Leif on a Sailboat

I'm always hoping to find a photo of Leif I've never seen, that someone will have taken one, or more, that was never shared with me before. It's a rare delight, but it happened today. Peter was scanning negatives of photos he took during our years on Puerto Rico and this was on one roll, along with many others I HAD seen before. We were out sailing in the waters on the northeast side of the island. In most of the photos, Leif has on his Oakley sunglasses (here around his neck) and a blue shirt, but here, only his sailor's gloves. It surprises me to see him wearing a cross, because he was not religious, and I have no idea whose tiny ring he has on a chain around his neck. They will stay mysteries. The lighting in the late afternoon sun makes his hair look red instead of dark brown, and it looks this reddish color in all the photos taken that day.

Leif inherited my love of being out on the water and sailing. I think he missed his calling and should have gone into the Coast Guard. But, the requirements were stiff and he wasn't driven enough to pursue it, though if he had, he might well have had the same physical problems he had with the Air Force and the Army. I think he would have been good in the merchant marine, but he didn't want a career that would keep him away from a family for months at a time. We sent him on a teen sail summer program when we lived in Puerto Rico and he loved it. He went on two cruises with us. I wish we could have taken him on more.

Finding photos like this is bittersweet. I love seeing them, seeing something new of him, but it also makes me sad that he is no longer with us. It still hurts every day, even after more than eleven years.

Eleven Years

Forty-two years ago, on April 10, 1977, it was Easter. We were living in Charlottesville, Virginia, and  two-year-old Leif was excited to be looking for his Easter basket.

Today, it is eleven years since we found his lifeless body on April 10, 2008.

We can look back on this beautiful child with love and longing, and gratitude for the years we had him.

We went to the cemetery today. In all these eleven years, this is the first time I have gone there without tears. They could have come, if I had let them, but I had my tears yesterday, and was glad that today, a beautiful sunny spring day, we could visit the cemetery without such wrenching grief, and talk about him with both sadness and happiness.

I am grateful for every picture I have of him. There is a Facebook meme going around today saying that you should make sure you are in photos because someday that's all your children will have of you. For us, except for a very few of his possessions, photos and memories are all we have of Leif. They are treasures.

Eleven Years

He would want us to remember him like this, or on his motorcycle, or in his SCA garb, or in his RX-8. He would want us to remember his intelligence, his sense of humor, his love of speed and weaponry. He would want us to remember the good times. So, on this day, when he departed from us eleven years ago, I chose a photo of him with that rascally smile and a stein of celebratory beer, taken at a happy family gathering on July 29, 2004.

As I searched for a photo for this post, this one seemed to best represent the adult Leif, but it also struck me that this shirt is the same one he wore in death, when we found him April 10, 2008. From a happy occasion to the depths of despair.

Eleven years, one third of the years he lived. Yet he is a part of our lives every day. He always will be.

Today Would Have Been His 44th Birthday

Look at this beautiful child. Hopeful, innocent, happy, vulnerable. Today would have been his 44th birthday, if he were still with us, but his last birthday was 11 years ago. He was here, at our house, for a steak dinner. I see a photo of him taken that night every day in my office. I miss that man. I miss this little boy.

This photo was taken in Hawaii on his 9th birthday. We lived there then. He was in third grade. He loved video games and going to the arcade in Honolulu with us on a Friday or Saturday night after a dinner and a movie. It was always a family activity, in Japan, in Hawaii. We'd all play. He loved Pac Man. For this birthday, he wanted a Super Pac Man cake, so he and I made one. The photo makes me cry, though I have been crying on and off all day. But i also makes me smile at the utterly homemade look of this cake, but he loved it, and I loved making it with him, even the unorthodox positioning of the candles. His idea.

I don't know why this day is so hard, or why it is still so hard after he's been dead almost eleven years. I guess the only way to understand it is that the greater the love, the greater the grief. I guess I should be glad that not every day is like this. Most days I can live a pretty normal existence. We can talk about Leif and our memories of him, usually without crying or tearing up. But not today. Today has been rough. It IS rough.

What I really wanted to do today was light his candle and look at photos of him, just "be with him" even if only in my mind. But real life with responsibilities and appointments crowds that out, and all I have are the moments of tears, a few minutes to find a photo to post, and write a few words.

I miss the boy. I miss the man. I miss my son. If he were here, I could wish him a happy birthday. Now, I can say it, I can write it, but where is he? No longer with us. 

A Photo of Baby Leif from Long Ago

He was so bright-eyed, so curious, so eager. He was so small here, and yet, for his age, so big. This was taken in the spring of 1975 when he was only about four or five months old. I don't think I've seen this photo since it was taken. I scanned it from an old slide that's been in a box for all those years. It's both a joy and a sorrow to see photos of him I didn't remember existed. So many memories. So hard to know he's been gone for over ten years.

Babies work so hard, trying to learn to control their muscles, raise the heads, roll over, crawl, walk, get things into their mouths. What ambition it takes. What makes them do it?

Leif did it all early. He walked at ten months. He talked early, especially for a boy. He grew fast. He took in his environment and figured things out at amazing speed.

Right now, I just want to look into those baby eyes and say, "I love you. How I wish I could tell you that again in person."

Leif's Political Views in 2004 Fit Today

From: "Leif Garretson"

Date: Wed Aug 18, 2004

My main concern with Bush, other than the fact that he is alienating our allies, [is that he] has made us even less secure by making even more of the world  hate us than already did. I considered myself a Republican previously because I am against big government and as a libertarian basically believe that the government that governs  least governs best. In past years I had a much greater fear that the Democrats would rob my freedom than the Republicans. But in the wake of the Patriot act I am far more concerned by the Republicans, which have become so radically right wing that it is beginning to resemble the beginnings of Fascism. If the Democrats  are allowed to get too much power we slip closer to becoming Soviet Russia. We have now tilted the other way and are leaning in the direction of Fascist Germany. Granted, we are not there yet, but the price of Liberty is eternal vigilance and if you wait till it gets 'too bad' it will be too late. It must be stopped now while it can still be done without a more dramatic measure.

I also find the war in Iraq unconscionable.  The idea that  we are protecting our selves by sending over a thousand Americans to die and 5 times that many to be wounded  along with 50,000 Iraqis at the expense of 4 billion with a B dollars a month to me is nothing short of criminal. Those man and woman, and those dollars, should be here at home improving the problems we have within our own borders. The war has accomplished nothing other than to make lot of Bush and Cheney cronies very rich and to get lot of far more deserving men killed.

This pattern is extremely disturbing, with our civil rights and privacy eroding to make way for a Government that more closely resembles the Mafia than a democracy. Combine that with laws that are nothing short of a prelude to Big Brother, a Republican media that tells us that to dissent is unAmerican and we should all just shut up and hail  the flag no matter how wrong those waving it are, and I am forced to conclude that the greatest enemy of American Freedom and Prosperity is not Al'Qaeda it is the Bush administration.

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I was looking for another file on my computer this evening and came across this email he wrote in August 2018. He wrote it to his brother and me in response to questions from a BBC journalist about why some Republicans were leaving the party. I hadn't read it in the intervening 14 years, but I think he would have a lot to say about the current government and state of affairs. He was a PASSIONATE defender of civil rights, freedom of speech, and the Constitution. At this point, he had only been out of the Army for a little over a year, where he was a machine gunner in the infantry. He was a gun owner who thought the NRA had gone way too far. I think his comments are so apropos to our country today. He would have a lot to say, an IMPASSIONED lot to say, if he were still with us, and he would be defending Colin Kaepernick. I frequently find myself wishing he were here to talk with.

The photo was taken about two months after he wrote the email, in Kansas.

A little More Alex Silliness

I continue to find old photos I'd never seen before as I scan my mother's slides, and even ours, which I must have seen at least once years ago. This one was one my mother took at her house on Christmas Eve 1997. Leif took her fuzzy black winter hat and put it on and was acting silly, as he loved to do. That thing he is holding is one end of a Norwegian cookie called a "Krumkake" that we traditionally had for Christmas.

A month later, he enlisted in the army. Although we continued to share Christmases together, this was the last one before he was gone for several years. He had been married for a couple of years at this time, and is wearing his wedding ring. He is also wearing the silver double-sided ax necklace we brought him from Greece. It was a favorite of his, and I still have it.

I miss his silliness, his laugh, his smile, his jokes.

A photo from long ago - Scheffau - August 1979

Last night I dreamed about Leif. I can't clearly remember the dream, unfortunately, but I do remember glimpses of following him and Peter W. down some stairs, of being in a strange house, where I was making up some kind of bed for him on the floor. In this dream, he was a young man.

I wonder how often I dream about him and don't remember the dreams. He lives on, in my subconscious, as well as my daily thoughts.

I've also recently found a few new photos of Leif, slides taken by my mother in her visits to us in Germany in 1978 and 1979. I've never seen them before, since she never projected them or made print copies. The photo at left is one of them, taken in the town of Scheffau, Austria, in August 1979 when Leif was four-and-a-half years old. That's him in the red shirt. I wish he were facing the camera. He seems to be trying to pull me toward something,

Scheffau was a favorite destination of ours. We went there in the winter for skiing on the Wilder Kaiser mountain, and in the summer for the beautiful mountain scenery. Since we left Germany in the summer of 1980 when Leif was only five years old, I doubt that he had memories of this, but we had such good times there.

Peter W. was looking through photos of Leif a couple of days ago and said, "We gave him a good life." Yes, we certainly tried to, and I think we succeeded when he was a child in our care, and Scheffau was a part of that. Life was not good to him as an adult, when everything he tried seemed to disintegrate.

There are so many reminders of him everywhere. Last week I came out of Walmart to find a gray RX8 parked just one space away from my car. Leif's was silver, so I knew it wasn't his, but it was so close it startled me.

The third weekend of July we had a family reunion in honor of my mother's coming 100th birthday. Every one of her descendants were there except Leif. This is now the third family reunion he has missed. It brings tears to my eyes that Leif was the only one not present. He would have enjoyed it, seeing his cousins and nieces and nephew, aunts and uncles. 

How Can It Be Ten Years?

Today it is ten years since Leif's death, ten years since we found his body, and ten years and just over two weeks since we have seen him alive. It doesn't seem that long. He is a part of our lives every day. We will always miss him and always be grateful he was our son, grateful that at least we had him for 33 years.

Yesterday I was looking for a photo on my computer and came across this one I don't remember seeing before. When I clicked on it and it opened full size on my computer screen, LIFE sized, it was startling, as though he were right there looking at me, with that quizzical amused look. How I wonder what he was thinking. Oddly enough, he was either wearing this shirt when he died, or one much like it.

I don't know who took this photo, only that it was taken with a Fuji camera (probably his), and I don't know where I got it. I do know it was taken in the house on 9th Street in Manhattan, Kansas because of the drapes and computer screens, so it had to be between 2002 and early 2005. I'm betting it was 2003.

Even now, as I write this, he has such a direct stare into the camera that it unnervingly looks like he is there looking at me. How I wish he were! I sit here in this room where he once had his computers and a sort of "living room" for himself, before he moved out to Tampa, and wish he were back again.

We have learned to live through it all, to appreciate him, what we have, learned to handle grief, which comes back, but is mixed with good memories, too, learned that we can feel many emotions at once, sadness and happiness together.

We went to the cemetery today. There were tears. There were also smiles. They say no one is truly gone as long as they are remembered. I disagree. He is remembered, but he is gone. What remains is not him, it is our memories. We keep him in our hearts and minds, always. 

It Would Have Been His 43rd Birthday

Yesterday was Leif’s birthday, the tenth since his death. If he were still with us, he would be 43 years old. What might have happened in those ten years? How do you celebrate the birthday of someone who is no longer with you? Probably most people don’t, though I imagine that they, like us, remember and miss their departed loved one on that day.

As I have written before, we decided years ago to try, when possible, to do something Leif enjoyed on his birthday. This year we Went to Bellows Beach, a place we spent many happy hours with our sons. Even after we moved away from Hawaii when Leif was only 11, we went back several times. The last time we took him there was in 1989, when I took this photo of him. How I wish he and his brother could have been with us again.