So we assuage our private grief with public ceremony. We enshroud our dark pain with bright flags. We expect politicians to speak for us all when they offer comfort to the family.

But what if a soldier dies and no one notices? Does that military life and death have meaning to anyone except family and friends?

"When our son died, none of the politicians showed up for his funeral," Bob Pesta of Cary said. "They knew they would get no public attention. Our son isn't accounted for in the honor roll of the 3,000-plus soldiers who have died in the war."

Bob and Joan Pesta's son Chris died at Fort Bragg last year. The Army told the family he died from a previously undiagnosed heart condition made worse by the painkillers Army doctors had prescribed for a back injury.

"When they announce how many soldiers have died in Iraq, they never say how many have died here," Bob Pesta said. "And the ones who die here don't get the same treatment as soldiers who died in Iraq.

"That's not fair. They were volunteers, too."

Chris joined the Army in 2002 to train as a mechanic. He volunteered for duty in Iraq where he served as both a mechanic and as a machine gunner escorting convoys. He earned the Army's Combat Action Badge for his many forays and firefights on the deadly streets of Baghdad.

"My wife and I lived day to day waiting for an e-mail or phone call saying he was still OK," Bob Pesta said of the year Chris was at war.

Chris came home safely and was assigned to Fort Bragg where he hoped to serve out his four-year enlistment. He met a girl named Angel from Ocracoke Island. They planned to get married after his scheduled discharge in September 2006.

On Friday, April 7, 2006, Joan Pesta was at home in Cary. She remembers what a pretty day it was, just a week before the Easter weekend. Angel was on Ocracoke Island, waiting for Chris to arrive in his Bronco for a weekend of fishing. Chris loved to fish and drive his Bronco on the beach.

Bob Pesta was at work. He had just called Chris and left a message telling him he loved him and wishing him a safe trip.

Then the doorbell rang at 300 Melanie Lane in Cary. Joan Pesta was taken aback by the three grim-faced soldiers at her door. She knew what it meant, but it must be a mistake.

"You have the wrong house," she screamed at them. "My son is back. He's safe."

No, they didn't have the wrong house, and no, Chris was not safe. He had been found that morning on the floor of his room in the barracks of Fort Bragg's 264th Corps Support Battalion. He was dead at age 22.

"We immediately requested to go to Fort Bragg to see our son," Bob Pesta said. "We were refused."

"I just wanted to hold his hand," Joan Pesta said. "I just wanted to say goodbye. They said we could not come and if we did, we'd be arrested."

It was at that moment -- when an Army functionary refused permission for the grieving parents to rush to to the side of their dead son -- that everything turned dark and sour at the Pesta house. The Army's explanation to the Pestas that there were no visiting facilities at the base morgue was not good enough for a family deep in shock and grief.

"There were too many questions and too few answers," Bob Pesta said. "No one one knew what anybody else was doing. They left us telephone numbers that didn't work or were connected to fax machines. Answering machines were full. It was a weekend and nobody would call us back."

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.