Grief can sneak up on fallen troops' kids

LANCASTER, N.Y. — CamerynLee was 3 when her father, Lance Cpl. Eric Orlowski, a Marine Corps reservist, was killed in an accidental shooting during the first days of the Iraq war. Now 8, she is hungry for information about the man she remembers only in vignettes: Did he like chicken wings as much as she does? How about hockey? Was he funny?

"When it happened, I don't think she fully understood," said her mother, Nicole Kross, 29. "At that age she really didn't ask too many questions. It's all coming out more now."

In a grim marker of the longevity of the war, children who were infants or toddlers when they lost a parent in action are growing up. In the process, they are pondering a parent they barely knew, asking pointed questions about the circumstances of the death and experiencing a kind of delayed grief.

Families and bereavement counselors say media coverage of the war, dedication ceremonies and even school events — in which most classmates have both parents in attendance — all can heighten yearning for the missing parent. For young children, the flood of prickly feelings and questions often arises just as the surviving parent is moving beyond intense grief, sometimes with new boyfriends or husbands.

"As 3-year-olds, they have a pragmatic, concrete concept," said Joanne Steen, co-author of "Military Widow: A Survival Guide." "They'll say matter-of-factly, 'My daddy died.' But at significant points in their lives, they go back and revisit this, and it's really hard on the surviving spouse. They end up telling the story over and over again of how Daddy died at each stage."

Nevertheless, many parents work hard to keep the memory of the dead parent alive for their children.

CamerynLee and her mother recently looked at pictures of Orlowski, along with letters of condolence from President Bush and former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. Kross also showed her daughter a letter that her husband wrote from Kuwait City, which began, "What's up ladies?" He ended it by telling CamerynLee to be a "good girl for Mommy."

It was the first time that Kross had shown the letter to CamerynLee. "I think about him every day," the girl said. "I remember cooking with him. He was helping me flip the sausages. I remember him carrying me. I wish he was still alive."

In some cases, involving children who were very young or not even born when their mothers or fathers died, the surviving parents attempt to create memories.

Brandy Williams, of Waipahu, Hawaii, had a 3-year-old daughter at home and another on the way when her husband, Sgt. Eugene Williams, of Highland, N.Y., was killed by a car bomb in March 2003.

Williams has three videos of her husband, who usually was the one behind the camera, and the girls, Mya, now 8, and Monica, 4, have watched them many times.

"My worst fear is that they'll forget about him," Williams said.

Like CamerynLee, Mya clings to fleeting images of her father: frolicking on a playground at Fort Stewart in Georgia, being given toys. At first, Mya's understanding of her father's death was simplistic, filtered through a child's universe.

"When I told her that Daddy's in the sky with the angels, she said, 'Like the Care Bears?' " recalled Williams, referring to the popular line of rainbow-climbing bears. "So for a while we would say, 'Daddy's in heaven with the Care Bears.' "

But after attending a grief camp run by a nonprofit, the Tragedy Assistance Program for Survivors (TAPS), then-6-year-old Mya asked her mother exactly how her father had died. They were sitting in the car, and Williams told her as calmly as she could about the checkpoint and the bad person who pulled up in a car and the bomb that exploded.

"I'm looking at her through the rear-view mirror, and I saw her eyes get really big, and it was heart-wrenching," Williams said. "At the grief camp, she heard about IEDs and roadside bombs, and hearing how her daddy died was hard for her to take. The rest of the day she was withdrawn and quiet and said she didn't want to hear anything else. I started freaking out: Did I do the right thing?"

TAPS, a Washington, D.C.-based organization that helps military families cope with grief and trauma, estimates that at least 2,000 children younger than 18 have lost a parent in Iraq. It is unclear how many were toddlers or infants when the death occurred.

Grief counselors and sociologists who study military families say children, and surviving spouses, need a strong network of support after a member of the military dies, especially since many abruptly leave the cocoonlike environment of a military base.

"This goes back to the old axiom that if you don't take care of the mother, she can't take care of the child," said James Martin, a retired Army colonel and associate professor in the Graduate School of Social Work and Social Research at Bryn Mawr College.

"In that kind of trauma, it's really what the extended family and community and organizations can do to reach out and provide comfort to assist the primary caregiver," he said. "The younger the children, the more likely that kind of support is needed."

The burst of initial support is not always sustained, however.

Brandy Sacco, 26, lost her husband, Sgt. Dominic Sacco, of Albany, N.Y., two years ago when insurgents fired on his tank. Sacco was left with two young children: Anthony, then 3 months old, and Elyssa Armstrong, 4. (Elyssa is Sacco's daughter from a previous relationship, but Dominic Sacco, his wife said, cared for her as if she were his child.)

"I had people come visit me the first month," said Sacco, who lives in Topeka, Kan. "They brought me food, and then everybody was gone. I was like, OK, what do I do now?"

For Elyssa, now 6, the anguish of losing her stepfather resurfaced last summer when a new softball complex was dedicated in his memory at nearby Fort Riley. Dominic Sacco's parents flew in, and Elyssa's mother spoke through tears at the ceremony.

"That opened up a lot of things for Elyssa," Sacco said. "She cried the week before and the week after. She listens to sad songs more these past couple of months."

While fielding questions and providing reassurance can be tiring, it at least plugs a parent or guardian directly into the child's psyche. In that sense, a child's volubility can be strangely comforting. Williams now worries about Mya's silence, fearing her daughter is avoiding discussion of her father as a way to protect both herself and her mother.

After Mya's second visit to the TAPS grief camp this summer, Williams prepared for a new round of inquiry about her husband and his death. "I asked her if she had any more questions, and she said, 'No, I don't,' " Williams said.

"When she asks me and I start talking about it, my voice gets cracky and tears roll down my face," she said. "I don't know if it will ever get better."