BENSON - With their pickup loaded with mulch and their 3-year-old sprinkling her toes with a watering can, Richard and Diana Pasquinelli looked like the typical suburban couple tackling yard work on a holiday weekend.

But nothing's quite normal anymore at 5714 Raleigh Road. Not since a bomb blew up Lance Cpl. David Parr's Humvee in Iraq and stole Diana Pasquinelli's only son. And especially not today, the holiday when millions of Americans honor men and women who died in service to this country.

The Pasquinellis are but one of more than 800 American families forced to spend their first Memorial Day too intimately aware of war's sacrifice.

The war in Iraq has taken a tough toll in North Carolina; since last Memorial Day, at least 124 service members stationed in North Carolina died in Iraq. That's more than any other state, according to an analysis of casualties recorded by the Associated Press. All told, at least 163 soldiers with ties to North Carolina perished in Iraq or Afghanistan since last Memorial Day.

"The price of freedom hit home when David died," Diana Pasquinelli said, hands on hip, offering a nod to a neighbor passing by their beige, two-story home. "I took it for granted, but I can't now."

Saturday's yardwork was the Pasquinellis' quiet tribute to 22-year-old Parr. They planted a cluster of autumn azaleas and rose bushes at the base of a 25-foot flag pole they erected this month. They traded their standard, modest American flag on the porch for one about the size of a parking space. With each shovel thrust, each clump of earth padded around the plants, with each whip of the flag in the wind, they remembered the gregarious boy the Marines built into a man.

"What we'd give to hear that voice again," Diana Pasquinelli, 44, nearly whispers.

Hearing the news

It's been 3 months and 23 days since a Marine called Diana Pasquinelli to tell her that insurgents blew up Parr's Humvee, killing him and two others outside a town in Iraq called Hit.

In another three days, his mother said, his company -- part of the 22nd Marine Expeditionary Unit based at Camp Lejeune -- had planned to ship out of the war-torn Anbar province into a safe zone in Africa.

The wound is still raw, but Pasquinelli tries not to dwell. With her youngest child still in diapers and two teenage children to shuttle to band practice and church functions, there's little time for mourning. Plus, her son wouldn't stand for it; Parr was never one to mope, she said.

Instead, the Pasquinellis talk about Parr as though he's still alive. Saturday, they recalled his patriotic crusade senior year at South Johnston High School -- his only year there after Richard Pasquinelli's job transfer at Talecris brought them from Ohio to Johnston County. Parr had tried to coax other students to be more respectful during the Pledge of Allegiance.

They talked about the letters Parr sent from boot camp asking his mother and stepdad for Bible verses about strength that he could share with his fellow Marines. And don't forget, his mother laughed, the legions of buddies he brought home from Camp Lejeune during weekend leave to swim in the family pool and score free drinks at Sonny's, a favorite watering hole in Smithfield.

"We think of him more now than when he was with us," said Pasquinelli, a full-time mother. "We take our children for granted."

Father's story

Nearly 600 miles away, Parr's father pressed a Marine deployed with Parr to talk about the day his son died.

The officer, back in the United States just a few weeks, drove to Akron, Ohio, Saturday to visit Parr's father, also named David. He brought a few medals Parr's sacrifice earned.

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