Dispatches

I hate days like this.

It began with a call from my editor. "Did you read the obituaries over the weekend?" she asked.

I hadn't, so I missed the short item announcing the death of former soldier Patrick Dwyer, who apparently had succumbed to complications from decompression sickness related to a military diving accident 12 years ago. His funeral was just over an hour away in Sandy.

I was pulling the suit from the closet when I received another call from a colleague in our D.C. bureau.

“Did you see the announcement from the DOD?” he asked.

Another Utah soldier, Kimble Han, had been killed in Afghanistan.

•••

There’s no good way to handle these things, so I stood against the wall at the funeral parlor and tried to keep my eyes open for someone who looked like they were in charge.

After a few minutes, I spotted Patrick’s step-father, Bob. I approached him, introduced myself and asked if I could have a moment of his time. He graciously obliged, and pulled over Patrick’s mother, Mary, to speak with me.

They told me about a young man who faced incredible pain and inexorable personal demons, but never complained over his lot. He was a soldier, they said, and he carried on.

I stayed for the funeral and caught Patrick’s biological father in the parking lot afterward.

“I’d like to do a story about your son’s life,” I told him.

He took my hand and reached out to touch my shoulder.

“Really?” he asked.

“Yes, sir,” I said. “Is that OK with you?”

“Oh yes,” he said, looking as though he were fighting back tears. “Thank you. Thank you.”

•••

Three hours later I was standing at the doorstep of Kimble Han’s family’s home in Saratoga Springs, alongside photographer Rick Egan, with whom I traveled to Iraq in 2005.

We’re accustomed to being stopped at the threshold, but that’s where we found a man standing on the porch talking on a mobile phone. Without so much as pausing his conversation to ask who we were, he reached over, opened the door, and gestured for us to go inside.

We stepped in and heard... laughing.

Lots of laughing. Lots and lots of laughing.

We introduced ourselves. Kimble’s mother, Lisa, gave me a hug.

“Thank you for coming,” she said.

Earlier on the phone, Lisa had told me about her son, who faced incredible fear in his last days, as fellow soldiers were being picked off in roadside bomb attacks and the entire war in Afghanistan seemed to be unraveling around them. But although he was afraid, he did not waiver from his duties. He was a soldier, she said, and he carried on.

Rick snapped some photos as I chatted with Kimble’s big Utah family. They laughed and laughed and laughed.

“We weren’t like this on Saturday, of course,” explained Kimble’s older brother, Jerod. “But we’ve had some time to digest this now.”

It was, of course, a tragedy, Jerod said — particularly because Kimble and his wife, Melissa, been married just days before he left for war. But this devout Christian family, members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, believes that they won’t be parted from Kimble for long.

And so for now, they said, they simply wanted to celebrate his life.

•••

I hate days like this. But sometimes I get to help families share their stories. And in doing so, sometimes I’m in a position to help them heal, if only just a bit, from their enormous hurt.

Sometimes I’m embraced. And sometimes I am thanked. And sometimes I walk away from it all wondering how, in the face of such enormous despair, these people have room in their hearts to welcome me into their lives in these ways.

It’s humbling. And heartwarming. And I right now I would like nothing more than to be able to give it all back to give Patrick and Kimble just one more day together with their incredible families.