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.

Scars

We all have our scars, those injuries life has dealt out to us that heal over but leave their image and imprint on us forever. Sometimes they are things we would fervently wish that we had never experienced. Sometimes the experiences were worth the pain. Sometimes we learn from them. Sometimes we grow. But sometimes, they are just wounds that heal over but leave us irreparably harmed. The scars of our lives, whether visible or invisible all have stories, and all those stories are worth telling. How different they are than tatoos, which also may have stories, sometimes even ones from invisible scars, but which usually are meant as decorations on the body, not evidence of wounds. So, although I think Leif would have heartily approved of this t-shirt saying, I think that scars and tatoos are quite different.

Leif was fond of saying he had no regrets though in the end I don't know whether that was completely true. He also believed that it's the things we don't do we regret, not those we do. Both are popular viewpoints, but I am not so blithe in either assertion.

There are so many things that remind me of Leif, of his life, of the things he said, the things he loved, the places he lived and visited. I just returned from a Caribbean cruise that visited San Juan and St. Thomas. We lived at Fort Buchanan in San Juan for two years, during Leif's sophomore and junior years of high school, where he attended Antilles High School. I've written about him during those years on this blog. They were good years for Leif, years when he blossomed in many ways. I hadn't been back to Puerto Rico since we left in 1992, and each place I walked in Old San Juan was a place I'd walked with Leif many times. I remembered him there, remembered the times we took him with us out to dinner, the visits to El Morro fortress, the trip to the Bacardi Rum Factory, the trip to El Yunque Rain Forest, swimming at Luquillo Beach, sailing to Vieques, and so much more. How I wish I'd been able to take him back there again.

We visited St. Thomas, too, and I remember climbing the hill to have lunch at Blackbeard's Castle, the place I saw this t-shirt. The restaurant is now gone, replaced by a gift shop and a bar, but the view is still spectacular, now "graced" with statues of famous pirates. Leif would have gotten a kick out of the story of Blackbeard, a man Leif's size who was a giant in his time, when the average man was 5' 2". He wore 6 pistols across his chest and would put cannon fuses in his hair and light them, then jump on to a ship with his hair on fire, yelling at the top of his lungs, and scare the daylights out of the crew of his victim vessel. They say he had little need of his guns to intimidate them. Leif would have loved hearing that.

I think that Puerto Rico and the Caribbean was the closest place to a home where Leif really felt AT home, where, after an initial series of difficulties, he made good friends, had an active social life, fell in love the first time, and loved the climate and culture. I am grateful he had those years.

Finding Leif - April 10, 2008

The morning of April 10, 2008, I woke with a sense of dread. We still had not heard anything from Leif. Michael called about 7:30 a.m. to say that no one from Tally Ho Pub had gone to check on Leif and had he tried again to call him without success. Peter W. and I got dressed and ate breakfast with a sense of foreboding.

I chose to wear my "Worrier's Manifesto" t-shirt that I had designed for CafePress, the one I've written about here before that was created half as a joke, half as reality because I did worry about Leif. I thought if we found him alive and reasonably well, I would "give him a hard time" about making me worry like that and if we didn't find him okay, my worries would be confirmed. I also took a second set of clothes in a tote bag, thinking that I might encounter some kind of mess that I would have to conten with. Little did I know what I would find.

We drove to Leif's apartment complex in Tampa with fear in our hearts. I was so hoping that when we got to his building, we would find one of this vehicles gone and that would mean he had gone off somewhere for whatever reason, maybe with this phones turned off, but that was not to be. As we pulled into the parking lot, we could see both his car and his motorcycle parked there and that's when I got really scared.

Leif lived on the second floor. All the buildings in the complex were two-story. We went up the stairwell and knocked on the door, then banged on it and shouted for him to open. There was no response and the door was bolt-locked from the inside, so we drove over to the manager's office and explained the situation to her. She handled it well and was willing to let us into the apartment. She came over with a man from their maintenance department and stayed respectfully down on the walkway outdoors. It was a beautiful sunny morning.

The apartment was cool, the AC turned fairly low. The way the apartment was laid out, we came in to an area that branched off to the bedroom, bathroom and dining area. Beyond the dining area was the living room and to the right of the dining area was the door and pass-through to the kitchen. I looked in the bedroom and he wasn't there, nor was he in the bathroom. I went into the dining area, which he used for his computer desks, and saw that he wasn't there, either. His desk was neat, cleaned off, and his pistols were laid on one side of it along with a couple of letters. On the left were his wallet and keys, and, oddly, his income tax return, as though he wanted us to know he had filed it. His iPhone was in it's cradle. Seeing that his wallet and keys were there put a stab through my heart.

I could see from there that he was not in the living room, though his laptop was open on a wooden tv table, asleep.

Then I looked into the kitchen and my heart stopped. All I could cry was, "No, Leif, No! Oh, no, no, no, Leif" over and over again.

He was on the floor in a pool of blood, his head and shoulders propped up by the corner made by the wall and the refrigerator, his feet toward me as I stood in the doorway. I thought he had shot himself in the eye because his eye looked damaged. Thank goodness his eyes were shut.

A gun was on the corner of the countertop with the barrel pointing toward the doorway and the handle toward him. He was cold and still and there were no signs of a struggle, or even as though he had moved once he hit the floor. Along with some unspent bullets, the countertop also had a bag of baby carrots and some ranch dressing dip. It looked as though he had been standing at the countertop eating carrots and playing with the gun.

Peter W, could not take the sight. I had to keep him away. I wanted to get down on the floor with Leif and hold him. i wanted so badly to hold him, but I knew I couldn't, because I had to leave everything untouched and call the police.

I used his house phone to call 911. I reported his death by gunshot and said i thought it was a suicide. The 911 dispatcher said not to come to that conclusion yet, that there had to be an investigation, that we shouldn't touch anything and wait for the unit to arrive.

I went to tell the apartment manager that we had found him and called the police and then came back into the apartment.

I kept Peter out of the kitchen and we just stood there in the computer area and waited. When the sheriff's deputy arrived, she was kind but said we had to leave the premises until the investigation was finished. I guess I should have known that we couldn't stay while they did their work but it hadn't occurred to me that I would have to leave Leif there and wait. We went outside to our car. Soon the homicide team arrived. The detective told us we could go somewhere else to wait, but where else would we go? We stayed in our car. We were questioned at length about Leif and what we knew, but all we could tell them was that we couldn't contact him the day before and we had come to find him and the apartment manager had let us in.

They interviewed others in the complex but no one had heard or seen anything. One of the deputies called Michael in Atlanta and asked him what he knew. it seemed like we waited forever but it was probably about two hours. Then the body detail arrived. Two young guys went up the stairs with a gurney. I couldn't even imagine how hard it would be to get a dead weight of nearly 300 pounds lifted into a body bag and onto a gurney and take it down the stairs. When they showed up I knew I would not have the time I wanted with my son's body, that it was going to be taken away to the morgue for an autopsy and I wouldn't get to really say goodbye.

When they brought him out in the blue zippered body bag, I asked them to open it so I could hug him. They all refused. They thought it would be too traumatic. They didn't want me to see him, but he was my son. I wanted to see him. I wanted to touch him. I tried to convince them, and I know they all thought they were doing what was best but it wasn't best for me. I came to understand that I had to spare them the sight of him and of me hugging him goodbye, so I settled for just putting my hand on his head, on top of the body bag, and silently said goodbye to my son, tears running down my cheeks. I have regretted every day since then that I didn't get to hold him. Peter says it was just a shell, that Leif was no longer there. I know that, but it doesn't change my feelings. He was my son. A mother should be able to hold her son and say goodbye, and I didn't get to do that.

Someone said I could have gone to the medical examiner's office and seen his body, but that was not the same. I didn't want to go there, in that place, after they did an autopsy, and look at him then. I know what an autopsy entails, and I didn't want to say goodbye to my son's body in a morgue.

So, they took him away, and the detective told me she thought it had all the signs of an accident. She did not think it was a suicide. The questions began and they have never ended. She said she had investigated many gunshot deaths and that even people who were expert gun handlers had terrible accidents. I told her that Leif was a certified military armorer and knew gun safety. I could not imagine him accidentally shooting himself in the head . . . except that I could. I could see him playing some stupid drunken game, toying with the idea, putting the gun to his head, and maybe pulling the trigger just a little too hard. It was a new gun, unfamiliar to him, after all. He might not have known just how much pressure it took to fire it.

The sheriff's personnel who were there told us that they would either have to impound all of Leif's guns or we would have to remove them from the apartment, so we asked them to make sure they were not loaded and we would remove them. They also told us to make sure we got the motorcycle out of there and any valuables taken out of the apartment because a lot of people had seen him being taken out and would know the apartment was empty. It would be a theft target.

They told us they had not found a suicide note.

Once they were gone, I started scouring his apartment looking for some message from him. I looked at the call logs on his cell phones, the text messages. I checked his email. I looked for handwritten notes. I checked recent files on his computer. The only thing I found was what was on the "desktop" of his laptop computer, left open on that television tray table by his chair in the living room. There were two files open side by side. One was the sepia toned self portrait he had made with PhotoBooth on February 28, 2008. He looked inexpressibly sad. Beside it was the file of his final philosophy paper that he had written for the class he took in the fall of 2007. He had recently emailed the paper to me and we had discussed it. He had written it back in December 2007, so it was four months old. It was not like Leif to even be remotely interested in an old school assignment, so the fact that he positioned the paper right next to the picture seemed to me to be Leif's way of saying, "Look at me. This is how I feel. Read this. This is my explanation."

The paper was showing a specific passage on the screen. I assumed that meant he wanted me to read it, that it was the message he wanted us to get. However, no one but Peter W. and me can see what he meant. I will post the paper at the end of this entry so you can read it for yourselves. I will italicize the part he had on the screen.

We had no way of getting the motorcycle or his car to our house because I never learned to drive a manual transmission and Peter hadn't driven one for 28 years. He was in no emotional shape to try. I got on the phone in the apartment and started notifying Leif's insurance and finding out how we could get the cycle towed to our house. We had no idea how we were going to get the other things that needed to be removed immediately out of there so we called our neighbors, Bill and LaRae, and asked if they could bring their pickup truck and help us. To this day, I don't know what they had planned to do that afternoon, but they dropped it and came to help us. I know it wasn't easy for them to come there under the circumstances.

The sheriff personnel had tacked a sheet up over the kitchen doorway so that you couldn't see in there unless you pulled it aside. That was a good thing because we didn't have to look at the blood while we worked to pack things up. We only took the guns, electronics (like his computer and television), phones, and his mountain bike that was standing in the stairwell. We couldn't take any furnishings or clothing.

The towing company came and loaded up the cycle, and Bill drove Leif's car to our house for us.

On our way home, I used my cell phone to call my mother and tell her about Leif's death.

We were alternating among crying in wracking sobs, talking and trying to fathom how this could have happened, and trying to figure out what to do next.

At home we unloaded our car and Bill's truck, and put Leif's two vehicles into our garage. That evening, I had to start calling family members to tell them the tragic news. The hardest one to tell was Peter Anthony. We didn't know he was in Texas visiting his daughters, and calling his cell phone to tell him put a terrible pall over his visit with them.

There was so much ahead of us; planning Leif's memorial services and finding a place to have them, figuring out how to arrange for inurnment in a national cemetery, getting the rest of his belongings out of the apartment and selling his furniture, cleaning the apartment, notifying friends and family, and so much more. We were in shock and terrible grief.

It was three days before Peter W's 65th birthday and he had lost his son.

It was the most terrible day of my life.

Later, at home, I went through every file of his computers, every message and call on his phones, all the papers we found in the apartment, but we never found another clue about why he did it. We were left with our speculations, the philosophy paper, and two letters turning him down for personal loans, which he had received not long before he shot himself.

Tonight I lighted the two special candles made for Leif's memory, the one from Darlene and Marcus that has pictures of Leif and things he loved around it, and the beautiful one with the poem on it that Peter W's cousin Wolfgang and his family sent from Germany. I think to myself that the soul must be a little like the flame of a candle. You know it is there. You can see it and feel its warmth, but it has not substance. You can pass your finger quickly through it and not even feel it. You see its light, and the light pushes away the darkness, but it has no solid form. Leif's soul was a bright light, but it has gone out, at least in its earthly form, and I will never feel its warmth again.
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Leif Garretson
12-11-2007
Final Examination

In addressing the questions presented for this final examination it seems to me necessary to touch at least briefly on each, as with such general examinations of philosophy no single inquiry exists isolated from others.I shall focus on the the first and last questions relating to metaphysics and morality and the relationship between goodness and happiness. However, in order to address these questions, particularly metaphysics, we must examine what we can truly know. When considering morality as it relates to metaphysics there is one underlying question which is of paramount importance. That question is the existence and nature of God. The reason that this is of paramount importance is that the existence or absence of God, as well as the nature of God, can have great bearing on what one considers to be moral.

For the faithful, for whom God's existence is generally self evident, morality is often defined within the confines of sacred doctrine or scripture. A Christian, for example, who accepts the existence of God and believes that his nature or will can be known via the scriptures will have a moral code that might very well differ from an atheist, and agnostic, or even a non Christian believer. There are many acts which are considered sinful according to doctrine but which might be considered perfectly moral in their absence. Contrarily there may be action which would seem immoral in the abstract, such as killing a non believer, which can be justified under some religions.

If we are to consider Descartes and the skepticism of all that we perceive there is little that can be known. While Descartes himself seeks to rationalize the existence of God, as do Anselm and Aquinas, all such attempts to know such things are merely illusory and even if successful might suggest the existence of a God yet fail to provide evidence of his specific nature. To further explain this statement, while it might be possible to convince one's self, rationally, of the existence of God, such existence still does not further prove a specific divine will. Thus even if the aforementioned examinations of God's existence were not so lacking in their strength one could only conclude that God exists and not that his will is congruous with any particular sacred doctrine. The result of this realization is that one still cannot, even if he acknowledges the existence of God, accept the teaching of religion unless the moral codes contained therein are consistent with one's own rational determination of what is just and good. Thus ultimately the existence of God is irrelevant to morality as we cannot place any credence in the varied and often contradictory teaching of the myriad religions. God's existence can only be thought to matter if we assume without cause that he is concerned with our actions or intentions. If we do make this leap of faith and conclude that God is concerned with our action and intentions then we must decide how best to act and intend. Given that the notions of religion as stated above are often disparate and contradictory as to what God favors as good, we must logically discount them as flawed and unreliable and therefore must seek our own council on what is good or just.

There is the primary significance of Metaphysics as it relates to morality. First if God exists, which can hardly be convincingly demonstrated, and second what is God's will or expectation of us? The latter of which has yet to be demonstrated in any rational fashion which is not refuted by an alternate religious hypothesis. Given that neither Christianity, nor Judaism, nor Islam, nor Buddhism, nor Hinduism, nor any other doctrine of faith can be demonstrated with credibility to be more right or correct than another we must conclude either, that such an absence of clear guidance means that God is unconcerned with out actions or intentions, or that he has placed within us a moral compass which is innate and which surpasses and supersedes the religious doctrines of men. Thus our own conscience and the degree to which we follow it is the true measure of human virtue. Those who subscribe to religious doctrine would have us alter our action contrary to our own reason or conscience based on fear or punishment or damnation. I would argue that this is flawed, for if such things were evil in the eyes of God their corruption would be self evident as well and thus such threats of damnation would not be necessary. In fact, true virtue is doing what you believe is right regardless of the repercussions in this life or the next. As Socrates said in Plato's Apology: “You are wrong sir, if you think that a man who is any good at all should take into account the risk of life or death; he should look only to his actions, whether what he is doing is right or wrong, whether he is acting like a good or bad man.” (Cahn p.34)
Now before moving to the Fourth question I wish to focus on, it is relevant to make a note as to the third. Namely, if after millennia of enquiry Philosophy has failed to produce any definitive answers to the big questions, what is the point of further philosophizing? The simple answer is that that action of doing so develops the conscience. It causes us to examine our own actions and intentions and decide for ourselves what is truly just and right.

Given the above, the final question of: what, if anything, is the connection between being happy and being good? is relevant. Does goodness result in happiness? Such a question is difficult to answer as one cannot know the mind of another. Is a wicked man happy? A good and just man might speculate that because it would damage his soul to do evil thus the evil man must also suffer such damage. But one cannot know this. Similarly, as we cannot know if God exists, nor if he cares as to our natures, whether there is any penalty for those who are purely predatory and self serving. Ultimately, much if not most of Philosophy, is based on assumption. Epistemology fails to tell us what we truly know: without such knowledge Metaphysics is pure speculation; without a metaphysical framework Ethics is based purely in convention and the assumption that others are like us. While this is surely assumption it is utilitarian in purpose and must be assumed if are we to gain anything from our conjecture. Therefore, assuming that others are like beings, that they are thinking creatures capable of empathy and compassion, it is reasonable to assume they are also possessed of conscience.

In the context of conscience intentions are far more important than actions. As Immanuel Kant stated: “There is no possibility of thinking of anything at all in the world, even out of it, which can be regarded as good with without qualification, except, a good will.” and further “A good will is good not because of what it effects or accomplishes, nor because of its fitness to attain some proposed end; it is good only through its willing, i.e.,it is good in itself.” (Cahn p.984)
Ultimately, if we are to examine the relationship of happiness to goodness we must admit that these judgements are subjective as what one considers good is not universal. Actions which we might consider to be evil might be considered to serve a greater good when viewed from another perspective. Thus the subjective question of whether the will of the actor was good is paramount to its objective result. If that other acted in good conscience then regardless of the objective appearance of an act we must acknowledge that the actor may be of clear conscience and therefore free of the torments of guilt. Relating to good will and action I refer to Socrates' assertion in Plato's Crito “Do we say that one must never in any way do wrong willingly, or must one do wrong in one way and not in another? Is to do wrong never good or admirable?” To which Crito agrees it is never acceptable. Socrates in particular is a portrait of such conscience and virtue as he is happier to accept execution than to suffer the torments of guilt were he to act against his conscience in interest of self preservation.

What we must conclude of this is that barring some defect of consciousness which might leave the conscience impaired, such as the afflictions our legal system might accept as incompetence to judge right from wrong, that a person possessed of a conscience will be tormented if they have acted in such a manner that is unconscionable. That it should be impossible to be truly happy if you have achieved pleasures in the absence of good will. While said pleasures are undeniably a source of great enjoyment the weight upon the soul at the guilt in attaining them may preclude true happiness.

Again this is assumption. We cannot know the conscience of others nor be sure that they could be tormented by guilt such as we. Nor can we know if they have a conscience or are afflicted with some defect that destroys it. Similarly we cannot know if that defect has a bearing on their souls. Further, returning to metaphysics, we cannot know if that weight of guilt, nor conformity to conscience will sway our interests in the eyes of God or if God even exists or cares. Ultimately, all that we can do is be true to our own conscience and seek our own happiness in our own goodness and if we believe that there is a God and that he cares how we act, that we have acted in a way that is consistent with the only moral compass on which we can rely.

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The top photo of Leif was taken on April 10, 2004, exactly four years before he died. I think my mother took it at an Easter dinner at her house in Manhattan, Kansas, the year before Leif and Peter W. moved to Florida in March 2005. How sadly he changed in those four years.

The photo of Leif's kitchen was taken after I cleaned it. I was surprised at Leif's apartment. Leif was no housekeeper, no homemaker. Periodically he would decide to clean the place up, but generally it was a mess, except for his computer desk, which he usually kept reasonably neat. That area was his pride and joy. When we got to his apartment on April 10, 2008, I was surprised that it was, for him, relatively neat and clean (not neat and clean by my standards). There were not dirty plates, cups and glasses standing around, no beer bottles except for one on the kitchen floor, from which he may have been drinking. He had loaded and run the dishwasher and taken out the trash. I suppose he did most of this during his day off. That, again, doesn't seem like a man planning on suicide. Why would he care of the dishes were washed and the trash removed? I think he died when he made a sudden decision, or perhaps there was a horrible accident.

The sepia toned photos was taken by Leif with his iMac's PhotoBooth program. He took a lot of shots at the same time and used a variety of effects on them. the photo was taken on February 28, 2008, not long after he had been notified that he would not get his GI Bill benefits and dropped out of school.

Shirts for Worry and Joy

Leif's Dad and I have worried about him for years, particularly since he was so unhappy living alone, in the army in upstate New York, depressed after coming back from service in Bosnia to find his health destroyed by asthma, his marriage over, and his army career in shambles, also from the asthma, and the final blow, his finances ruined. Leif considered suicide then but overcame his despondency, decided to fight for his future, and ended up getting medically retired from the army due to the asthma.

When he came back to Kansas from the army, he was a depressed, morose and broken man. We worried about him immensely. I tried to help him find something to engage his mind, since he seemed to be drowning in misery, by suggesting he start writing a book. He had become so engrossed in science fiction like the Ender series of books and shows like Battlestar Galactica and the movie "The Matrix" that he had some good ideas.

He did start writing a novel about a badly injured veteran of the war in Afghanistan who tried to plug himself neurally into the internet in order to be able to experience directly. It was a first draft and a first try at writing, but it had some real possibilities, and beyond that, it was therapeutic, as I had hoped. I am sad that I can't find the computer files for that book on his computers. I know he had it on an old Gateway laptop that he sold several years ago, but I thought he had transferred it to another computer. He had a laptop stolen in July 2006, and I wonder if the files were on that. To my knowledge, he hadn't printed them out, and I didn't find any printed copies in his things. If there is anyone reading this blog to whom he might have emailed this story for their opinion, and they still have it, I would be grateful to have a copy.

I also got Leif to start working on consolidating his debts and paying them off, and get back into college. Over time, he began to heal and his mood improved immensely. By the time he graduated from Kansas State University, he had a sparkle in his eye and seemed to be enjoying life again, was involved in SCA, spent time with friends, and had hope in finding a good job. How different his life might have been if he had found a good career and a woman to love who would have stayed with him and made a home for him instead of breaking his heart. He had terrible luck in so many ways.

I had been talking for years about the possibility of creating a "worriersanonymous.com" website and finally actually reserved the domain name. Partly it was a joke, and partly it was because I am a worrier, particularly about Leif. I worried about him through his first periods of financial and emotional difficulty as an adult, through his heartbreaking experiences with military service, through his depression at the end of it. When things got better for him, I rejoiced, but there were still many things in our lives for me to worry about.

After he went through the heartbreak of his failed romance in Kansas and moved to Florida, he again seemed to be pulling out of his depression, only to be knocked down over and over again. In the three years he lived in Florida, he had many disappointments at work, three accidents (one that totalled his Dodge Stratus, one minor fender bender with his Suzuki motorcycle, and one with his Honda motorcycle that badly damaged his collarbone last July), was robbed twice (his apartment once, his Suzuki motorcycle stolen another time, endured a painful surgery, and went through another painful relationship. He insisted he was "fine" but I could see in his eyes that he was not.

I didn't start the worriersanonymous.com website, because I couldn't figure out how to make it pay for itself, but in May 2007 I created a CafePress site with a crying-frowning face logo that was a parody of the smiley face and a "Worrier's Manifesto" that was way over the top. It was partly for fun, and partly it was a reflection of my own worries, not only about Leif, but primarily so. I ordered the pink "Worrier's Manifesto" t-shirt above and got a kick out of wearing it. I showed it to Leif and told him why I did it. He laughed.

Last summer, I hoped he was on the way to a better life. He had made some decisions I hoped would have good results. Then in July 2007 came the motorcycle accident that put him in the hospital for the surgery to screw a 9 inch steel plate to his collarbone with many screws. He had no idea how painful it was going to be.

I remember wearing the t-shirt and with tears in my eyes begging him not to ride a motorcycle any more, because I did not want to either bury my son or face taking care of him as an invalid. I could see that my plea affected him, but not enough to stop him from riding. We also had IM discussions about it, and he told me that when he was riding was the only time he felt completely alive, happy and free. I finally told him that I didn't want to take that away from him, but that I still worried. Leif liked to ride like a demon, exceeding any reasonble limits on speed. I worried about him every single day. I kept my cell phone near me at all times, in case I needed to go to him if he were injured.

Meanwhile, I also worried about all of his firearms. He pooh-poohed those fears, too, accumulating more of them and getting a concealed carry license. In the July 2006 robbery, his guns were stolen, but he replaced them.

In November 2007, he told me in email that he was feeling purposeless, searching for a reason to exist. I continued to worry, tried to stay in touch every day, take him out to dinner, find things to discuss. I had more reason to wear my Worrier's Manifesto t-shirt.

He still seemed depressed at Christmas and his birthday in January, but as always, insisted he was "okay." I should pressed him more, insisted he needed help, but he probably would have denied it as he always did.

In February he seemed to be happier, fascinated with the Obama campaign, predicting the Obama would win, and taking an interest in other new things. I was so happy to see him seeming happier that I created another CafePress shop I had been thinking about for months, "Find Joy" (which is on CafePress as FindJoyInspired) and ordered the second t-shirt above. Peter W. liked seeing me in that shirt, partly because it was pink (he likes me in pink), partly because he liked the rose, and partly because he liked the sentiment.

We had two really great last evenings with Leif. In February we met him in Brandon at Sam Seltzer's Steakhouse for dinner. He rode his bike over from his Tampa apartment. We had a good meal and a lively discussion. I remember feeling so glad to see him happier.

He had a setback at the end of February when the VA GI Bill program at the University of South Florida, where he was a part time student using his GI Bill benefits, said the classes he had enrolled in were not the ones he needed for a degree program and cut his benefits, too late for him to withdraw and get his tuition back. He was angry about it, but we didn't realize how much he had counted on that money to stay afloat.

The last time we saw him was at our house for dinner on Easter, March 23rd. He had been a bit reluctant to come because of the cost of gasoline, and I told him I'd pay for it. Little did I know how bad his finances were, and he wasn't about to admit it to us. Since we had rescued him from debt twice before, I'm sure he didn't want us to know he was in over his head again . . . again from purchasing things he couldn't afford to make himself feel better when he was depressed.

We had a nice dinner on Easter, but we had no idea that he had applied for personal loans to try to pay his bills, since he was deeply in debt and couldn't manage. That day we saw him, he was still hoping he would get a loan and be able to somehow make it all work. We had a good visit, a really happy one. I'm grateful that we had good times together at Christmas, New Years, his birthday, and these last two times for dinner, but I'm sad we didn't know what was really going on.

These two shirts are emotionally intertwined with this whole story. They represent my worries about Leif and my hopes for him, and by extension, for me, to find a new hope and joy in life.

On April 10th when we went to Tampa to his apartment because no one could get an answer from him and he had not showed up for work, I was terrified that something had happened to him. I was afraid he was dead, but I tried to hope it wasn't so. I chose to wear the Worrier's Manifesto t-shirt, partly because I WAS that worried, and partly so that, if I were somehow to find him alive and well, I could tease him about my worries. That was not to be. My fears were all too true.

I have not worn either of these shirts since the day Leif died. I don't know whether I will ever wear them again. The Worrier's Manifesto t-shirt is too inextricably associated with finding Leif dead. The Find Joy t-shirt seems to be a mockery. Perhaps someday I will find joy in my life again, but that is a long way off, and this shirt was created too specifically because I felt, on the day I created it and first wore it, that Leif was finding joy, too. Perhaps he was . . . but like every time in his adult life, it did not last.