This article originally appeared on www.rockymountainnews.com on June 23, 2007.

Editor's Note: TriWest is a long-time supporter of TAPS and proud to be the title sponsor of this Denver event

team successes

Families of Lost Soldiers Find TAPS Lifeline

By James B. Meadow,
Rocky Mountain News

TAPS Memorial helmets at Fort Carson commemorate soldiers killed in Iraq. TAPS, a group that helps families cope with military deaths, is raising money for a Good Grief Camp for kids.
Sometimes in the darkness you need the light of empathy.

Sometimes in the terrible silence where your heart screams and only you can hear it, you need the comfort of someone who knows what that scream sounds like.

Sometimes in the cold isolation that makes you feel marooned even though there are good people all around, you need to know - really know - that there is someone who has breathed the same despair and can reassure you that you're not going crazy.

Sometimes, when you've lost a father, mother, sister, brother, son or daughter who was a soldier, you need TAPS in your life to help you deal with death.

The Washington, D.C.-based Tragedy Assistance Program for Survivors is a nonprofit organization that offers assistance to those who need it from those who can provide empathetic counsel and understanding. It also provides families with help in remedying gaps in government support after the official casualty case file has been closed.

Today through Monday, local organizers are asking Front Range residents to provide TAPS with a little help of their own by supporting a fundraising golf tournament, concert and comedy show in Colorado Springs.

The money raised will go toward a Good Grief Camp scheduled later this summer for the children of servicemen and women who died for their country. It is often children - particularly teenagers - who feel the tumult of loss "worst of all," said Brad Gallup, a TAPS grief facilitator.

'Nobody Can Understand'

The loss of a parent can be excruciating for children, but they don't have a monopoly on grief.

"You're not just losing a soldier, you're losing a way of life," said Bridgette Van Dusen, who ought to know. When her husband, Chief Warrant Officer Brian K. Van Dusen, was killed in Iraq in 2003, he left her with four children and a world flipped on its axis.

"Your whole life has revolved around the military lifestyle and now it doesn't," Van Dusen said.

Part of that perspective shift, says Van Dusen, involves people "who say 'I understand what you're going through.'

"But they don't understand; nobody can understand," she said. "It's an individual thing. Even family members who have lost a soldier acknowledge they can't understand what you're going through. But they can relate."

And it was in part through TAPS that she came into contact with people who could relate, people who became woven into "a big security blanket."

One of the securities that blanket provided Van Dusen was, "I knew no matter how difficult things got, there was always somebody there who wouldn't think I was going insane."

Insanity often feels like something tangible, something not abstract but very real, to military survivors.

"Millions of feelings go on inside you," Van Dusen said.

And while those feelings whirl and collide and you feel like you're locked in a kaleidoscope, "It's really nice to have people who have been through it and can be non-judgmental of the way you feel, what you think."

Often what you think, at least initially, is "Why me?" said Cindy Dietz, whose son Danny was killed in action two years ago.

"At first, you feel like it's only you that this has happened to," Dietz said.

Not that Dietz lacked a support network. Her husband.Her two other children. Close friends. People "sympathetic to what I was - am - going through."

But in the first year without Danny, without the Navy SEAL who died a hero in Afghanistan, she was foundering. There were times when the loss was so "powerful," so "overwhelming," she knew she was approaching a place "where you're not in your right mind."

Some Comfort Over the Phone

Finally, there she was, "at wit's end," when she remembered the TAPS pamphlet the casualty officer had included in the information he gave the family. For some reason - "I think it was God guiding my heart" - she looked at it.

What Dietz soon discovered was TAPS has a 24-hour hotline staffed by people who "understood a little of my pain." What she soon discovered was TAPS gave her the ability to "to share my pain with someone else who has lost a son." What she discovered, slowly, was, "You're not alone."

And as this glimmer of light penetrated and started to spread, she began to feel "a little bit of comfort."

"I don't know how to explain it," she said, trying. "It makes you feel less selfish. Less isolated."

Yes, there are still dark, lonely moments that seem to come out of hiding deep in the night, moments when Dietz still needs to reach out. And so she does.

"The people I speak with are further down the years than I am in terms of loss," she recalls. "I call them and just talk to them. They just hear me out, hear me through the moment, give me that personal time I need."

She pauses.

"They're just there."

Grief 'Never Goes Away'

Not that TAPS is a magic cure.

"It - it doesn't take away the pain," insists Dietz. "I know the pain and tears are going to come again, regardless."

"Whoever said, 'Time heals,' never lost a loved one," Van Dusen said. "When it comes to grief, it never goes away. In order to live with it and go on, you have to file it and you can access it and not have it thrown at you every two seconds."

Like Dietz, Van Dusen still reaches out. "Yes, there were times when I had lost my mind," she said, recalling 2 a.m. calls to people who understood, people who helped reel her back in.

Those calls are less frequent these days, but they still happen. After all, you never know when shifting tides of grief will roll in, when you'll need someone who has been in these dark waters before to help you swim to the light.

Assisting Grieving Families

Tragedy Assistance Program for Survivors, or TAPS, is a Washington, D.C.-based, tax-exempt, nonprofit organization founded in 1992 that assists families who have suffered the loss of a U.S. serviceman or woman. For more information about the group, go to taps.org or call 202-588-8277 or 1-800-959-8277 (24-hour hotline).