Those left behind
War widows find ways to cope, but there's really no cure for the pain
Deb Kiser knew something was terribly wrong--felt it in her gut and in her heart--hours before she would receive the official word. The fear was so strong that she ran from it early in the morning on June 24."I knew that the notification officer was not supposed to come before 8 a.m. I knew something bad happened," she says. "So I left. I wandered every stupid aisle in Wal-Mart."
When Diane Rooney saw two officers in Class A uniforms step onto her porch, she made a futile attempt to silence the messengers of death. She tried to slam the door in their faces.
Amanda Parkerson didn't want any of the details about her husband's death when the casualty assistance calls officer came to her door. "That's too much to take from someone who didn't know my husband," she says. She'll wait until his unit returns and she can hear the story from his friends.
Lisa Vance was afraid that on a bad day, a comforting look from an acquaintance would send her into uncontrollable tears; on a good day, a smile on her own face would cause whispers that she wasn't grieving properly. She largely stayed out of sight.
Body count. As tragic as an injury in the line of duty can be, it is not the ultimate sacrifice. So far, about 1,200 soldiers have been killed in Iraq and Afghanistan. According to the Department of Defense, just about half of them were married. The department does not have figures on the number of children who have lost a parent. Every military spouse knows what it means when, one somber day, there's a soldier at the door. News of a death is delivered in person; of an injury, over the telephone. So for as long as a loved one is deployed, they dread the knock more than the ring.
The military, initially criticized for not being prepared to support and counsel survivors, has taken steps to update the care, counseling, and benefits available to spouses and children.
For Kiser, the military system worked well. Even so, it wasn't enough to help the stunned family make the shift to a single-parent household. For that, the people of the Wisconsin towns of Cleveland and Sheboygan stepped in with an overwhelmingly helping hand.
Kiser and her children, Ali, 13, and Mark, 11, live in Cleveland, a 2-square-mile town of 1,300 on Lake Michigan in rural Wisconsin. Deb and Chuck, a staff sergeant, met while both were in the service stationed in Italy 17 years ago. He joined the Army Reserve after 14 years in the Navy and Navy Reserve. She knew what to expect from the military.
"My CAO [casualty assistance officer] was here all the time. I didn't open my own mail for a good eight weeks. He took care of everything. He monitored all the funeral stuff, was my escort through the funeral. He made appointments with the VA, Social Security. He would fill out forms for me and tell me where to sign," she says.
The Army offered grief counselors, but Kiser said she got tired of hearing that it was OK to cry. "I wanted to say, 'I don't feel like crying. Is it OK for me to punch a hole in the wall?' " An 11-year stay-at-home mother, Cub Scout leader, PTA volunteer, and former foster parent of two troubled children, Kiser has done a good job of finding what she and her children need. She's always been a community volunteer and knew how to plug into the network. Even before the bad news came, Kiser found a support group called Silver Linings, created to help families confront uncertainties like a cancer diagnosis. But it's tailor made for children whose parents are deployed, says director Judie Meise, because it deals with fears of the unknown.
Kiser could see that her children were depressed when their father left for Iraq. They missed him, they were scared for him, and political discussions at school would put them on the defensive. But they didn't talk to her about it. "In many cases, the mom gets upset if you talk about it. So the kids have no one to talk to. They want to protect her," says Meise.
While Chuck was still sending daily E-mails, Mark learned that he had feelings and could begin to talk about them; Ali kept a journal of her fears; and Deb, a little to her surprise, recognized that she was angry. "I was mad at him. I was mad at the Army. And kind of mad at myself for letting him play Army for as long as he did: "What's he doing, 37 years old with two kids, and going to war?" Since he died, they have begun going to meetings of Rainbows, the parent organization of Silver Linings, for grieving children and parents.
Military assistance with funeral arrangements and paperwork and community-sponsored grief counseling helped a lot--but it didn't put shingles on the roof. When Chuck went to Iraq, his wife's task was to order shingles and siding for the house; he would do the work when he returned home. When Sheboygan firefighter Tim Kohlbeck heard that the Kisers needed help with the roof, he went back to the fire station and put out a sign-up sheet asking for volunteers. About 20 firemen signed up. Firefighter Bob Irish, who owns Irish Roofing, donated shingles, and his son, Jon, who runs the business, asked his crew to pitch in. "I got up at 6:30, made my coffee, and saw that all the supplies had been dropped off," says Deb. "Then the cars started showing up. And vans. And trucks." The local Piggly Wiggly donated sandwiches. The firefighters' wives made desserts. Volunteers clambered up and down ladders, and within 12 hours, the garage and the house each had a new roof.
For many war widows, however, grief has not been softened by military benefits or community concern. Diane Rooney was in the midst of planning a homecoming for her husband, Sgt. 1st Class Robert Rooney, when the military messenger arrived. She was to pick him up in three days. Rooney, an Army national guardsman, was 44 when he was killed in Kuwait on Sept. 25, 2003. He was struck by a forklift while helping his unit load gear. His wife has not gotten over the cruel timing of the accident. "I'm still in therapy, still on medication," she says. But members of his unit came through for her. After selling the house in Nashua, N.H., that they had planned to remodel together, she moved to Plymouth, Mass. "It only took one phone call to my husband's unit and the whole maintenance section showed up," she says. "They got our house all packed and moved down to Massachusetts."
Sgt. Harvey Emmett Parkerson III chose a Marine Corps career, and his wife, Amanda, was happy with it. "I loved that lifestyle, the stability, knowing we were going to have a paycheck, a roof over our heads because we lived on base. The medical care was free," she says. He was 27 when he died on August 18 in Najaf. She now lives with her parents but will soon move to be near the Camp Pendleton, Calif., base she loved. "There's the type of widow that doesn't want anything to do with military. And then there's a widow like me. I want to be submerged in it. Not only have I lost my husband," she says, "but I've lost my military family."
Too old? Staff Sgt. Gene Arden Vance Jr. was 38 when he was shot by the Taliban in Afghanistan on May 19, 2002. When he and Lisa married in 2001, her idea of the National Guard was that he would be gone once a month and two weeks a year. "I thought we were too old for him to be going off to war," she says. She was pregnant when he left, but a month later, she fell down, shattered her ankle, and lost the baby. After her husband died, she tried to find a psychological counselor, but no one in her town would take Tricare, the insurance benefit for survivors. She called the VA for help. "I was told that I had to bring my sponsor. I kept telling them, he's dead. They said, 'You can't come in for counseling without your sponsor.' They were adamant that I had to bring my dead husband in to get counseling," she said. Eventually, a local therapist donated her time. In August, the VA authorized its centers to include survivors like Vance in bereavement counseling programs.
Even under the best of circumstances, healing comes slowly. The small town of Cleveland will miss Chuck Kiser as Little League coach. His children will miss his surprises, like being suited up for sledding when they get off the school bus on the first day it snows. "He was the director of fun in this house," says Deb. When she sits with her morning coffee and talks about what she's lost, she tears up and whispers, "Companionship."
With Elizabeth Querna, Angie Cannon, Nancy E. Shute, Marianne Szegedy-Maszak, Daniel Gilgoff, Carol Susan Hook, Jennifer L. Jack, Nancy L. Bentrup, Allegra Moothart, Ann M. Wakefield, Jill Konieczko and Monica M. Ekman
This story appears in the November 29, 2004 print edition of U.S. News & World Report.