the risk of depression and suicide three times or more.

A Single Concussion May Triple the Long-Term Risk of Suicide

They don't know what the mechanism is, but the evidence is clear, that even mild concussions cause brain damage that has severe consequences.

Maybe in Leif's case, he might have been able to handle any combination of all the problems he faced if he hadn't had the head injuries, or the asthma, which bothered him greatly. Both head injuries and asthma are also associated with depression. Several studies have shown a link between asthma and increased suicide rates, too, particularly with severe asthma.

Too many risk factors for one man to escape.

Who knows, maybe without the injuries and the asthma, he would still be alive.

Thoughts on Leif's Fortieth Birthday

If Leif had lived, January 28, 2015 would have been his fortieth birthday. It will be over in just a minute, before I finish this post. I've thought of him all day. We didn't spent the day the way we wanted to. We wanted to go to the cemetery to honor him, but this was the day the house painter decided to show up to finish the job, so we were stuck. It was also the day to deal with other issues that came up unexpectedly, so both of us were sad, both because of Leif, and because we didn't get to go to Bay Pines.

It seems that for several years, something has always come up on his birthday to keep us from going there, and that makes me feel bad, as though I can't manage to take time on his birthday to be there. It's not that I think he's "there" wondering why. It's that I want to go there for me. I want to spend time away from other distractions. Yet it seems that nearly every year since the year after he died, something else has distracted us on his birthday. Even my computer wouldn't publish this post and I had to copy it to a different browser.

We talked this morning about Leif and my father, and how they were alike and different, and how I wished Leif had lived long enough to have a family. He lived thirteen years less than my father did.

Leif's birthday was a happy day for me. I was so glad he was born and part of our family. He brought so much into our lives. I looked at a lot of photos of him today, at all the things we did together over the years.

But the last couple of days I have found myself haunted by the same old questions that have haunted me from the day we found his body. Why? What happened? I still cannot fathom it. The detective thought it was accidental. The medical examiner that did the autopsy thought it was a suicide because it was a contact wound. But I still can't even understand how things transpired, how the gun was where it was on the counter, as though he had been standing by it and dropped it, yet there was no blood on the counter.

I still don't understand how someone who had been carrying on an animated email discussion with several people during the evening, all about designing the perfect smart watch, and who was looking up a German band online and sending requests to Amazon to get their music, who went home with his best friend and was socializing him and another man until the wee hours of the morning, would suddenly not be around to get that music.

I still don't understand why someone contemplating suicide would pay his rent, put gas in his car, get new shoes, a new video game, and a new gun.

Could it have been an accident? As I've written before, it's hard to believe that of someone as well trained in firearms as he was. Surely he wouldn't have been stupid enough to put a loaded gun to his head and play with the trigger? On the other hand, he was drunk and high. Who knows what kind of stupid game he might have played with his brand new gun. Maybe the trigger pulled a little easier than he thought.

Could it have been murder? By whom? The door was bolt locked. Someone would have had to have the key, and his keys were sitting on his desk. And why would they leave the weapon? Who would have had a motive? The detective did not find anything suspicious.

I know it's not about logic. I still think the things I know point to suicide, that the things that happened after March 22nd became too much, and maybe he made a spur of the moment decision to do it.

Would I feel any better if I knew? Probably not. It won't bring him back. But at least the eternal questioning would be over.

I find myself going from smiling at photos of him I love, to crying over his death and missing him. I am grateful for those that remembered him on his birthday, my sisters, Nikko, cousins. I don't want any of us to forget him, that he lived, that we loved him, and he loved us.

Where is the compassion for Robin Williams?

This is Leif at the age of 16, in his room in our house at Fort Buchanan, Puerto Rico, with the guitar that he designed and made.

His initial time in Puerto Rico was difficult, as he was initially not accepted by the kids at Antilles High School, and was attacked by one group of guys and beaten up. But he overcame that and found a group of good friends and a place in the school. The years in Puerto Rico became some of the best ones of his life. Although he was sometimes angry and frustrated, he was also creative, had friends, enjoyed the sea and guitar lessons. He had hope. The future looked bright. He had every reason to think life would treat him reasonably well . . . and so did we.

It was in some ways unfortunate that we had to leave Puerto Rico the summer between his junior and senior years of high school. It's tough to go to a new school as a senior, hard to fit in, hard to make friends, especially for an introvert like Leif. Yet staying in Puerto Rico would have offered him less opportunity, and he would have had to return to the USA for college anyway.

All that aside, there was no hint in these days that he would ever be seriously depressed or suicidal. There were times, as there are for all of us, when he wasn't happy, but he found much to enjoy in life and went out to meet it with open arms.

Robin Williams' suicide this week has opened a bigger public dialogue about suicide than we have seen before, it seems to me. I think it is because it's so hard for people to believe that a man who could act so funny, so silly, so seemingly full of the enjoyment of life, could be so deeply depressed that he would take his own life. It's because he was so much a part of our lives that we all feel the loss, unlike with many others who have taken the same course of action.

I've seen so many comments on Facebook, discussions, sadness, even anger, misunderstandings, blame. Some people can't understand how someone who was rich and "had everything" could be unhappy. Why didn't he just "walk away"? Some can't fathom how he could do that to his wife and children, and think his act was cowardly and selfish. Some people who have struggled with depression can't figure out why Williams' couldn't tough it out like they have. Some have no sympathy for him, only for his family members left behind.

I understand where they are coming from, but depression is no respecter of wealth or position. Nor does someone like Williams do it "to" his family . . . more likely, he was just trying to escape his own deep misery and felt he had tried everything and failed. More likely he was in such a deep hole of hopelessness that he felt he had failed his family and they would be better off without him, if he was even able to consider them at the end.

None of us will ever know the depth of his struggle, how hard he fought to escape depression and addiction. Most of us will never know what it's like to feel so terrible that we try drugs and alcohol to "self-medicate" in an attempt to either feel better, or feel SOMETHING. My father said he felt "dead inside" for the two years before he took his life. Leif listened to a Johnny Cash song that said he hurt himself to see if he could still feel, not long before Leif took his life.

I think it's time we learned to be less judgmental and more compassionate, less angry and more understanding. Some people will be able to fight depression. Some will not. Just as some people can fight other illnesses and either be cured or manage the illness for a long time. Other people find no effective cure or die younger from the same disease. It's time we recognize that mental illness is as much an illness as a physical illness, and just as devastating. It's time to stop blaming those who suffer.

It's also time to have compassion for those left behind, those who every day of their lives will wonder if there's something they could have done to save their loved ones; those who will wonder every day of their lives what put them over the edge? The eternal question of "why" will haunt them. They will not only grieve as we all grieve when we lose a loved one, they will be tormented by questions that will remain unanswered.

So my hope is that all those who are blaming Williams for "taking the easy way out" or "taking the coward's way out," or for being "selfish," will keep their compassion for his family and extend it to him. We have not walked in his shoes.

Missing Him So

I wonder what it is that triggers sadness and missing Leif again so much, as I have been in the last week. Next Sunday it will be four years and five months since he died. There are days when I'm busy and life is full and it doesn't hurt so much, but the sadness rolls back.

I think perhaps it's because of the election season. The last time around, before the actual nominating conventions, we had such lively discussions about the candidates and policies. He was writing email letters Hillary Clinton (as he had to General Wesley Clark in 2003). I probably miss him a lot right now because I know if he were here we'd be hearing a lot from him about the election and issues. It makes the hole in our lives so much more evident.

I know it's not my fault he isn't here, but I will always feel that I failed him, failed to help him, failed to keep him alive.

I look at this darling picture, taken by my sister, Sherie, in July 1976 when he was a year-and-a-half old, and he seems to happy, so carefree. I wish I had some scrap of hope that his adult life held any happiness for him.

I've thought a thousand times about why a death like Leif's, a suicide, is so very very hard, and I think that on top of the loss and grief we would have over the death of a child, our son, there are the dual burdens of knowing how unhappy he was and that we couldn't help him, that he died alone and uncomforted, cut off even from our love in that moment of death when he didn't reach out to anyone for help.

I can't have this beautiful little boy back. I can't have the handsome young man back. I can't even have the sad and depressed man back for a second chance to help make it right.

Was it his destiny?

Someone asked me, a few months ago, whether I thought perhaps Leif's life and death were his destiny. I thought a long time about that. What does destiny mean?

The Free Dictionary by Farlex defines destiny as:
destiny [ˈdɛstɪnɪ]

n pl -nies

1. the future destined for a person or thing; fate; fortune; lot

2. the predetermined or inevitable course of events

3. (Philosophy) the ultimate power or agency that predetermines the course of events

How can we really apply that to a life? Because something DOES happen, can we automatically assume it was "destiny" and MUST happen?

If there is such a thing as destiny, can we change or avoid it?

Is destiny the same as "fate"?

fate [feɪt]

n

1. the ultimate agency that predetermines the course of events

2. the inevitable fortune that befalls a person or thing; destiny

3. the end or final result

4. a calamitous or unfavourable outcome or result; death, destruction, or downfall

It seems to me that the definitions rather beg the question. If the end result IS fate or destiny, then of course it was fate or destiny, but if we define it as "inevitable" and basically preprogrammed to happen, that's a different thing all together.

Or, is there a force called destiny or fate that DOES determine our lives?

I don't believe that, at least not in the usual colloquial sense. For instance, I don't think there was some guiding hand of fate that "made" me and Peter go to the Manhattan swimming pool one August day just so we could meet. I think that was a more or less random piece of luck that could easily have happened entirely differently.

However, I DO Think there are factors that determine things in our lives, some of the biological or genetic. I think that genes not only determine or heavily influence much of our appearance, they also determine many other things about us, from talents and likes and dislikes (some of them) to propensities to diseases or risky behavior or some forms of mental illness.

It's hard for me as a mother to contemplate that I, and perhaps Peter, passed on to Leif some genetic tendency toward severe depression, but with the family history on my side, and my father's suicide, and Peter's mother's severe depression, it know it is possible, and indeed probable, that he inherited the gene for depression and that it was activated during his miserable time in the army and he fought it the rest of his life. Perhaps he WAS doomed by destiny, the destiny of that inheritance, and perhaps it was only a matter of time for him, as it seemed to have been for my father.

My dad lived 13 years longer than Leif did, but he had much to anchor him to this life that Leif never had, a wife, four children, a career, a home. Even with those things, life became empty and he said he felt "dead inside." Leif listened to Johnny Cash's sad song "Hurt," which seemed to speak of what Leif was going through.

I don't know whether Leif had an exact predetermined fate, one that would end on that day, that exact day, with him taking his life, in that exact place, with that gun. I doubt it. What I do think is that he may have had a destiny to become depressed and eventually end his life, but the how, why, when and where would have been shaped by the events of his life. Perhaps if he hadn't joined the army, perhaps if his marriage had lasted, perhaps if he'd found a career he could get his mind into, perhaps if he'd felt he had worth in this life and that he mattered, he would have lived . . . but for how long?

In the end, would he have still terminated his life as my father did? I will never know the answer to that, never know exactly why did shot himself in the wee hours of April 9, 2008, never know whether he could have been saved . . . or if he was, for how long.

I have come to believe that we all face some destiny in our lives, but that it isn't all just predetermined, that it influences our lives but doesn't just determine it. We, and events, and the people in our lives, shape the outcomes every day with each and every action and decision. Yes, many of THOSE are in some sense "determined," too, but not every detail, just the broad outlines. We paint in the strokes.

Leif suffered, but there are others who suffered worse than he did who did not and will not take their lives. What could be the difference? I believe it was inheritance, the genetic disposition to depression and suicide, and I regret that I passed that on to him.

Could things have been different? I believe they could have, but his life would have to have been different, too. He would have to have made different decisions, found a path that wouldn't have taken him down the path of depression, or found a way out of it for a second or third time. But much of that was not of his choosing . . . the things that happened to him were the RESULTS of his choices, but all of us make choices without knowing the outcomes we will face, and he was no different.

Was suicide my father's fate? Yes, because it happened. Perhaps yes because of his genetic inheritance. Yes because of the damaging depression he developed.

Can we know our fate? I'm glad we can't, though sometimes we can see some possibilities or the broad outlines we face in life. I'd rather not know if terrible times are ahead. Nor do I want the happy times lessened by knowing about them in advance.

All we can do is make the best choices we know how, forgive ourselves for the ones that turn out to be foolish or unwise, and appreciate, as much as we can, the life and loved ones we have.

I will always be glad that Leif was my son, no matter how hard it is to know he is dead, no matter how much I miss him, no matter how much I disagreed with some of the choices he made. He was my son, my handsome, brilliant, anguished son, and he brought much to my life I would never want to wish away.
-------

The photo was taken of Leif by my sister, Sherie, in the living room of our old stone house in Manhattan, Kansas, in November 1975. Leif was 10 months old, and must about that time he started walking.

Four Years Have Passed

This morning at 7:30 a.m., Peter Anthony called to express love and the wish that we would remember today all the good and positive things that Leif brought into our lives. We are grateful for them, and for all that Peter has brought into our lives!

How different this morning is, four years past the day we found Leif's body in his apartment. At 7:30 that morning, Michael called, we got up full of dread at what the day might bring. I wrote all about that day on the one-year anniversary, April 10, 2009. (This is a link to that post.)

The journey through grief is a long one, and it is full of ebb and flow. Change comes gradually, so gradually it is hard to see the progress unless you are far enough along the road to look way back and see how far you have come.

This morning, these past days, have shown me how far we have come. I have been happy! Not happy because these are the anniversary days of Leif's last day of life and communications with me, the day of his death, the day we found him, not happy because of the remembered dread, shock, and misery, but happy because the depths of grief have mostly passed. Yes, the questions remain. Yes, we miss him, but this year, for the first time, I could wake up each of those days and appreciate the sunshine, the mockingbird singing, the wonder of Peter's arms around me, and look forward to the day. This time, I am finally experiencing a renewal of my interest in writing something besides this blog, to turn my energies to some creative writing of another kind.

I know there will be days or moments of sadness ahead, perhaps even today there will be moments when I acutely feel the loss of my son and the misery we felt four years ago, but in these three days I have been, as Peter Anthony put it, glad to remember how much he brought to our lives. I have been motivated to continue making writing notes.

This morning I put on my "Find Joy" t-shirt, and I do find joy in my day.

Because it IS this anniversary, I also find myself wondering, once again, about all those unanswered questions. When Leif's ex-wife, Nikko, was here visiting us in February, she asked me whether I thought his death could have been an accident. I still don't think so, but the question will always be open. I've examined that question in depth since she asked it, though I've done so many times before. I've been thinking of this topic for about two months and decided to save it for today.

The thing is, we somehow expect to be able to analyze people's actions logically, and that doesn't work, or at least normal logic doesn't work, when you are dealing with the state of mind of someone who is either taking their own life or playing with guns. You can't get into that mindset with logic, though a mind in pain or under the influence of alcohol can have a very different logic of its own.

When I look at Leif's life, and his actions leading up to April 9th, I don't see any evidence of planning to kill himself. I see the opposite. He was in love. He was planning to move. He was looking for music. He put gas in his car and motorcycle. He wouldn't have needed that if he weren't going anywhere. He paid his rent. He bought a new computer game, which was still in his laptop CD drive when he died. He bought a new gun he had ordered some months before and showed off proudly.

He bought expensive new shoes, which he was wearing when he died. He wasn't dressed up. He was wearing jeans and a nondescript shirt. No one buys expensive shoes to wear in death along with those clothes. He was out with friends and with them at his apartment until 3:00 a.m. None of those things point to a man considering suicide.

However, Leif had been suicidal before, and he had recently had several huge blows. He had lost his GI Bill funding, which was keeping him relatively afloat financially. He hadn't gotten jobs or promotions he had applied for. He hadn't gotten a personal loan for which he had applied because of his high debt, and he was probably counting on that to help him out of his financial woes. The woman he had fallen in love with had virtually disappeared from his life due to family needs of her own. Until he met her, he had been despondent, discouraged, depressed, and admitted to me that he had more pain than pleasure in his life and nothing to live for. So, perhaps he felt that way again.

The detective who investigated his death on the morning of April 10, 2008 said she felt the scene had all the earmarks of an accident. She did not think it was a suicide. We did. The doctor who did the autopsy ruled it a suicide because he said it was a "contact wound," meaning that the gun barrel was against Leif's forehead.

Leif was an expert on guns, an trained military armorer. He knew guns well enough to write a dissertation on them. He would certainly have known the danger of putting a loaded gun to his head. At least two people have told me that they had seen him do it in jest several times, or even scratch his head with the gun barrel. Yet that wee morning of April 9, 2008, when Michael and Jaime were with him and they had all the guns out examining them and Jaime pointed one at one of them, Leif had a fit and told him never to do that, that he always had loaded guns in his house and you should never point a gun at anyone unless you intended it for protection. So, even under the influence of alcohol that night, he was aware of the danger.

However, all that doesn't mean that he didn't at some point decide to play with a gun himself and maybe go just a little too far. I can't persuade myself to believe that, but it's possible. Alcohol impairs judgement. He could have been "experimenting" with the idea of what it would be like to actually pull that trigger and gone too far . . . . but even if that happened, would that really have been an accident?

I don't know what Leif did after Michael and Jaime left, but I think he must have taken out the trash since there was only one beer bottle in the place. Knowing Leif, even though he had to get up and go to work in the morning, he probably either watched something on television or played a computer game, even though it was past 3:00 a.m. I doubt that he ever even went to bed.

I still come back to my original hypothesis. At some point the effects of alcohol and exhaustion set in and he hated the idea of having to show up for work or call in sick. He felt he was just working to pay his debts and had nothing else in his life. I think he set up the philosophy essay and photo on his laptop as a message to us. I can't see any other reason why he would have had those two things there.

But what happened then, I don't know. Why the kitchen? He wasn't going to go out and drive somewhere in that state. That would have risked getting arrested for drunken driving. The living room and bedroom were carpeted. That left the bathroom and kitchen. I have no idea whether he thought about that logically, or if he just walked around into the kitchen with the gun and a bottle of beer, ate some carrots, and thought, "What the sh___t. What the point? I might was well get it over with," and put the gun to his head. We will never know what he thought.

I hope, if he looked back over his life before he did it, that he remembered some happy times, that he knew he was loved.

I am glad I have so many other, better, happier memories of him. I am glad for every photo I have of him. I am glad I even have the sound of his laugh on a silly little video he made of Aly on his cell phone. I am glad he was our son.

And I am glad that after four years, this day is no longer as sad as it was in the past three years. I am glad I have Peter Walter and Peter Anthony. I am glad I have my sisters and brother, my mother, my grandchildren, my friends. I am glad I feel purpose and worth in my life. I am glad I can find joy again.
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The photo is one Leif took of himself with the built-in camera on his computer, and the solarization effect was one he chose to apply. It's a thoughtful shot, and he was an introspective man given to much thought. It was taken during that bleak period in November 2007. I never understood why someone as smart and potentially creative as Leif could have the power of a computer and not use it to be creative. Perhaps he would have had he not been depressed.

Remembering Never Ends

Memories are triggered by almost anything, at any time, even when least expected, and they bring with them so much emotion. Not only the emotion of the time they happened, but all the emotions that are associated since that time, including happiness, love, wonder, nostalgia, longing, and grief.

For us, like so many others who have grieved for loved ones, especially those who have lost a child, the holidays will always hold those memories of the happy days gone by, all we shared, and bring to the fore all we will miss this holiday season. I am trying to keep focused on gratitude that we HAD those wonderful days, those years we enjoyed so much with our sons during the holidays.

Today I was doing some straightening up in my home office and came across something I don't remember even seeing or noticing at the time I received it. It's a pamphlet for parents about the death of a child called, "The Saddest Loss," written by Jane Woods Shoemaker. It was sent to us in a packet by USAA, the company that Leif dealt with for his car loan, vehicle insurance and a checking account, after I notified them of his death.

It's probably just as well that I didn't read it then. I don't know whether I would have been in any condition to really appreciate its message. It won't change anything, but reading it now is like an acknowledgement of all we have been through. I haven't read it fully, but these phrases stood out:

"The death of one's own child is so devastating you may not feel like reading this booklet right away."

Perhaps that's why I didn't. Perhaps that's why I don't even remember seeing it before.

"When a child dies, parents grieve harder and longer than with any other loss."

I can't know whether that is true, as I haven't experienced every other loss, but I do know it is the most devastating thing that has ever happened to us.

"The ties of love and hope that bind parent and child are the most powerful in human relationships."

I've written about the role of our hopes for our children, and the bond between me and Leif, and how I wonder if deep in us somewhere, even our DNA knows of the loss; certainly our bodies and brains respond to the loss in deep and profound ways.

"The suicide of a child leaves parents with so many unanswered questions. It is the most difficult loss to accept."

The questions will always haunt us, as long as we live and are capable of thinking.

The booklet deals forthrightly with the emotions surrounding what to do with your child's possessions, and how parents hold onto their child by keeping possessions. How well I know that feeling . . . and also the sadness that comes from disposing of them, which feels somehow disloyal.

"Memories are the worst and the best aspects of grief."

Yes, and that is the crux of it. We WANT to remember. We WANT to keep our child alive in our hearts and minds, but as the memories come, the grief comes along with the happiness, so many times.

There is a section on "Memorials," ways to memorialize one's child. Here, I have perhaps fallen victim to my own feelings of grief, for she writes, "A memorial should be a celebration of the child's life, not an expression of your grief."

She gives some examples, but my memorial for Leif is this blog, and it cannot be truthful without acknowledging grief. I found that out as I wrote it. If you have followed this blog these three-and-a-half years, you may remember that when I started it, the day we found him, I said I wanted it to be about the "remembering the good times." But it was and is not a biography that progressed in linear order through his life. It is not just a series of stories about him. It is a collection of thoughts, stories, emotions, which all intermingle, just as life does.

Here is a sentence from the last paragraph of the booklet, "Recovering from grief does not mean that you get over the death of your child."

Yes, every parent I've talked to who has suffered the death of their child says this. You never get over it, but you learn to cope. You learn to go on. You learn to handle the occasions the sadness and nostalgia return. You learn to be grateful for the years you had. You learn to treasure every memory and every photo. You learn to be thankful for them.

And you will never, never forget.

Leif will not be with us this holiday season, not in person, not on this earth, but he will be in our hearts.
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This photo was taken of Leif in Hawaii in July 1984. He was nine years old. He looks happy, confident, adventurous. 

Was It An Accident?

Today I was talking to a friend whose son also committed suicide by shooting himself with a gun. Unlike Leif, this young man had grown up with real guns and liked to go shooting with his dad. He told me that he was glad his son hadn't used a gun he had given to him. I understand how he feels.

He asked me, "Do you ever think it could have been an accident?"

The answer is no . . . and yet, there is always the tiniest hint of a question.

When we first told Leif's brother about his death, he could not accept it as a suicide. He thought it had to be a murder. When we and the law enforcement officials believed there was no chance of that, he wanted to know if it was an accident. I remember asking him whether he would feel better if he lost his brother to a stupid and preventable accident because he was mishandling or playing with a gun under the influence of alcohol, or to a the deliberate and chosen act of suicide. How can one answer that?

We tend to want people to be logical, to follow a pattern we can discern and figure out, but life is seldom neat a tidy in that way. Human beings aren't always, or even mostly, logical. There are many contradictions at the end of Leif's life. He had been depressed for a long time. He hadn't been successful i finding a job he liked better. He was suffering from pain caused by the motorcycle accident, broken collarbone and surgery. He had been dealt a financial blow when his GI Bill was discontinued due to a misunderstanding, and he couldn't keep up with his bills. His asthma was worse.

And yet, just three weeks before his death he had a wonderful date with a woman he had been corresponding and texting with, and with whom he'd had many long phone conversations. He was falling in love again. He was hoping to see her on his day off, the day before he died. He was talking to me about taking it slow and getting the relationship right.

A few days before he died, he paid his rent. The day before, he filled his car with gas, bought a new pair of shoes, a new computer game and a new gun he had ordered and been waiting for, the gun he used to kill himself. The night he died, he went out with friends, brought them back to his apartment, drank, and got out and displayed all of his weapons. He was participating in an online discussion about the most perfect watch and a German band whose music he wanted to get. He did not sound like a man planning to kill himself that night. He did not act like it.

But how does such a man sound? How does he act? Do we know? Does he hide it? Even from himself? The night my father died, he acted normal, yet he had planned it.

Was Leif planning it? Was it a sudden decision? Or could it have been a horrible accident? Not according to the coroner. Even under the influence of alcohol, it's hard to imagine that Leif would have pressed a gun barrel to his head (pointed it at it, yes; he'd done that before in jest, foolish as it was) and pulled a heavy trigger hard enough to shoot it. Not only would it have been difficult to accidentally shoot that gun, Leif was so well trained in weaponry that it's hard to imagine him doing that without intent.

But you see, today was another one of those days when the questions don't go away, not for me, not for my friend who lost his son two years before we lost ours.

Today I could discuss it quite calmly with him. Today was so different than the days leading up to Thanksgiving when I felt so sad that Leif would not be with us. I couldn't have done it then. The anticipation of holidays is always hard, for me, harder than the holiday itself.

I wish he'd been here to have some of his beloved pie.

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The photo above was taken at the City of Refuge on the Big Island of Hawaii, probably in 1985 when Leif was ten years old.

A US Veteran Dies by Suicide Every 80 Minutes.

How inexpressibly sad that so many of our servicemembers and veterans are committing suicide. Read this blog piece by Juliette Kayyam, "A US Veteran Dies by Suicide Every 80 Minutes," and hope that we can do something to prevent this continuing tragedy. I wonder how much of it is due to social isolation in a country were so few people serve in the military and people don't understand what they go through. 

Thoughts on Leif's Anger and Hurt

Leif died three and a half years ago. It's taken me that long to be able to write this post and to face these photos on the blog rather than just on my computer. During that time, I've examined his life and his death from every angle I can find, with every bit of knowledge I have about his life. I've agonized over his death. I've cried rivers of tears.

All of us who lose loved ones to death, especially our children, have a beautiful fantasy in our minds, I think. We somehow believe that if we could just have saved them, it would have been different. Things would have turned out all right. With a second chance, they would heal and do better. They would thrive the way we always wished they would, and we would be happy together. Our dreams for their future would come true, and we would rejoice in their lives.

Perhaps for some, that fantasy is a reality, if the suicide hotline helps, if therapy succeeds, if medical intervention saves them. We always seem to think that if we had just done the right thing, been there at the right time, we might have saved them and the future would be good, maybe wonderful. 

But what if that weren't true?

What if we saved them only to have things continue to go wrong, 

continue to give them misery and pain? What if their lives did not improve? What if they were too ill, emotionally or physically or both, to ever really recover? What if life continued to deal them blow after blow of disappointment and grief? What if their anger turned outward?

At various times since Leif's death, his dad and I have said to each other how thankful we are that Leif maintained his self control, that he maintained enough moral equilibrium that he did not do as some others and turn his guns on those who hurt him, or on innocent people who happened to be in the way when he was feeling the depth of anger and despair. 

Leif certainly had the capability, both in weaponry and skills, to have created a tremendous amount of death and destruction. I am so thankful that he did not! 

What might have happened if he had lived and not gotten well, not thrived, not found love? Might he have lashed outward? Might he have deteriorated, become mentally unstable, unable to work, gone further into too much drinking or using drugs? Where might he have ended up?

In all my searching, I have had to ask myself, did he ask that question, too? Did he ask himself where he was going, how he was going to find a way forward that did not spiral further downhill?

Some people who attempt or think of committing suicide are in an acute state of depression, anger or misery and if prevented from going through with it, get beyond that low point and find a new path. Others harbor thoughts of suicide continually until one day they finally go through with it, or find another way to act out their pain.

Did Leif, in his own, inimical introspective way, take stock or himself and his life and decide that the right thing to do was to end it before it got worse? Before he felt he had created worse consequences for himself and us? While I will never know, I can conceive of that, of a rational thought process, at least rational from his point of view. That is supported by the essay he left open on his laptop that night. It fits with the philosophy he wrote, his pronouncements about happiness and moral values. If appled to his decision to kill himself, it basically says that he chose a path that others may consider wrong and immoral, but that it served a higher morality he chose.

It's very hard to look at this as a mother, a parent. It's a terrible thing to consider that your son may have really believed that suicide was the right and rational choice for him because he saw his life spiraling downward and perhaps he was ashamed.

I have thought aboout posting these photos for three and a half years, but I never had the right words to post with them, never had to courage to put them on a public blog until now. It's with this realization that I think I can see them, still with pain, but also with understanding.

The first photo was one a a series of many he took of himself with an assault rifle he owned back in Kansas,. (It was stolen in his apartment burglary here in Florida, so heaven knows who has it now.) He had just gotten out of the army and missed his M-16. He loved guns and this expensive rifle was a pride and joy of his. He was posing for the camera in the stances he learned in the army and probably fantasizing about how he could save the day or rescue someone. He did have such thoughts of being a hero.

The second photo he took with his computer camera, a series of photos of him using a variety of filters, a variety of expressions, with and without his pistols. They were taken on November 22, 20007, in the wee hours of the morning. He had been up all night, probably playing online games and drinking. It was the same time he had written email to me about how hopeless he felt, how purposeless and lonely. It was early in the morning of Thanksgiving. He would come to our house many hours later that day and share Thanksgiving with us, putting on a good front, acting as though everything were all right.

Some of the photos he took then just look like a man playing with a new camera toy. Others are striking in their pose of anger or hurt. Whether he was acting or showing his real feelings we will never know for sure, but I believe those feelings are real, and I am thankful he did not act on them against others.

I will never know whether Leif could have recovered and had the good life we wished for him. I know I want him back and miss him terribly every day of my life, but I am also realistic enough to openly say now that I don't know whether, if he had lived, it would have been a good life, whether things might not have gotten worse.

So, I am left with being grateful I had him for 33 years, that he never showed that angry, bitter side to us, that he never turned against those who hurt him or innocent others, that he kept that much of his moral compass. And, in the end, whether I like it or not, I have to accept his choice.

Putting a Face on Suicide Project

Mike Purcell lost his young son to suicide in 2008, the same year Leif died, and started the Putting a Face on Suicide Project. He is creating tribute pages for those who have died by their own hand, submitted by family members and friends, and plans to continue this for 365 days. Each photo submitted is shown on a tribute photo page in an album for that day. Leif and my father appear in Day Four. There is a separate album of tribute pages for those who served in the miliary, and Leif appears there as well. He also makes videos of each day, and the videos are available as links from the project video page on Facebook, or from the pafosproject page on YouTube.

Leif and my father appear in "Day Four." The links to the photo album page and YouTube video for Day Four are below.

Putting a Face on Suicide Day Four video

Putting a Face on Suicide Day Four photo album

The project makes composite poster pages from hundreds of the photos submitted, creating a face from faces. These are available as posters that can be used for suicide awareness.

I have always felt, ever since my father died in 1960, that it is important to be honest and open about suicide and it's terrible impact on those left behind as well as the deep need to help those who are in such despair that they contemplate taking their own lives.

If you go to the Putting a Face on Suicide page, you can't help but be struck by the smiling faces that look happy . . . at least in those pictures, at least for the camera, by the misery and grief of those left behind, and by the many projects that families are doing to memorialize their lost loved ones and educate people about this silent epidemic. I thank Mike Purcell for creating this poignant and important project. Only someone else who has gone through the pain of losing a loved one to suicide can understand what he went through and continues to suffer. Creating a project like this is a tremendous way of helping others cope with the loss and emotions they likely have few other places to share.

If you want to know more about Mike Purcell's son and how he died, visit the Christopher Lee Purcell Memorial Page on Facebook, and if you are a suicide survivor, or know those who are, recommend the Putting a Face on Suicide Project to them.

How Much Did Heredity Play a Part?

When I saw this photo of my father when he was about eight years old, I was struck once again by the resemblance to Leif at the same age. My dad's home haircut was a bit more jagged than Leif's, and the color photo of Leif makes it harder to compare the two, but I still see such a similarity. They both are beautiful children, and both have a certain vulnerability about them, a certain tenderness.

Were there any signs, in either of them, at this young age, that their adult lives would end in suicide?

Beyond that, what else did they have in common? Both were extremely intelligent. Both had only one sibling, another brother, six years apart, though my father had a younger brother and Leif had an older one. Both were dreamers and described as moody. Both liked to take photos when they were teens. Both liked music, though their musical tastes only overlapped in a few areas. Both liked pie, good food, stage plays and movies. But most of those things are superficial, things many people share and they aren't connected to suicide.

Leif had a harder and sadder adulthood than my father did, from a repeatedly broken heart to financial difficulties he couldn't solve, from being robbed to being injured in a motorcycle accident. He served in the army, which my father never did. He was divorced, which my father never was. He had no children. My father had four. He had no faith. My father was a professed Christian, though I think some of his views were less than properly doctrinaire.

But despite the lack of some strong and obvious characteristic that linked their fate, I believe there was a link. Was it genetic? Was it example? Was it both?

I will never know, but it is so hard to look at these beautiful and hopeful young faces and know that despair ended their lives. Grandfather and grandson who never knew each other but shared a common fate.

I miss them both. My father has been dead for 51 years now, and I don't associate him with Florida and my adult life, so I don't miss him acutely and daily, but I do still miss him and deep down in my heart, when I open that door, I grieve for him. He was only a part of my life for twelve years. Leif was mine for thirty-three, and though he has been dead for over three years now, there is no day that goes by without us talking about him, remembering him, no day that I don't miss him, no day that I don't still ask why.

What was the link? Why did they both take their lives? No matter how many reasons we can give, it is still no explanation. It still doesn't reveal how a man can consciously decide to drink cyanide, or knowingly put a gun to his head and pull the trigger.

Even in Suicide, Soldiers' Families Deserve Condolences From President

Leif was no longer in uniform, no longer on active duty in the army when he took his life. He was medically retired, but he felt close to his brothers in arms, cared deeply about them, and identified with them. He kept his uniforms, boots and dog tags. They continued to have meaning. He often talked and commented about policies that impacted soldiers' lives, and was against their lives being lost in what he felt were needless wars that counted their lives of too little value, no matter how much lip service was paid to our "heroes."

He would have been incensed to know that soldiers who died of suicide to not receive condolences from the President, as those who die in other ways do. He would have supported Gregg Keesling's efforts to make this happen. Read the article by clicking on the title, "

Even in Suicide, Soldiers' Families Deserve Condolences From the President."

Mike Purcell talks about this in a Military Times, Outside the Wire Article titled, "Are Suicides Considered Less Honorable?" (Click the title to read it.) He says, and it is so true, as you will learn if you read the stories of those soldiers who took their lives . . . they were good soldiers and served their country well:

“This Memorial Day please remember those we have lost on ‘the other battlefield,’” Purcell writes. “Their service mattered greatly, as did they. Their families deserve to be recognized with dignity and respect, in their time of profound loss.”

It's now past Memorial Day, but we should remember still.

Purcell is also behind the Putting a Face on Suicide project, a Facebook page with a broader mission to literally show the faces of those who have died by their own hand, whether military (there is a special Wall for them) or not. It isn't possible to visit that page without being affected by all the smiling faces of those who felt life was not worth living and the pain of those left behind.
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The photo is one taken of Leif by an unknown fellow soldier. I found it in an envelope of photos he had.

Senators Tell VA to Reduce Veteran Suicides

Senators Tell VA to Reduce Veterans Suicides

The senators can tell the VA all they want and it won't bring about the results without enough funding, enough psychologists and psychiatrists, with enough time to treat those who need it. If you read this article and see that the VA suicide hotline received 14,000 calls in April, 450 a day! Any those are only the veterans willing to pick up a phone and make that call. Many others will never do that.

Adequate treatment facilities are costly and while the US taxpayers say they want good care for veterans (like a lot of other things they want), they don't want to pay more taxes to make it possible. Even with adequate treatment, some veterans will never seek it, and we have to stop fooling ourselves that suicidal depression is like having an earache - you just take an antibiotic and it's gone. Even prolonged and excellent treatment will not save every veteran that is contemplating suicide. We don't have the means to make them well and whole.

Prolonged and repeated deployments are wreaking havoc on soldiers lives and as a nation we just seem to see them as "heroes" doing their job and serving their nation, without seeing the destruction we are visiting on them in body and mind.

Leif's military service, including his time in Bosnia, was the beginning of his descent into depression and despair. It wasn't the only reason for his suicide, but it was a contributor, as it destroyed his health, his marriage, and his career, and all his efforts to rebuild his life came to naught. To our knowledge, he never sought help for his depression and, like so many, felt it could not change the circumstances of his life.

Another Young Man Takes His Life

One big question haunts Marine's suicide: Why?

Another young man who served his country took his life, and like Leif, will not be counted among battle casualties, though they certainly died in battles of their own, battles that were at least in some large part brought on by their military service. How sad for this family. How sad that we send our young people to war.

A Day Like Any Other?

My friend and neighbor, whose son committed suicide a couple of years before Leif asked me a few weeks ago, just before the anniversary of her son's death, "Why is it that those days are so hard? Aren't they just a day like any other?"

I answered her that they aren't just a day like any other because humans mark time. They have calendars and a way to measure the passage of time. We spend our whole lives measuring time and its passage, knowing what day it is, what hour, what month, what year, knowing what we are supposed to do or celebrate on a particular day, knowing when the birthdays and anniversaries come, when the holidays arrive. It's only natural that the day something as momentous and life-changing as the death of one's child happens will be one we will continue to remember, not just as the day it happened, but each calendar day throughout the years that falls on the same month and day, another year having passed.

We note or celebrate the passage of a another years since our last birthday, another wedding anniversary for a year gone by, and the birthdays of our deceased child will still come. We will still calculate how old they would be if they had lived. We will remember the day of our child's death and each year on that day we will commemorate it in our own way, whether only in our hearts and minds, or with something more concrete.

Today my sister Sherie brought beautiful plants from her and my mother, and a lovely bouquet from my sister, Lannay, in remembrance of Leif's death three years ago. Three years ago today he died, though we did not find his body until April 10th. My mind goes over again and again those hours when none of us knew where he was or what had happened to him, thinking about his lifeless body lying in his kitchen, cold, gone.

It still seems as though he could come driving up to my door, still get out and say "silly Mommy," and give me a big hug. It still seems as though he should be coming here for dinner and to watch a movie, or chatting with me online. I expect it will always seem that way, no matter how real his death is. The mind does not let go of a loved one easily. The heart holds them close forever.

So no, it is not a day like any other. it is a day with a terrible significance, the anniversary of a tragic loss, a day to remember, a day to mourn. But also a day to pick oneself up and dry one's tears and go on with life, grateful for sisters, grateful for each other, Peter and I, grateful for our son and grandchildren, grateful Leif was ours, even for so short a time.

The Signs One Does Not See

I really debated about posting this photo. It's shocking and dramatic and disturbing, but in the end, I decided that's why I should post it. I was thinking once again about how we all look back and try to see the signs we might have missed, the ones that might have alerted us to the danger a loved one was in, that he was thinking of suicide. We could find small clues, very small ones, but they weren't things that would have alerted us at the time. I came across this article online, "How to Help Someone Who Is Thinking About Committing Suicide," on Wikihow, and it brought things into a different focus.

The article talks about hints someone contemplating suicide might give. I only remember one email that Leif sent to me in the same month he took this photo of himself, and it did alert me and make me very worried, but when I tried to engage him about his depression and loss of purpose, he insisted he was all right. I think this is a common reaction of men, and this article, helpful as it is, doesn't give you anything to go on if the person denies depression, denies suicidal thinking, and you have no other direct evidence. You certainly don't want to take precipitative steps if someone ISN'T contemplating suicide.

Had I seen the photos Leif took of himself using the PhotoBook program on his computer at the time he took them, I would have been even more worried and confronted him about then, but he would most assuredly have insisted that he was just playing with the program and his guns and it was all just a fun experiment . . . though it doesn't look like that to me. All of the photos look like an angry, depressed, sick man either giving the "camera" the finger or pointing a gun at it, or making nasty grimaces. There are no smiles, nothing "fun," nothing he would ever want to show the world. There is a series of photos using the various effects that PhotoBooth offers, sepia, negative (like this one), and others, but the poses are all in the same vein.

The thing that makes it all the more disturbing was that they were taken in the wee hours of the morning of Thanksgiving, November 22, 2007, less than five months before he died, and he had Thanksgiving dinner with us that night, seeming a little detached and depressed but mostly himself, conversational, pretty normal.

He started out taking some pictures at about 1:38 that morning. those were serious, thoughtful and maybe slightly sad. Then there was a break of about 4 hours and he took the rest between 5:48 and 6:08 a.m., and those were the ones I'm writing about. I think he may have used some of them to help model the face of one of his Mass Effect characters to look like him (I've posted photos of that character), but most of what he was doing was what appears to me to be a sort of documentation of how he was feeling, and that feeling was terrible, angry, hurt, sad, lonely, depressed.

None of the photos had him pointing the gun at himself. He sighted it toward the camera several times, held it sideways in front of his face, but not at himself. There were two different pistols in the photos, and neither was the one he used to kill himself. That one he had purchased only the day before he shot himself.

It's hard to imagine that only 12 hours after taking these photos, during which he probably spent a good part of the day sleeping, he drove to our house and acted normal for Thanksgiving dinner, and probably felt he had very little to be thankful for.

How does one help someone who is thinking about suicide if you can't tell, or they won't admit it, or insists they are handling things all right? And even if you try, will it help? It might. It's worth trying. There are many stories of people who have been saved or stopped from suicide and gone on to live a happier life and been grateful for the chance. We tried with Leif but we weren't able to help him. We cannot get inside the mind of someone in this condition. And we can only help as much as they will allow.

Leif did not call for help, didn't call a suicide hotline, didn't reach out, didn't tell his friends or his family. I still wonder how long the decision had been coming, whether he planned it or decided on the spur of the moment. Surely he had enough depression and disappointments and problems in his life to bring him to that.

However, now I am also beginning to wonder if there was yet another influence that might have tipped the scales. I knew that I'd seen things about the asthma medication Singulair causing depression and suicide. I even remember asking him about that in the fall of 2007. He said that was interesting because he had used Singulair at one time but wasn't on it then and hadn't been in quite awhile. I didn't think to examine further, but due to some other research I was doing online, it occurred to me to find out whether other asthma medications possibly caused depression, and I found that they do. It is a well-known side effect of the steroid inhalers and other medications. Leif's asthma was getting worse and he was using them more often. We will never know, but now I wonder whether that might have been the thing that put him over the edge.

If you have someone in your family who is depressed or despondent, consider their medications as possibly contributing to that state of mind.

On April 10th, it will be three years since we found Leif's body, and we are no closer to knowing why than before, but I think I am more able to take a balanced view. I'm more able to smile at the photos of him that I treasure. I will never smile at this one, but it's part of the truth of who he was and how he felt before he died, and maybe someone seeing this might see signs in someone they love that look like this and find it possible to talk with them and help them. I did not see these photos until months after Leif died.

Doomed by a Gene for Depression?

Today is the 51st anniversary of my father's death. Donald Gerald Kundiger took his life by swallowing cyanide around 2:00 a.m. on February 10, 1960, in the bathroom of his home. I heard him fall and found him on the floor.

Forty-eight years later, my son, Leif Ashley Garretson, somewhere in the wee hours of the morning of April 9, 2008, put a gun to his head and took his life. I found him the next day.

Were both these men doomed from the start by a gene for depression? Or did they have it and it was "activated" by some trauma? so many unanswered questions, but some things they both had in common include brilliant intelligence, the ability to concentrate piercingly, excellent memories, winning smiles, thinning hair, brown eyes, an interest in music and world politics, a fascination with science . . . and death.

Do you think they resemble each other? I do. I think the resemblance is striking. It's hard to find them in a similar pose at the same age so that the comparison is easy, but these two photos show it. Leif would even more like him if he hadn't started shaving his head when his hair got thin on top. The one of my dad was taken on February 27 1954 when he was 41 years old. You would not believe that in six years he would be dead. The one of Leif was taken on May 31, 2003, when he was 28 years old. He would be dead five years later.

They each chose a method they knew a lot about. My dad was an organic chemistry professor and poisoned himself with a deadly chemical to which he had access. My son was a trained military armorer who had many guns and know how to choose a weapon and a type of bullet which would accomplish his task fully.

But there are startling differences. My father lived 13 years longer than Leif. Was it because he had a real career in a field he loved, a wife and four children, a home? Leif had none of those things. Yet in the end, they did not keep my father happy, healthy and alive. In the end, he chose to exit this life.

I wonder, sometimes, if all these years later anyone but me remembers the day of my father's death. His birth family members and cousins are no longer living. His other children were so young when he died they don't remember him, only the stories we tell about him. There are people who remember who he was, but I think I may be the only one who, in my heart, thinks of him on this day and on his birthday and still wonders why, even though, like in the case of Leif, I can name and tick off reasons. They are not sufficient for me.

I wonder if they would have liked each other. How sad they never had a chance to get to know each other. The surely could have matched their wits against each other.

I miss them both, these two men who were closest to me. I will always miss them and wonder why they could not live.

And I am thankful I did not inherit whatever terrible gene that took the joy from their lives, made them say they felt dead inside, made them want to end it all. How sad that I passed it on to my son.