This Time of Year

This time of year, each year, and undoubtedly for the rest of our lives, we know we are nearing the anniversary of Leif's death. Another year will have passed without him. It's a hard time for me, for us, in some ways, because we are so aware of his absence and the anniversary brings up all the questions again. It's not that we haven't faced them the rest of the year, just that anniversaries seem to focus the mind more fatefully upon the loss of our son and how it occurred.

It's a puzzling time for me, as I think over what it was like between Easter 2008, the last time we saw him, and April 10, 2008 when we found him, a mere 18 days, but the difference between life and death, between hope and despair.

Since the last time we saw him, he was in good spirits, relaxed, conversational, in love, and in between, we had contacts that seemed normal and good (unlike some of the hopeless and angry communications I'd had from him between November and early March), we were feeling hopeful for him. He seemed happier than he had in a long time. I don't think that was because he had made up his mind to kill himself and was at peace with the decision, because he was busy making plans . . . to get a job in and move to Orlando, to court the woman he had fallen in love with.

The last text messages I got from him were on April 2nd, a week before he died, when he rescued a huge turtle from the road. He cared enough to do that.

The night before he died, April 8, 2008, he was having a lively real-time email discussion about several subjects, including "the ultimate watch," with a bunch of about five of us.

His brother sent the link to all of us for a YouTube video and thought it was stunning. I replied asking whether he understood the German and Latin, saying it was dark and rather occult. I translated some of the lyrics.

Leif responded that he thought it sounded, "kinda like Rammstein but more techno, less metal. Either way I want it."

Then he began to concentrate on finding out the name of the band and where he could get their music. Leif loved music and bought a lot of it.  The last messages he sent, at 8:19 p.m., was that he was contacting iTunes to ask them to get the music from this band so that he could purchase it. He wrote:

Found it. It is a German group called "E Nomine." Here are some of their  videos on youtube. Hard to find the music.  iTunes does not have it. I  just put in a request for iTunes to get it. Amazon does but it's about $35 an album."

With that he sent more YouTube links. Then he disappeared from the conversation. That was the last email I ever got from him. I learned later that his friend Michael had contacted him and wanted to go out together, so Leif spent the rest of the evening with him.

It's still a complete puzzle to me that a man who was conversing like this and contacting iTunes to try to get this music could be planning on taking his life. If he was, why bother with iTunes? If he was not, what made him do it?

These 18 days, and especially April 9th, will always remain a mystery to us.

Sometime near the anniversary of his death I like to go to the cemetery. Peter W. probably would never go if it weren't for me. He always says, "Leif is not here. Leif is with us. He is in the blog." Or something like that. I don't ask him to go with me, but he doesn't like me to go alone, so this year, as in past years, we have combined the drive over the St. Petersburg with another less sorrowful activity and went to a rock, gem and bead show.

This time, as we stood there touching Leif's stone, which is symbolic only, of course, but still draws us, he said again, "We tried to give him everything he needed to succeed in life. We gave him a good family, love, a good home. He was blessed with good looks, intelligence, height. We gave him an education. What went wrong? What was within him?" We will have those questions forever.

We were struck by how many more of the niches had been filled since the last time we were there, about three months earlier. The WWII veterans are dying rapidly, but there are also many Korean and Vietnam War vets inurned in the past three months.

This time, I also saw niches for two young men who were born a year after Leif and served in the Persian Gulf and Afghanistan. They didn't live much longer than he did, dying in 2012, only 36 years old. I don't know how they died, whether from wounds in battle, illness, an accident, or even a suicide. I feel sad for their parents and family. I do know how they feel.

We also noted that the national cemetery must have a new policy to allow special messages to be engraved on the lower part of the stones. We didn't see any of these until some time after Leif was inurned, and they are poignant and meaningful. Peter W. wondered whether we could still have something added to Leif's stone. I spent some time reading them. Some of them were, "Querida Padre" (beloved father), "Dancing Forever," "Forever Free At Last," "He loved God and Country," "Married 50 Years," "Love of my Life." Spouses can be inurned together. There was even one that read, "Go New York Giants." One that has me wondering was, "He who walked softly."

Usually when we go, there are few others around the grounds, unless it is Memorial or Veteran's Day. That was true on March 31st, but while we were there, one other car pulled up. A man got out and went to one of the newer stones. I had never seen someone else do the same thing I do, particularly a man. He put his head on the stone, his hands on it, and he sobbed his heart out. I felt so sorry for his grief. Something in me wanted to go and just hug him and tell him I understood, but I didn't do it. I didn't do it because I didn't know him or how he would take it, and we are all so alone in our grief. I also thought that perhaps he would not want me to call attention to his private agony.

Perhaps I did wrong to walk away. Perhaps he needed a hug from someone who understood. I will always wonder whether I made the wrong choice. I have almost four years of grief behind me. Whoever it was that he was grieving died not so very long ago and he is only just starting on this journey. I wish him well. I wish them all well. And I wish Leif were here.

The Day Leif Died - April 9, 2008

The day Leif died, April 9, 2008, we had no idea anything was wrong until just after 1:00 p.m. I got call from Rodney, his supervisor at Humana where Leif worked. He said Leif hadn't showed up for work that morning and he was unable to reach him by phone or text message. He was worried, he said, because Leif was always reliable and always called in if he was sick. He knew Leif rode a motorcycle and knew of his accident the previous July. He wondered if something had happened to him.

I was concerned, but not scared at that point. I told Rodney I would try to find Leif and would ask Leif to call him, or I would. I was startled to get his call, though, because never in all the years Leif worked had I ever had a call from a supervisor of his, or anyone at the places he worked, saying he hadn't shown up. I was the emergency contact in Leif's record and that's why Rodney called me, a good supervisor trying to find out if his team member was safe, not just be mad at him for not showing up.

I then started calling Leif, over and over, on all three of his phones and sending text messages to the cell phones as well. He preferred text messaging and we did a lot of that. Here are the messages I sent to his iPhone:

"Are you ok? Your supervisor just called. Said you are several hours late for work and has heard nothing from you. Rodney XXXXXX. XXX-XXX-XXX. Call me. I am worried!" (Xed out phone number and last name for this blog.)
1:01:27 PM

"Where are you?"
1:07:17 PM

"Called Rodney back and said i couldn't get in touch with you. He said he was worried because you ride the bike on days like this. Hope you are ok and aren't jeopardizing your job. Worried!"
1:14:52 PM

"More and more worried! Where are you? Asleep? Wrecked? Hurt? Drunk? Run away?"
1:36:55 PM

"Hard to believe you would still be asleep on a workday even if you missed your alarm. My anxiety level is rising rapidly. Call. Text. Something!"
2:20:47 PM

"Wilson said he would let me know if he heard from you and he hasn't called so I guess you still haven't made it to work or called him. It's almost 3 pm."
2:56:07 PM

"Wondering if I should call your apt manager to check on you or drive there. But don't know how I could get in."
2:56:10 PM

"Please, son, let me know you are ok."
3:34:20 PM

"You in a coma? Know what day it is? Time?"
3:51:30 PM

"My imagination isn't doing me any favors. Please let me know what's up!"
4:24:41 PM

"Going to work out and swim. Taking this phone. Wonder if i should be driving there instead. I hope there is some good explanation for this that doesn't involve injury or worse."
4:28:43 PM

"In my overwrought imagination, I can only think of 4 reasons you can't reply with a txt msg. Lost both phones. Badly injured. In jail. Dead. Unless of course you are so pissed off at me you want me to worry like this, but I can't figure out any reason for that to be so. Gad, it's been over 4 hours since your boss called. Nothing. I'm scared."
5:07:22 PM

"Do I need to start calling hospitals? Would they even tell me if you were there with our privacy laws?"
5:44:28 PM

"Hell, I don't know where you are, can't even get into your apt to check on you. I'm going to start calling hospitals and the police if I don't hear from you by 9 pm."
8:20:53 PM

"If you are there and able to respond, please do. Talked to Michael. He said he was with you drinking til 3 am but left you ok. He hasn't gotten an answer from you, either. He is going to send someone from Tally Ho over to see if your car and bike are there. If they are and you don't answer the door, Michael wants them to call 911 and break in."
11:46:59 PM

I stayed in contact with Michael until after 1:00 a.m. He tried calling Leif numerous times. He was in Atlanta for a trade show, had gone there that day. He was frantic, too. We both were waiting for someone from Tally Ho, the pub across the street, to go check, and someone there said they would, but they never did. At that point I went to bed, resolved that if I hadn't heard from Leif or found out what was happening, I would drive to his apartment and figure out some way to get in if both vehicles were there. I don't know what I would have done if only one were there. That would have meant he had gone somewhere with the other one.

I've asked myself a thousand times why I didn't go to his apartment that afternoon and the answer is always the same. I thought that either he was not there, or if he was, he was deliberately not communicating (which had happened before), in which case he would not like or welcome the melodrama of his mother driving 30 miles to check up on him, or if he couldn't communicate, it was likely too late. Neither Peter W. nor I wanted to really contemplate whether Leif could be dead at home. It made no sense. After 5 p.m. no one was in the apartment management offices. I tried to call that evening and couldn't reach anyone.

I did call hospitals that night. None of them had him listed as a patient. I called the sheriff's office thinking there might have been an accident report, or that he might have been arrested for something. I even called the sheriff's offices in the counties between here and where D., the one he had just fallen in love with, lived, in case something had happened to him on the way there or back.

I had thought he might go to visit her on his day off and even stay overnight. I know he had wanted to do that. Maybe he had been too tired to drive back, was asleep with his phones turned off. Maybe he thought he had gotten Wednesday off, too, and had his schedule mixed up and was spending time with her.

I was hoping that one of these things was true, but my mind was telling me that something was terribly wrong. I envisioned him off the road somewhere after a cycle accident, not found yet. I envisioned him very ill with some awful asthma attack. I even envisioned him in a drunken stupor, but I never imagined that he had shot himself in his apartment, not during that day. I began to fear his death by the time I went to bed but I tried to keep hoping I would hear from him and he was all right.

As it turns out, it wouldn't have made any difference if I had gone to Tampa and gotten into his apartment somehow, because he was already dead long before Rodney tried to contact him about missing his shift.

Sometime between 3 a.m. when Michael and Jaime left and 8 a.m. when he was due at work, he loaded the new Springfield XD pistol and shot himself in the head in the kitchen of his apartment. We were told he died instantly. I hope that is true.
-------------------------------

The eerie photo above was one or a series Leif made of himself with a gun using the PhotoBooth program on his iMac. He experimented with the sepia and negative effects. This one is just how he made it except that I deleted the apartment background. Somehow it seems appropriate, ghostly, for remembering the day of his death. He actually made the photo on 11-22-07 at a time when he was depressed and felt his life had no purpose.

An Overwhelming Load - Leif - Sun City Center, Florida - May 13, 2007 - Age 32

Leif's adult life was strewn with disappointments and stresses, beginning with the financial problems he had in college, the health problems and misery he experienced because of them in the army, the loss of his marriage, and the resulting depression. There was a brief respite and happiness during the time following his college graduation in May 2003 when he was working and met J. and was in love. Then he plunged into the depths of depression again when she left him in March 2004. He continued to work in Manhattan, Kansas but was dying on the vine and wanted so badly to move away to Florida.

We moved him there in March 2005. He found a job with Amscot which he thought would lead to a good career with a good salary. He was doing well and had become an assistant manager until a jealous colleague made problems for him and his hopes ended. He went to work for Alltel, which gave him a bit of longevity because Alltel purchased Western Wireless where he had worked in Kansas. It was call center work again, which he was good at but it wasn't good for him because it tied him to a cubicle on the phone for eight hours a day. He gained weight from being sedentary. His shifts were often afternoon and evening shifts which meant it was late when he got off work and not a good time to get any exercise. Then he would stay up even later gaming.

Later, Alltel changed their pay policies so that his pay fell by 19% and he looked for another job. He found one in the same complex working at the Humana call center as a customer service representative for Medicare clients. He learned a lot about the American health system and it incensed him. He became truly angry at the lack of care for people without insurance and the denial of services to some that did, the cost shares and deductibles that made it hard for even those with health insurance to afford care. He was an advocate for a national health insurance system.

Meanwhile, life in Florida was not what he had dreamed of. In addition to the everyday need to work and take care of the mundane business of life which makes life even in a place like Florida pretty much like elsewhere, his asthma continued to cause him problems, and love continued to elude him.

Sometime in 2005, he had the minor accident with his prized new Suzuki and scraped it all up. (He replaced all parts to pristine new condition.)

December 23, 2005, Leif called me (I was still in Kansas) to tell me he had been in a car accident in Tampa. His black Dodge Stratus Coupe had been totaled. Luckily, he was not seriously injured, but the accident did damage his neck and he had to use a traction device. It caused him pain from then on.

In July 2006, his apartment in Tampa was broken into, the locked door to his bedroom kicked in, and most of his valuables were stolen, including cell phones, computer, and guns. He and Donna lived on the first floor and the thieves had come into the place through a sliding glass patio door in broad daylight in the afternoon. Supposedly no one saw them. The place was a wreck. Donna was scared out of her wits, with strangers out there who could get in at will having guns they could easily use on them.

The apartment complex didn't fix the broken lock on the patio door or provide any security, nor did they repair the broken bedroom door and left exposed nails sticking out of the door frame, for 90 days. At that point, Leif had enough and decided to take his insurance money and break his lease, thinking he could do so because the premises were literally not safely inhabitable. If I had been in his shoes, I would have been both frightened and extremely upset. The apartment management continued to hound him for the next year and half, claiming he had no deposit (we had proof he did), that he had caused damage he didn't cause (he had proof in the form of photos he took when he moved in of the damage they said he caused).

Leif moved to a different apartment complex to a nicer apartment but even there, he was not immune to thieves. On May 4, 2007, at 12:36 PM, Leif Garretson sent this text message to me, "When it rains, it pours. Motorcycle got stolen last night." That was the end of the speedy yellow Suzuki.

Then in July 2007, he broke up with Donna and had the more serious motorcycle accident with the Honda cycle, and the collarbone surgery.

He went back to school (continuing to work full time) in the fall of 2007 at USF in Tampa, which wasn't far from his apartment. He wanted to major in philosophy, and wanted to use the rest of his GI Bill benefits, partly for the education and partly to help out his finances. He enjoyed being on campus again but it was hard to juggle the classes with his work schedule, especially when the work schedule would change abruptly. By November, he was becoming very lonely and depressed, without purpose, as he wrote in the email to me that I posted yesterday.

At work, he had been interviewed for promotions several times. Each time he would get his hopes up that he would get a supervisory position, and each time he was not selected. He had a lot of good ideas and leadership ability and wanted a chance to put those skills to use, but each time his hopes were dashed and he remained tethered to the phone in a cubicle.

I had been trying to get Leif to look for a different kind of job but because he lacked focus and didn't know what he wanted to to with his life (other than things that were out of his reach like being a race car driver or pilot), and because he was depressed, he didn't have the drive or ambition to work on seeking other jobs. He did finally apply for a call center position with USAA, a company he would very much have liked to work for, and was interviewed. However, when the told him the salary range, he told them he'd have to have the top of the range because otherwise it would be a lower salary than he was getting at Humana. He was not offered the job, and that was another disappointment.

Then, in February 2008, after he had already paid the tuition and could no longer get it back, USF pulled his GI Bill stipend and he fell into a financial hole he couldn't fill. He never told us about the condition of his finances, just that he was "broke," but Leif was ALWAYS "broke" so we didn't know it was really far worse. We had helped him out several times before and would have done it again, even though he owed us a lot of money he couldn't pay back, but I don't think his pride would let him tell us or ask for money, since he had insisted all fall that he was doing fine. I had worried about the way he was spending money and he said he had sold some belongings and was using insurance money for other purchases. Little did we know what was really happening.

Then in March 2008, a month before he died, he tried to get personal loans to cover his debts, and couldn't get them. He tried to get his credit limit on his credit cards raised and couldn't. He had run out of financial options. The only ones he had left were to declare bankruptcy or to come to us or a friend for money, and I don't think he was willing to do either.

Leif was a proud man, a man who believed he should show no weakness, a man who always put forth an image of a guy with the cool car and the cool bike and the cool gadgets. I don't think he wanted to give up that image.

So he came to April 2008, when he was again in love, with D., but didn't know how he was going to pay his phone bills, his credit cards, his car and insurance payments, his rent, his internet service, or how he would pay for gas to go see her. He was going to work to support his debts and his car and his apartment, without even money for good food. He must have felt it was not worth going on.

Leif had pulled his life out of a tailspin before, not once, but several times, and he believed he was strong and could handle anything. On July 5, 2006, the day of the apartment robbery, he sent this text message to me:

July 5, 2006 at 11:29 p.m. Leif Garretson wrote, "I am OK. You know me. I am the rock. Also the good thing about my life of having once been so dark as to make me want to end it, in overcoming it means there is nothing I can't handle. After that everything else is just a new adventure or challenge. I am so much stronger now. This did not even raise my pulse. Just a speed bump. The car is still running great. I see it almost as a good thing, it will allow me to move out of here."

It was that email and that he told me that he hadn't killed himself at Fort Drum because he knew what it would do to me that gave me hope that he would pull out of his depression, because he had before, because he was "the rock." I hoped he was. I wanted to believe that, even as I worried that he was more vulnerable than he admitted.

That was the way he portrayed himself. Strong. Could handle anything. Maybe at that moment he could. When did he pass that point?

-----------------
This photo was taken May 13, 2007, Mothers Day, the last time I saw him on a Mother's Day, at our home.

Leif & His Motorcycles - Kansas to Florida - May 2003 to November 2007 - Ages 28-32

Leif owned three motorcycles. The first one was the maroon and yellow Yamaha that he purchased in Manhattan, Kansas, moved to Fort Drum, New York when he was stationed there in the Army, then back to Kansas from 2001-2005 and then to Florida. It was that one he had the accident with at Fort Riley, sliding out on gravel when coming down a winding road from Custer Hill.

In the summer of 2005 in Florida, he was living at our house with his dad and spending his earnings from Amscot on dating, booze and a new motorcycle, the yellow Suzuki he's riding here. This was one fast crotch rocket and he loved it.

After he moved to Tampa, the Suzuki was stolen from his apartment house parking lot one night and with the insurance money, he bought a used Honda touring cycle. This was a very different kind of bike. I was surprised he made that choice, and I think he was, too. He said riding in the position required for the crotch rockets was hard on his back and knees, not comfortable for longer rides. He liked the position on the Honda but maintained he was "safer" on the Suzuki because its speed allowed him to avoid accidents. So he said. He refused to consider that speed might be dangerous. He was supremely confident in his riding ability. I told him it wasn't his skills that worried me . . . it was the other drivers on the road, and that turned out to be the problem when he was cut off by the white Cadillac not a mile from his house, when he wasn't even going over 45.

Leif took a lot of photos of his possessions, especially his cars and bikes. He took the photos of the Yamaha and the Honda that I'm posting here. He also took the photo of himself looking into the Honda bike's mirror. That one was taken on November 21, 2007, just a couple of weeks after he sent me a very depressed email about how life held no meaning. He was a very depressed and unhappy man at that point. Ironically, I took the photo of him on the Suzuki on November 7, 2005, two years earlier, when he was still hopeful. The Yamaha photo he took May 5, 2003.

It's hard to imagine Leif without a motorcycle, even though I didn't want him to have one and pleaded with him not to ride after his accident in July 2007. It was sad, though, to think of his joy being taken away, no matter how much I worried. Here is a bit of our text messaging about it, but only his side as mine were not recorded.

July 14, 2007 at 5:54 PM Leif Garretson wrote,

"July is not a good month for me. Crashed bikes twice in July. Had house robbed in July. Probably other bad stuff, too. July is like a country song. 'I crashed my bike. I crashed my other bike. My house got robbed and my best friend's wife died.6 And the car breaks down.' "Next year I am going to stock up on movies, food and beer and not leave the house."

Sadly, he didn't live long enough to see another July.

July 18, 2007 at 4:28 PM Leif Garretson wrote,

"Saw bike. Barely scratched. Just looked up FL DOT stats on helmet use. In 2005 riders wearing helmets were 22% more likely to be killed than riders without them. (You mean INFJ. I am INTJ.) 8,147 bike crashes vs 268,605 total auto accidents. 441 bike fatalities or about 5%. 3533 total auto fatalities or about 1.3%. Bikes more dangerous but . . . not by an enormous margin. And that includes all the young stupid trickster and street racers out getting themselves killed."

8:25 PM,

"Well, I certainly see your perspective. I would give you mine but I am sure that would be pointless as anyone who rides will tell you if you don't do it, you don't get it."

8:59 PM,

"There is more guilt than that? Seems rather abundant already. However, you should know I am immune to guilt. Always have been. Guilt doesn't factor into my thought processes. Only logic. Logically, I know I will not be happy if I am not riding. Logically I know you will not be if I am. All that remains is deciding which of two undesirable and diametrically opposed options is the most acceptable. I am really sorry to upset you, mom. I don't mean to. I really don't get upset. I really am the cold, unfeeling bastard I am accused of being. If I decide to stop riding it will not be because I feel any certain way but rather because I rationally decided that it was the most just and logical course of action. Weighing my strong desire to ride vs your strong fears. I don't share those fears. I honestly don't experience fear. I weighed the risk vs reward and accepted the risks years ago. In that regard nothing has changed. All that has changed is that continuing what I have been doing will cause you pain. My decision is now simply one of compassion vs desire. Whose desires do I put first, yours or mine? I have not decided. I have not decided if I am willing to sacrifice one of the things that makes my life worth living to save someone I love worry. Were it up to me I would keep riding until I am physically unable. I know people that have lost legs and still ride with prostheses. I haven't decided anything just yet. I figured if the bike was totaled I would not replace it but it's barely damaged. From my perspective you are overreacting. It is understandable but to me this was a minor mishap and just a further reinforcement against my fears. I see this totally different than you. I see 3 accidents and none of them even required hospitalization. I see statistics which show that after 6 months of riding in the saddle of a new bike the odds of an accident are very slim and the odds of serious injury or death much slimmer. I could quit riding and get killed in my car. I am never as happy at any point of the day. Never feel so alive and free and content as when I ride. There is not part of me that wants to give it up. If I were to do so it would be a sacrifice on my part to make you happy. So guess what, the guilt goes both ways. So who gets to sacrifice? One way or the other, one of us is going to have to accept something undesirable to accommodate the other. How does one decide which sacrifice is most in the interest of justice?"

9:36 PM,

"I am not sure that is a fair comparison. Maybe it is, but I don't think riding is as universally destructive as other addictions. It's risky but no form of gambling has odds as GOOD as riding does. Again, it's about risk vs reward. If I am willing to risk death riding, do you realistically think financial ruin or bankruptcy would deter me? Hell, I have faced that danger since I moved out. I face it every day whether I ride or not, so losing money or being poor is no deterrent at all. Been there, done that. Got the bank charges to prove it. I don't fear death and I don't fear life."

There is a lot of bravado and male pride in those messages, and I think he believed them, but in the end, something put him over the edge, and the slide began with the accident, continued through a lonely fall, and reached a tipping point when he had no financial options left, though we didn't know it. He would not tell us.

On April 2, 2008, just a week before he died, he sent the last text messages to me that I recorded (he sent email through April 8th). He still cared enough about the life of a turtle to stop his bike on his way to work and save it's life. He sent:

"I rescued a turtle today. "
Sent on Wednesday, Apr 2 2008 at 4:12:08 PM

"Where was it?"
Received on Wednesday, Apr 2 2008 at 4:12:44 PM

"In the road by my work"
Sent on Wednesday, Apr 2 2008 at 4:13:08 PM

"What turtle habitat is near there?"
Recevied on Wednesday, Apr 2 2008 at 4:14:02 PM

"I Dunno but it was a pretty big turtle"
Sent on Wednesday, Apr 2 2008 at 4:21:30 PM

"How big?"
Received on Wednesday, Apr 2 2008 at 4:23:36 PM

"Shell like a dinner plate. Maybe ten inches long and five thick"
Sent on Wednesday, Apr 2 2008 at 4:25:01 PM

"Looked like a walking speed bump"
Sent on Wednesday, Apr 2 2008 at 4:25:47 PM

He saved a turtle, but he didn't save himself. I miss him so!

Leif & His Mom & Dad - Miami, Florida - March 20, 2002 - Age 27

Today we went to the spring FunFest in our community. It was a gloriously beautiful day with things to see and performances to enjoy (including me performing as part of the German American Chorus). It should have been fun, and sometimes it was, but sometimes I was sad. I couldn't help remembering that last year when we were at FunFest, Leif was alive, and he and I were sending each other text messages. I sent him cell phone photos of silly vehicles. It was hard to go through the day remembering that he is no longer there.

And last year at this time, he was newly in love, seemed so happy. I was happy for him. I created that "Find Joy" t-shirt because I was really happy. And then, less than three weeks later, he was dead. How could that be? How could he go from being so lonely and depressed the previous November (2007) to happy and in love March 15, 2008 to suicide on April 9th? My mind still can't really make sense of it, even though I can go through and list all the factors.

The next few weeks will be hard, are hard, coming up on the anniversary of Leif's death. I have to come to grips with the realization that he has really been gone a whole year. It seems impossible. He smiles out at me from my computer screen, those deep brown eyes so full of intelligence, mischief, fun . . . or melancholy.

This photo was taken in March 2002, almost exactly seven years ago, during one of our first trips to Florida to look for a place to settle. We were having dinner at a Thai restaurant in Miami. Leif loved South Beach, and he happened upon a group of RX8 owners who invited him to come to a club with them. He was taken with the Miami Beach nightlife and I think he would gladly have moved to Miami, though we were less enamored of it. He was so alive, wanted so much to move to Florida, yet in six years he would be dead.

I wish I could send him silly photos. I wish we could share a dinner out again. I wish I could give back his possessions and see him using them. I wish I could take time back a year and find a way to help him live.

Hopes, Dreams - Faults - Accidents - Regrets

On July 5, 2006, Leif sent this to me as a text message, after his apartment was robbed in the afternoon in broad daylight, the thieves making off with $7,000 worth of property including computers, cell phones and guns:

"I am OK. You know me. I am the rock. Also the good thing about my life of having once been so dark as to make me want to end it in overcoming it means there is nothing I can't handle. After that everything else is just a new adventure or challenge. I am so much stronger now. This did not even raise my pulse. Just a speed bump. The car is still running great. I see it almost as a good thing, it will allow me to move out of here."

Leif seemed to absorb the many difficulties he faced with equanimity, and often to turn them into something better. In this case, he moved out of an apartment complex which he had come to hate and see as a den of crime into a better one, replaced his property with newer things, and went on with his life, as if it hadn't affected him, though it had.

He had to break his lease to move out, and although the apartment complex had done nothing to secure his (and his girlfriend's) safety after the break-in, or even repair the damage to the inside of the apartment, they came after him for a lot of money. The complex was owned by one of New York's worst slum landlords, according to newspaper accounts. It took two-and-a-half years of contesting it, but they finally seem to have ceased trying to collect.

At the new place, barely seven months later his beloved Suzuki motorcycle was stolen from the parking lot.

During the same period, he went through job and personal difficulties and faced his continual money problems.

The two self portrait photos above show clearly the decline in his mental and physical health. The earlier one was taken in March 2003, when he was about to graduate from Kansas State University and had finally climbed out of his deep depression after his marriage breakup and his problems with the army and his asthma. This was the picture that he liked enough to make it the profile photo on his MySpace page.

The later photo is another self portrait he took in the parking lot at his work, November 21, 2007, ten days after he sent me this message:

"No things are not bright. Rather dark actually as I struggle to find purpose. ... I miss having a purpose. A reason to keep trudging on despite the fact that each day holds far more difficulties and irritations than it holds joys or pleasures."

It was that message (and the rest of it) that made me so worried about Leif.

At that time his quest for love was failing, no matter how hard to tried to find someone. His quest for a career was not going as he hoped and planned. He was in pain from the motorcycle accident on July 12th that put him in the hospital for the operation that screwed a 9 inch metal plate to his broken collarbone. He was spiraling downhill. I was extremely worried about him.

Then end of hopes and dreams is a terrible thing, a life-killing thing, but he seemed to come out of it. We had good visits with him in January, February and March, but he continued to exhibit one of his faults . . . denial of problems, both financial and emotional.

Leif had many wonderful qualities, a brilliant mind, a great sense of humor, incredible physical strength, but he also, like all of us, had faults. He knew what some of them were, and listed them in the quote I put on yesterday's post, but there were some he denied to himself and others.

Leif could be inconsiderate and uncommunicative, aloof and evasive. As his mother, I had to learn to deal with those qualities without becoming angry and punitive. If Leif didn't want to answer a question, he would simply ignore it or give evasive answers.

When he came back from the army in May 2001, he lived with us briefly over the summer until he got admitted to KSU and found an apartment in August. He was welcome to have dinner with us any day he was there, but all we asked was that he let us know if he was going to be there so we could have enough food and not be waiting for him if he wasn't going to show up. But that was apparently too much to ask. He wouldn't do it, and I had to ask him every day whether he would be there. Sometimes he was willing to commit himself, sometimes not. He didn't want to commit himself in case something better came along, but all we asked was that he let us know two hours before dinner.

That's just a small example of the ways in which Leif could be inconsiderate or rude, and yet when he was there with us, we invariably enjoyed it!

Leif liked to drive fast, very fast. He could ill afford to pay for a speeding ticket, but he said the price was worth it to drive the way he wanted to. He had no regard for speed limits.

He was an excellent driver, and would have liked to be a race car driver, though that wasn't a possibility for him. We worried that he would end up disabled or dead because of an accident in his car or motorcycle.

He actually did have an accident with nearly every vehicle he owned. Although they wre not his fault, there is a good possibility that he could have avoided at least some of them by slower, more defensive driving.

The first car he had was a used Mazda RX-7 that we bought for him when he was in college. He loved that car. At an intersection on the west side of Manhattan, Kansas, another car didn't yield the right of way and to avoid it, Leif slid the RX-7 into a light pole. There was luckily little damage, but the insurance money allowed him to have the car painted.

His first motorcycle was a yellow and maroon Yamaha. He loved tearing around on that, too, but he was coming down a hill on Fort Riley, a winding steep road, and slid out on some sand at the edge of the road. The resulting crash did little damage to the cycle, but the jeans on Leif's leg were scraped right off of him and his leg had a terrible case of "road rash." He didn't have medical insurance and didn't want to pay for a huge hospital or doctor bill, so we went home, nearly in shock, tried to wash out the sand and gravel himself, and hoped it would heal. He didn't tell us about it until days later when it had started to scab over and heal, and although he did have some infection, he luckily got better on his own.

When he graduated from KSU in May 2003, he needed a car. His old one was past repairing except for someone who wanted it as a project car, and he sold it to a man and his son who wanted to work on it together and fix it up with parts from a junk yard. We knew he didn't have the money for a new car, nor a way to pay the payments on one because he didn't have a job yet, so we offered to buy a car for him and he could pay us back once he had a job.

We got him a sleek, black 2002 (new) Dodge Stratus. It was a great-looking car and he enjoyed driving it, though Leif would ALWAYS head to all the dealerships in any town where he lived and try out cars to see what else was there. It was a major pastime with him.

When we moved him to Florida with us in March 2005, we shipped the Yamaha cycle (which he later sold and bought the Suzuki), and he drove the Stratus down. I think it was December 22, 2005 when he called me to tell me he had just been in an accident in Tampa, again at an intersection, and his car was badly damaged and he had a hurt neck. The car turned out to be totaled, and although we had paid cash for it, Leif still owed most of the money to us. His neck continued to cause him pain for the rest of his life.

He got the insurance money, used it to pay off his Suzuki bike loan, which was at a higher interest rate, and promptly found a beautiful used Mazda RX-8, which he got a loan to buy. He had a hard time making those payments after he moved into an apartment in Tampa, the car and insurance payments took about $700 a month out of his pay! He never had an accident with the RX-8, a car he truly loved, but when he died and there was still $16,000 owed on the loan, we had to let the bank repossess it.

In May 2007, after the Suzuki motorcycle was stolen, Leif took the insurance money and purchased his last motorcycle, a 2002 Honda VTX 1800C. It was a completely different style from his two previous "crotch rockets," being a touring bike that was more comfortable to ride. He had it only two months when on July 12, 2007, he was on his way back to work from lunch on 56th Street in Tampa when a white Cadillac cut in front of him. In order to avoid a collision, he "laid the bike down," and him with it. That's when he got the broken collarbone I mentioned earlier, along with nasty road rash on his hands and bald head. He said he would always wear gloves after that, but still resisted wearing a helmet.

Within the space of the three years he lived in Florida, Leif experienced three vehicle accidents, a love affair gone wrong, problems with one job, restructured pay scales at another that made him have to leave for a better paying job, disillusionment at the third one, an apartment robbery, a stolen motorcycle, a motorcycle accident that ended up causing him a lot of pain, and financial problems that finally got out of hand.

yet like most men, Leif denied depression, even when he was clearly depressed. That's why that email admitting that life was "rather dark" concerned me so much.

I can't look at the difference in these photos and not see that he had become depressed. There is hope and even innocence in the earlier photo. There is a kind of grim sadness and disillusionment in the latter.

Leif use to insist to me that he had no regrets. I had a long talk about this with him once before we moved to Florida. I asked him whether that was true even after all he had been through (much of which I haven't written about in this blog) and some of the choices he made, but he insisted that he wouldn't have done anything differently, that he had no regrets.

I don't know whether he still felt that way when he died. I didn't have that kind of conversation with him again, but knowing Leif, he would probably have still insisted that he would not have changed his actions or his choices even after experiencing the outcomes.

But who knows? Was that just a big front, male defensiveness? I don't know. Maybe it's possible, that despite the heartache and physical pain, he would not have been willing to give up the experiences he had.

I wish he had still been as strong as he said he was on July 5, 2006. He would still be here.

Political Prediction from Leif about a Historic Candidate

I'm a night owl, so for me, it's still the historic night that Barack Obama accepted the nomination of the Democratic Party. I wish Leif had been here to see that, to watch his speech.

Leif was an Obama man. On February 19, 2008, he sent this text message to me:

"I am gonna bet that Obama is going to win and beat McCain by the biggest landslide since Nixon."

It's sad he won't be here to find out if his prediction comes true.

He was caught up in the campaign. It was one of the reasons I had begun to worry about him a little less. I liked to see him fired up about it, passionate. He loved to discuss it. He actually voted in the primary, something I had never known him to do before.

When Hillary Clinton was still ahead in the polls, he even wrote a long letter to her, explaining why she and Obama needed to stay civil and not begrudge each other, because he saw the dream ticket as the two of them.

This photo was taken in December 2007 when he was with us for Christmas. I wanted to post a photo taken close to when he sent his opinion about the race to us.