Columbus Monthly / November 2011 / "Our worst fears have come true"

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"Our worst fears have come true"

Five years ago, the author came home to see relatives gathered in the living room. He learned that his brother, Army Sgt. Adam Knox, was shot and killed by a sniper in Baghdad. Since then, his family has tried to move on, but the pain won’t subside.

My mom was afraid to answer the door.

On that day five years ago, she froze when she saw the two men in Army uniforms on the porch of her Hilliard home. They kept knocking, knowing someone was there—the TV played in the living room and a car was in the driveway. Although it probably was only a couple of minutes, the knocking seemed to go on forever.

When she finally opened the door, the men told her what she feared most: Her son, Adam Lon Knox, 21, had been killed in the line of duty, shot by a sniper in Baghdad on Sept. 17, 2006.

Just two days earlier, my brother had called her with news that he’d made sergeant. He was excited.

Both of my mother’s parents died before I was born. My father’s dad died when I was 3. My mom’s only sister died when I was in elementary school and a short time later my cousin was murdered by her ex-boyfriend. She recently had broken up with him, and he went into her apartment and killed her, her boyfriend and himself with a sawed-off shotgun.

I was a seasoned veteran of funerals by the time my dad died of a spine tumor when I was 16. But when my brother was shot and killed in Iraq, a new kind of grief overcame me. While it was awful to see my father wither away, Adam’s sudden death magnified my sense of loss. Why was death so attracted to us, and how could I continue without half of my family at age 19?

I learned about Adam’s death when I stopped by my mother’s house after work that evening. I had moved out for the first time three days earlier, on the verge of starting my sophomore year at Ohio State.

It was around 7:30, the sky dark but not black, the air crisp but not cold. I parked my 1996 Buick Regal, which Adam had driven before he left, but gave to me while he was in Iraq. When I saw my uncle and his family from Pickerington through the living room window, I paused. Why would they be here? Then my mom opened the door and walked toward me, her facial expression a mix of agony and attempted composure. 

“Our worst fears have come true,” she said as I walked up the driveway.

I knew what she meant.

I had to ask, though, just to hear the words. To let them hit home.

“Adam?” I said. “He’s dead?”

I slumped onto the driveway, where the chimney meets the house, both sobbing and trying to remember our good times. I tried to recall Adam when we were younger, cutting the plastic chains that held six-packs of pop cans together so that dolphins’ noses wouldn’t get caught in them. I tried to picture him doing all of the things around the house after our dad died in 2004, especially when Mom needed new flooring installed in our home.

My thoughts soon slowed down. He was in the Army Reserve, but so were a lot of people. And most of them don’t die. But he did, and he was a good person. That didn’t seem right. Why was this young man, barely able to legally drink a beer, even in a position to get shot?

There were so many questions that began with “why” after his death.

 

My family and I were on the way to Port Columbus to watch the military unload Adam’s casket. When we got to the airport, soldiers and police officers stood at attention as the casket was placed into the hearse.

The next stop was the funeral home in Hilliard, our trip expedited by the police blocking traffic on the highway. Family and friends were in the lobby, while my oldest brother, Tony, and I viewed Adam’s body. I noticed the mortician’s makeup covering the bullet wound, which slightly distorted his face. That image of him lying in his green dress uniform will never leave me, but it’s not haunting. I got to see my brother again. Some military families aren’t so lucky.

Five years later, Tony isn’t so sure the viewing was helpful.

“That makes it worse,” he says of the makeup. “You can hide other stuff, if it’s an arm or leg. There’s no hiding that, and your face is what you remember, that’s what you identify with. And thinking about him getting shot in the face or head, that just feels worse than anything else.”

Adam’s funeral was more like an event. (His death had been covered heavily by the local media.) Hundreds of people attended, many of them strangers to me. Motorcyclists stood guard outside because Kansas pastor Fred Phelps had said he would arrive to protest. I knew Phelps sends those notices for every dead soldier and that he probably wouldn’t come, but it was strange to see such an infamous public figure call out my brother’s death.

Tony, Mom and I sat in a drab back room while the pews filled with mourners. We were ushered to the front row once the Army chaplain who had been with us since the beginning started his remarks. I looked up to see the standing-room-only crowd, amazed at the turnout. I thought briefly about the showing a few days before, when I stood flanked by my mom and Tony as person after person shook our hands, a never-ending line of “I’m so sorry for your loss” and “Adam was a true patriot.”

A couple of days earlier, at the showing, I tried to engage in awkward small talk with some of Adam’s old friends over the fact the Ohio State men’s basketball coach had flowers delivered. “Look what Thad Matta sent,” I said to one friend. He didn’t respond. He just cried, his head cradled in his hands.

 

The funeral seemed short. What I most remember is going to the cemetery immediately after.

Seemingly everyone lined the streets of Hilliard. Firefighters blocked the intersections, their ladders extended and draped with American flags. They saluted or had their hands over their hearts as we drove by. Most memorable was driving past an elementary school near the graveyard, where little kids who have no concept of war or death stopped in the playground and waved miniature American flags.

When we reached the graveyard, the chaplain spoke and a general handed my mom a folded flag. Soldiers fired a 21-gun salute, and someone gathered the shells and later framed them for Tony, Mom and me. A trumpeter played taps to close out the ceremony, and that’s when the sobs from the crowd turned to unrestrained fits of crying. I’d heard that song dozens of times before without giving it much attention, but I now tear up at the first notes.

 

Adam was born Jan. 26, 1985. We grew up the first 10 years of my life in Lincoln Village, a neighborhood in west Columbus that was created in the 1950s, one of the original American suburbs. A grandmother, Betty Knox, lived two streets down. Adam’s best friend since first grade, Rob Wallace, lived on the same street as her.

I had a great childhood. My dad, Jay, worked much of his life in the warehouse at Art Iron as a steel fabricator. My mom, Debby, held jobs in various offices. The family packed and delivered community newspapers and advertisements twice a week for extra money. My parents worked hard and made sure their sons did the same. Everything was perfect until my sophomore year at Westland High School, when my dad began to drop items randomly.

No matter what he was holding, it would slip out of his hand. His doctors initially were perplexed, but later testing revealed the culprit: A large tumor had wrapped around the top of his spine.

Dad’s condition deteriorated rapidly. An Army veteran, his once-muscular physique became bloated because of the opiates he took for pain. He couldn’t work anymore. As I was getting my learner’s permit to drive, he could no longer operate a car. He started to make less sense when he talked because of the high dosage of medication.

But as he was getting worse, Adam’s life began to bloom. Following my dad’s lead, he decided to join the Army Reserve. Adam wanted to do psychological operations, to win over the hearts and minds of Iraqi civilians. He was smart and aggressive. It seemed like the perfect job for him.

My dad spent his last few months with a cane and then in a wheelchair. He died in early spring 2004 at age 46. Like Adam’s death, my dad’s was unexpected—whether it was denial or youthful ignorance, I had never accepted that dying was a possibility. But he was in so much pain, and he hated that his kids and wife had to do such basic tasks as drive him to the bank and help him use the bathroom. I felt sorrow and uncertainty, and I was worried about my mom. The whole family was devastated, mainly because he endured so much. I learned about his death after I drove home from school . . . my mom meeting me in the driveway.

Adam reminded me of my dad. They were built alike and he was the only son to inherit Dad’s blue eyes. When Adam died, it was like living through my father’s death again in some strange way.

 

After Dad’s death, I got through high school and Adam soldiered on at various Army schools—Airborne, Air Assault and whatever else he could do to push himself. He worked with Rob, still his best friend, at a supply warehouse. He planned to go to Ohio State.

In late 2005, shortly after I graduated from high school, Adam found out that he would deploy to Iraq. Once he got there, contact was sporadic. He opened up the most the last time I talked to him. He said he and his unit were shot at recently with mortars. Adam didn’t give many specifics, but I knew he often would attach to infantry units to assist them on missions. His job was one of the few where the objective was not to kill the enemy, but to meet with local Iraqi leaders to try to get them to stop fighting the American soldiers.

Adam, who planned to come home on leave in November, died not long after that phone call. My early impulse was to save everything related to him. Mom had switched our Internet service a few days before his death, though, and I couldn’t retrieve our e-mail correspondence. I still wish I could read what he wrote to me, no matter how mundane.

 

We received Adam’s belongings piecemeal in the weeks following his death: his foot locker, computer, camera, dog tags and everything else that he possessed in Iraq. President George W. Bush mailed us a letter. I wondered if he had signed it himself.

I was awarded Adam’s laptop and looked at the songs on his iTunes. Two of the ones he listened to the most were “Mama, I’m Coming Home” by Ozzy Osbourne and “Mama” by Boyz II Men. Neither of them was typical of Adam’s taste, but their focus on missing your mother added an extra layer of grief.

I listened to them at length when I was alone in my new apartment, reading the lyrics and crying, picturing Adam listening to these songs, eager to seek the safety of our mom after spending months in danger.

Life slowly returned to normal after Adam’s death. In a few weeks, I started to hang out with friends again and go to parties. But throughout my remaining college years, Adam’s death would poke into conversations and the triviality of everyday life.

When TV commercials promoting the Army came on, I could sense that friends watching with me didn’t know how to react. My then-roommate Alex Cushing says it was obvious that discussions or depictions of the war would change my demeanor. But what was there to say? I rarely discussed it and my friends didn’t want to push it.

I lost 50 pounds within eight months after his death. Wearing one of Adam’s old Army shirts, I ran along the Olentangy River multiple times a week. I had never looked better and girls finally were starting to pay attention to me. At least one thing, I thought, had improved.

I majored in journalism at Ohio State, and three years in added social work as a second major. Both were directly impacted by Adam’s death. The Dispatch’s coverage of him played a role in my pursuit of journalism, making me realize a reporter can do some good during a family’s nightmare. I studied social work largely because I wanted to help people harmed by events not of their making; I thought about the struggles of the soldier who thought the sniper’s bullet, which whizzed by his head, was meant for him instead of Adam.

And I still drive the Buick Regal, now with more than 84,000 miles on it. It’s a sturdy reminder of Adam and his generosity.

I returned to Columbus late this summer from my new home in Daytona Beach, Florida, for a gathering on the fifth anniversary of Adam’s death. I enjoyed the company of friends and family, but the emotions that accompanied losing him hit me again. And I felt guilty, once more, for moving away from my family when we still needed each other—and for remembering his spirit while trying to forget his death. There are times I realize I’ve barely thought about my brother. It doesn’t feel right, but, at the same time, it helps ward off the depression that would set in.

This is my new normal. Adam has been dead for a fifth of my life, and soon I will make my own family. It’s difficult knowing that he missed Rob’s wedding in July, that he won’t be there for Tony’s or my own.

Some people might say this is moving on, that dwelling on death isn’t healthy. Yet, I wonder if I’ve moved on too much. I’ve tried to push Adam’s death out of my mind so I don’t have to address it anymore, but I fear I’ll spend the rest of my life wrestling with the end of his.

 

In September 2009, when I was working as an intern in the Dispatch newsroom, I covered the funeral procession of a soldier who died in Iraq. I interviewed and stood on the side of the road with mourners, many of whom didn’t know the deceased. As a reporter, I was supposed to show no emotion, but I couldn’t help but cry as I saw the hearse and limos drive by.

While interning for the Dispatch, I never understood why families of dead soldiers didn’t want to talk to the media. I wanted to scream to them: Talk. Talk now while people still care, because in time the soldier, except to family and friends, will be just a number in a body count. Tell his story before it’s forgotten.

 

Tom Knox is a reporter for the Daytona Beach News-Journal in Florida.