| Page 2 of 5 < > |
Another Memorial Day Marks Grief's Journey
'It Can't Get Much Worse'
Frank Adamouski watches as his wife, Judy, comforts their son's widow, Meighan, at a memorial service Thursday in Richmond. Capt. James F. Adamouski was one of the first casualties of the Iraq war.
(By Andrea Bruce -- The Washington Post)
TOOLBOX
   Resize
COMMENT
 Discussion Policy
 CLOSE
Comments that include profanity or personal attacks or other inappropriate comments or material will be removed from the site. Additionally, entries that are unsigned or contain "signatures" by someone other than the actual author will be removed. Finally, we will take steps to block users who violate any of our posting standards, terms of use or privacy policies or any other policies governing this site. Please review the full rules governing commentaries and discussions. You are fully responsible for the content that you post.
Who's Blogging  |
On Dec. 7, 2004, two casualty officers stood beside the Christmas tree that Sallie and Norm Stubenhofer had decorated the night before. They told the couple that their son Mark had been shot in Baghdad's Sadr City while on foot patrol with his men. He was dead at 30.
"You go into shock," Sallie recalled.
Mark was their middle son, a lanky infantry officer with an impish grin who had been awarded a Bronze Star the first time he went to Iraq, as the war started. He was a Clemson University graduate, talkative and opinionated but also humble and committed to working side by side with his men. He was a company commander in 2004, part of the 1st Battalion, 41st Infantry Regiment, out of Fort Riley, Kan.
He had a wife and three young children, including a 4-month-old daughter whose name was inspired by his military career: Hope Riley. Hope was "what I am all about -- what we are doing here in Iraq," he had explained to his mother shortly after his daughter's birth. Riley was for his Army post.
He died before he could ever meet Hope Riley.
Not the sort of woman given to tears, Sallie Stubenhofer found that after Mark died, she could not hear his name without crying.
Sometimes she sat down at her desk in a spare bedroom -- where she had often e-mailed Mark in Iraq -- and wrote to the son she had lost.
She told him that she wanted him to know she was proud of him. That she loved him. That everyone would be okay -- his parents, his four siblings, his wife and children.
None of her e-mails bounced back, which allowed her to imagine that, somehow through cyberspace, the words had actually found him. "It was like sending an e-mail to heaven," she said.
With the family's grief came unexpected illness. In a matter of months, both Sallie and Norm were battling cancer. Norm, then 64, received a diagnosis of non-Hodgkins lymphoma in January 2005. Sallie, then 61, was diagnosed in December 2005 with breast cancer.
For all the pain and difficulty of their diseases and treatments, the Stubenhofers said, cancer did not take the emotional toll it might have. Said Norm: "It was almost like, 'It can't get much worse.' "
But both openly wondered, as Sallie put it, "why we're still here, why we're going to get better, and why Mark is gone at age 30."
