Features

Lesson #5: Hope

After Josh died, his family discovered a journal he had kept. On the cover was: "Never deprive someone of hope. It may be all that she or he has."

At the time, Ben and Nate were the two reasons Donna and Steve got up in the morning. Now with Nate gone, Ben remains one of their sources of hope, or "sunrise," as Steve calls it.

Ben, 2006

Ben, blond and athletic like his brothers, says after losing Josh and then Nate, he's found perspective. "If I live a life full of grief and doubt and fear, I'm wasting that time," he says. So he has carved a life in which he devotes his days to two things he loves: writing (he's the assistant editor of bobvila.com) and soccer (he's the assistant men's soccer coach at Middlebury College).

The second sunrise is Parker, the cherished grandson who turned 2 in July. "Steve and Donna just inhale him," says Susie Renner. Mindi, Nate's widow, says you will never find more devoted grandparents. "Nothing compares to their pain," she says. "But they still have smiles on their faces. They come in and lie on the floor with Parker." Steve, she says, makes the best "choo-choo" noises.

He's a happy guy, their Parker, sturdy and blond just like his dad, with the same caramel-colored eyes and dazzling smile. When Parker is in the room, so is Nate, says Jeanne Beland. At her son Michael's wedding a year ago, Parker served in Nate's place as a groomsman, the only attendant with a pacifier.

Hope lies, too, in their marriage. Rather than splinter apart from the trauma, Steve and Donna say they have grown closer. They have learned not to criticize how the other grieves. Their friends say it is because they find solutions in each other. Mindi calls them her "ultimate heroes."

Nate receiving his Trident pin

Hope lies in the presence of Nate and Josh. Steve and Donna feel them through music, often when a Nirvana song plays on the radio or when a breeze blows as they walk along Marginal Way in Ogunquit, Maine, where Josh loved to surf. Most often, they feel their presence in their yard, in the giant spruce tree, which was planted as a sapling when Josh died, and the flagpole next to it, installed last year in memory of Nate. The spruce, like Josh, is sturdy and quiet. In contrast, the flag, says Steve, is "always flapping, just like Nate." On days when the sadness settles in, the flag will start whipping, as if Nate is telling them to be happy, to move on. These visits, Donna says, are the miracles that buoy her.

Hope, too, is living in the present. When Donna is gardening or quilting, she is focused on that weed, that stitch, not on yesterday's tears or tomorrow's worries. When Steve drives a shovel into the hard earth to create another planting bed for Donna, his thoughts are only on completing the transformation of what once was a two-and-a-half-acre jungle into a series of terraced gardens.

In Mary Westfall's experience, the people who fare the worst in crisis are those who feel victimized, who feel that someone—perhaps God—has turned on them. Steve and Donna, however, see random chance. "They don't see the universe as out to get them. Instead they try to focus on the moment they've got," she says, "knowing that you don't know what will happen day to day, minute by minute. So you just have to live with as much generosity and joy and openness as you can." ~

Sue Hertz '78 is a UNH associate professor of journalism and the author of Caught in the Crossfire: A Year on Abortion's Front Line. Her articles have appeared in national and regional magazines.

Also read: A Symbol of Goodwill: Operation Hat Trick is a bridge between soldiers and citizens

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