All the Reminders in Just One Day

Although we live with reminders and photos of Leif all over our house every day, they are part of the fabric of our lives that we are used to and familiar with, so it's now usually the unexpected or less frequent reminders of him that catch us unawares, and they, too, can be everywhere.

Last Friday we went to Walmart to get my glasses frames replaced after they broke. While I was standing in the optical department waiting, I was looking around at the display of frames and my eye caught a display of high tech, high fashion, expensive sports lenses of the type Leif might have gravitated to and I unexpectedly felt tears come to my eyes.

Even recounting this brings tears to my eyes. Why? I was never there in that store with him. This particular store was built after he died. It was just the remembrance of how he favored "cool" glasses, whether regular daily wear ones, sunglasses, or the kind of sport glasses he wore when riding his motorcycle.

From there we drove in to Tampa, and on the way, we were passed by a motorcyclist going like a house afire. Because Leif rode motorcycles and had accidents, I feel protective of cyclists, but I am also horrified at those that ride like he did, like a demon. There was the second reminder.

As we took the expressway exit off I745, Peter W. was remarking that something had suddenly made him feel sad, that he always thought of Leif when we were driving to Tampa and he couldn't believe it had been almost four years since he died, and I said, "If feels like we should just be able to drive to his apartment and see him." Yes, it still does, and it still feels like a knife in the heart when I realize I can't, that he isn't there and he never will be.

We saw some "cool" cars on the way and remarked how much Leif would have liked them.

When we got to the BX (base exchange, a department store for you non-military types), I saw someone that could have been his brother . . . tall, shaved head, goatee and mustache, about thirty-five, and wearing jeans and designer glasses. This man was probably three inches taller than Leif, but even at that, I had to look again to be sure it wasn't him.

We went into the ITT (Information Tours and Travel) office and they were advertising tickets for concerts by Van Halen and Rammstein. Leif would have loved to go to both of those, though they would have been out of his price range with tickets well over $100 each.

At home I read an article about the Mars opposition (positioning of the planet Mars) and an observatory program about it he would have liked.

By now, on Monday, I'm probably forgetting more things that occurred on Friday to remind us of Leif and make us bounce from everyday routine to sadness to reminiscing to sadness to just being busy. There are so many things we associate with him and always will.

The photo above was taken in Germany in the fall of 1977 when Leif was two-and-a-half years old. My little rascal. I miss him so!

His Lifelong Love of Guns

As I've written before, Leif displayed an amazingly consistent set of interests throughout his life. So many kids go through fads of interest and drop them. He didn't. From a very early age he was captivated by vehicles and speed, all kinds of vehicles. He always loved them. He collected toy cars, boats, planes, rockets. He built models of them. He drew them. And, when he was older, he test drove them and photographed them.

As he got a little older as a child, he became interested in science fiction moves, James Bond movies, and the weaponry that both used. Most little boys who are allowed to have toy guns play with them, and those that aren't allowed to have them often pretend with a "hand" gun or improvised toy guns made of sticks and other materials. Leif had toy guns, but by the time he was in the primary grades he was also making his own, and that's another thing he continued off and on throughout his life. He drew them, and then constructed them out of wood. Sometimes, when he was a kid, his dad helped him.

When we lived in Japan, they sold very realistic "toy" pellet guns. Our boys each had one or two, and they enjoyed pretending they were action heroes. Sometimes they'd get dressed up and pose, and even their dad enjoyed doing that with them. This was much more a pastime of Leif's than his brother's, though.

I think Leif loved both the design and mechanical beauty of guns, not just the power and glamor he saw in them (the glamor coming from the James Bond movies, of course). He must have had fantasies of being the gun-toting hero.

This photo is one of a series that Peter W. took of Leif posing on the lanai of our townhouse in Hawaii. I think it was probably taken in 1984 or 1985. He's holding two "guns." The larger one in his right hand is one of the guns he and his dad made, and the one in his left hand looks like it might have been a pellet gun. He's wearing his beloved black Members Only jacket, black pants, black gloves, and his cool sunglasses.

Leif started wearing "cool" sunglasses at an early age, here about 9 or 10, and graduated to Gargoyles and then Oakleys, which he saved up for and paid for himself. I would never have spent that kind of money on sunglasses! But the cool factor was always important to him, and he would gladly pay for it.

I like his hair the way it is in this picture, but it was combed over and styled like this just for the picture. On a daily basis, he wasn't interested in bothering with that.

It's hard for me to know how to think about Leif's lifelong love affair with guns because he used one to shoot himself, but I know he was passionate about them, enjoyed them, loved shooting them, and was incredibly knowledgeable about them. If I had known what would happen to him, would I have prevented him from having toy guns as a child? I don't know. I doubt that it would have done much good. We never had real guns in our home, and he was brought up with a very strong anti-violence ethic. He never had real guns until he was grown and had left home, and he wasn't irresponsible with them. So many millions of American own guns and don't misuse them. He was passionate about the Second Amendment, too. There was no way to know or predict that he would turn one on himself. Even though we worried so much about him, even though we knew the possibility of suicide with a gun existed, we worried far more about the possibility of a terrible car or motorcycle accident.

I wondered, when he died, whether I would be able to look at these photos and enjoy them, knowing what eventually happened, but I have come to the point where I can remember his posing like this and be glad he enjoyed himself and that he never turned a gun on anyone else.

He Lives in Dreams

A few days ago, I awoke remembering a dream about Leif. It's rare that I remember my dreams, and rarer still that I dream about Leif. In fact, I can't remember dreaming about him since early 2008, when I was so worried about him but dreamed that he was about seven feet tall and immensely strong, and that something wonderful was going to happen for him. It must have been wishful thinking, hope. I remember telling him about that dream and him laughing because I said he was built like "The Rock."

The dream I had a few days ago was quite different, though equally positive. I'm glad that if I was going to remember a dream about him that it was a happy one, with him looking young, healthy, slim and strong. He was dressed in some snappy suit, more stylish than traditional. It was a charcoal gray silk suit. Unlike some men, Leif liked to dress up, enjoyed wearing a tie.

The dream was so like him because he was happy and eager to show me this fantastic new "cell phone" he had. It wasn't like any I've ever actually seen. I wish I could have taken a photo in my mind so I could show it to you. There's something about it that makes me think of the realtime email discussion that he was having with his brother, Peter Anthony, me, and some others, on the evening before he died, about what would make the ideal watch. This gadget combined many of the attributes that Peter A. had suggested, plus more. It didn't look remotely like a phone, but actually more like a very stylish, very smooth calculator, with a sort of brushed metal case, glass screen similar to an iPhone, and some kind of trigger mechanism that reminded me of a pistol, but it wasn't a gun . . . though Leif certainly could have been the one to figure out how to combine that, too.

He was eager, happy, energetic.

It was only a dream, but he lived in it, and I will treasure that time to "see" him once again.
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This photo of Leif in his "famous" purple suit was taken in our back yard in Fort Buchanan, Puerto Rico around February 1991 when he was 16 years old. Of course he is also wearing his signature Oakley sunglasses.

Leif and El Morro - San Juan, Puerto Rico - Ages 16 and 17

One of the places in San Juan, Puerto Rico that we would all remember is the fortress of San Felipe del Morro, which people just call El Morro (the rock). It is a huge Spanish Fortress dating back to the sixteenth century. Approaching it via the expansive park grounds is beautiful but doesn't give one the full scope of it's enormous size. Near it are a famous cemetery and the School of Fine Arts (Escuela des Artes Plasticas). You can see El Morro in the background of one of the photos of Leif and the art school in another one, and I've included a photo of El Morro I took from the ship and one of the art school taken on the cruise I went on last week. The other photos of Leif show him on the walls of El Morro, a place he found very impressive. I wonder if visiting it, and some of the other places we visited in his childhood and youth, helped to further his interest in belonging to SCA and his fascination with swords.

Leif was sixteen in the photos of him at El Morro in 1991, and he's wearing his trademark Oakley sunglasses and the current fad in clothing at the time. The guys pushed their pants up to just below the knee and their socks down to the ankles and showed off their hairy calves. They were also fond of "muscle" shirts. The other photo, with El Morro behind Leif across the bay, was taken in 1992 at the time the tall ships sailed into San Juan harbor to celebrate the 500th anniversary of the discovery of America by Columbus. He's wearing another fad, a tie-dyed shirt that changed colors with heat and sunlight. he was seventeen.

Leif and His Gargoyles - Greenbelt MD - June 1990

On that same trip to the Virginia-Washington DC area when we visited my sister, Lannay, Leif had a good time playing with his younger cousin, Jacquie, who was five-and-a-half years old then. He was great with little kids and had been popular with the neighborhood kids at Fort Sheridan, where we had just lived, as "Big Al."

The lower photo shows Leif with his first pair of expensive sunglasses, an item that was to become a "trademark item" with him. These were Gargoyles, which I think he was introduced to by an Arnold Schwartzenegger movie. He spent a mint on them, something we certainly didn't understand.

Later, when he decided that Oakleys were more stylish and "cool" he gave the Gargoyles to either his dad or his brother.

These photos were taken in June 1990 when Leif was fifteen years old.

Leif with his "famous" Oakleys - Puerto Rico 1991 - Age 16

You'd think that after all the times I've mentioned Leif's Oakley sunglasses I'd have a whole series of photos with him wearing them, but I don't. I found another one with them hanging from his neck, and I think there are a couple more, but not many.

This was his first pair, and he accessorized them with different colored top bars, nose pieces and ear pieces, all in neon colors. As a grown man, he still went for stylish, expensive eyewear, but his most recent pair of Oakleys were more conservative.

Leif generously gave his "hand-me-down" cool stuff, sunglasses or techie stuff like cell phones, to us. When he "graduated" to Oakleys from Gargoyles, he gave the Gargoyles to his dad, but I don't think they were quite his style and he didn't wear them. Then Leif bought a new pair of Oakleys for Peter W. for either Christmas or birthday, and he still has them, though he rarely wears them.

As a high school student, like he was in this photo at age 16 in Puerto Rico, Leif had an allowance that was supposed to cover entertainment, incidents, haircuts, school lunches and the like. It was based on a budget with enough extra for some fun and entertainment like movies with friends.

It was all spelled out in a "contractual agreement" which we both signed. I made contracts for all kinds of things with my sons. (Leif told me recently he thought I ought to write a book about it because he thought it was a good idea.) I liked the formality of it and having terms clear, none of that, "Well I thought you said," or "I thought you meant," or "You never said that."

Leif knew very well what his allowance was supposed to cover, but if he wanted to buy something and hadn't saved up the money for it, or hadn't gotten gift money for his birthday or something else like that, he would simply go spend his allowance on it and do without all the rest for the remainder of the month, even if it meant he had to go without lunch or skip some fun with friends. He got what he wanted and was willing to put up with the inconveniences of doing without other things. And he figured out how to save more money by not cutting his hair, just letting it grow long, to that luxurious hair he had as a high school senior.

The trouble with that was that I think he tried to continue that same way of spending as an adult and it didn't work with bills to pay. (Though he continued to save money on haircuts by shaving his head.)