By Lisa Daniel
American Forces Press Service
ARLINGTON, Va. – When David Lloyd’s wife Ann, died, he hit a
level of loneliness he says he never could have imagined. Today, he stood among
some 2,000 people who had been there.
As the Washington area marked the first
day of a weekend teeming with public events commemorating the nation’s fallen
service members, some 1,500 adults and 500 children filled the Crystal Gateway
Marriott here in an effort to help themselves and each other deal with the
grief of losing their very own military heroes.
The 18th Annual TAPS National Military
Survivor Seminar and Good Grief Camp for Young Survivors offered four days of
events to help the families of those who died while serving in the military
cope with their grief. Sponsored by the nonprofit TAPS – Tragedy Assistance
Program for Survivors – the seminar includes numerous sessions for adults and
children ranging from coping with suicide to helping siblings and children to
understanding survivor benefits.
“As the surviving family and friends of
members of the armed forces, we share a very special bond of service and
sacrifice to our nation,” TAPS Founder and President Bonnie Carroll said. “We
have in each other our most powerful resource for comfort and understanding.
This is a safe place to spend time with others who have experienced a similar
loss and understand the pain we all carry.”
David Lloyd and his wife, Ann, were
soldiers with the 3rd Army Division at Fort McPherson in Georgia – David, a
lieutenant colonel, and Ann a major. Ann was away at training, preparing to
deploy, at Fort Gordon, Ga., in November 2006 when David got the call that
soldiers there had found her dead in her room from a blood clot.
With their two daughters, Rhaynae and
Nicole just five and 11 years old, respectively, and the family living off base
with no relatives nearby, Lloyd quickly decided to retire. “I had a new job
then” – as a full-time father, he said.
The family got by as best they could,
returning to their routines, and some happy times, too, Lloyd said. But he was
concerned that the girls weren’t dealing with their loss at the same time he
was trying to figure out his own grief.
It all caught up with him one night
shortly before retirement, Lloyd said. “I was very much alone in the office
that night,” he said.
Lloyd picked up a magazine among the
papers on his desk. “I couldn’t even tell you what the magazine was,” he said.
“I just flipped it over and there was TAPS advertised on the back cover. The ad
included a hotline for grief counseling. He didn’t hesitate in picking up the
phone. The TAPS volunteer spoke with him in exactly the way he needed, he said.
“When I called, it just opened up a new
world to me,” he said. “Then I understood I was not alone. It was just one of
those things, one of those defining moments,” he said.
Lloyd returned to the annual TAPS
seminar for the fourth time this year, mostly for the girls, he said. “It’s
therapeutic for them.”
Rhaynae, now 11, looks at it as going to
camp and playing with other children who have lost parents, and Nicole, now 19,
has come a long way in dealing with her grief, Lloyd said. It was only a year
ago that Nicole asked what her mother had died from. “She just didn’t want to
know,” he said.
“This place makes you see the kids in a
different light,” Lloyd said. “You just know the hurt [they’re going through],
then you see them laughing and you know this is a great thing.”
Other parents also voiced concern that
their teens and young adult children also wouldn’t talk about their loss.
When Shelann Clapp’s husband, Army Chief
Warrant Officer 5 Douglas Clapp, was killed in a helicopter crash along with
Army Brig. Gen. Charles B. Allen and five other soldiers near Fort Hood, Texas,
in 2004, Clapp quickly sought support with TAPS and other groups, she said.
“It helped me that I was employed,” said
Clapp, who works in education and is a doctoral student. “I just had to keep
going. I didn’t know what else to do.”
Vice President Joe Biden spoke at the
seminar about losing his wife and infant daughter, and how it made him
understand how people can contemplate suicide. Clapp said his message resonated
with her.
“I didn’t want to go on; I didn’t know
how,” she said. “I was married to this man longer than I had lived without
him.”
While Clapp worked through her grief,
her then 18-year-old daughter, Jennifer, did not. “She kept telling me she
didn’t want to talk about it. She was angry, but she couldn’t say why.”
The Clapps marked a milestone today when
Jennifer, now 27, attended the seminar for the first time with her mother.
After just one day of TAPS, Jennifer said she was glad she attended.
“I never really dealt with it,” she said
of losing her father, but being at the seminar forced her to think about it and
realize she wasn’t alone. Jennifer said she felt better about her loss when she
met a mother of three young children on a Metro train this morning. The woman’s
husband, a service member, recently died.
“It really opens your eyes about what
people are going through,” Jennifer said. “You think you’re the only one it’s
happened to, then you meet others who have it just as bad.”
“We’re very much about survivors helping
survivors,” said TAPS spokeswoman Ami Neiberger-Miller, whose brother was
killed in action in Iraq in 2007. “We find people come, first for themselves,
then they come for others,” she said of TAPS mentoring program.
Bob and Kitty Conant attended the
seminar for the first time this year, and went through mentor training. They
said they hope to help other grieving families by being TAPS mentors. “It’s
about coming alongside them and listening and being there for them,” Kitty
said.
The couple, from Valencia, Calif., said
their religious faith has gotten them through the loss of their son, John, an
Army sergeant, who died of an undiagnosed heart condition, miocardial arythmia,
on April 10, 2008.
“He just had a duty station change and
he’s serving the supreme commander now,” Kitty Conant said of her son’s death.
“He just went before us.”
Conant, the second of four boys, three
of whom serve in the military, had been in the Army 15 years and completed two
deployments to Iraq and one to Haiti when he died suddenly. While his heart
problems were unknown, he had been battling post-traumatic stress and seemed to
have turned a corner in the months before his death. He had started calling
again, having long conversations with his parents, and reconnecting with his
brothers, one of whom he had started to bond with in their shared PTSD and
combat experiences. John found out two days before his death that he had been
cleared to return to Iraq, his parents said.
While John’s death was a shock, the
Conants say they are content in knowing that he died doing what he loved. “He
had wanted to be a soldier since he was a Cub Scout,” his mother said. “That
was his dream.”
Ellen Andrews, TAPS Defense Department
liaison, said participants find a bond that lasts years. “This is like a family
reunion for us,” she said. “This is the group no one wants to belong to, but
we’re so glad it’s here.”
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