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Col. Bill Buckner, spokesman for the 18th Airborne Corps at Fort Bragg, said this week that the unit to which Pesta was assigned has been deactivated. "Without being able to contact members of the unit, it is impossible for us to confirm or dispute what the family is saying," he said. "If it did happen, it was unfortunate and not in keeping with the efforts we make to comfort families."

Nothing softens the bleak news that your child is dead. Nothing. It is a sledgehammer blow to your heart that makes it hard to breathe, much less think.

Little things can take on increased importance. Mere coincidences may grow into dark suspicions. The search for answers sometimes festers into an all-encompassing obsession. Such is the emotional devastation that must be endured when grief burrows into your soul. Too many sad days and dark nights take their toll of even the most resilient.

Take the issue of the clothes Chris was wearing when he died. After telling the family for months the clothes had been saved for them, officials later said they had been discarded.

"Those clothes held the very essence of my son," Joan Pesta said. "They held his smell. They were the closest thing I had to him, and I wanted them."

The death of Spc. Chris Pesta was not heralded by glowing Army news releases as is the case when soldiers die in combat. The members of his unit attended his funeral services and gave him an honorable soldier's farewell, but in the Pestas' eyes, all the Army establishment did was hand over a check.

"I sent them my son, and they sent me money," a still-hurting Joan Pesta said. "It feels like blood money to me.

"I want closure. I want to lay my head down and know how my son died. I want to know the truth. What were they hiding? Why couldn't I see my son?"

Her grief-fueled anger at what she sees as government indifference and lack of compassion for parents who had lost their son boiled over last summer. During a heated exchange with Army officials, she blurted out, "What do I have to do, threaten to kill the president?"

"Two hours later, the Secret Service was here," she said.

Some of Chris' ashes were sprinkled on Ocracoke Island, some beside a favorite trout stream in the mountains, and some remain in a container near his father's side of the bed. The rest are in a small locket hanging on a chain around his mother's neck.

No one will ever again keep Joan Pesta away from her son.

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