thedrifter
02-23-07, 07:42 AM
'Never going to be long enough ago'
By Jim Sheeler, Rocky Mountain News
February 23, 2007
It's been 18 months since Marine 2nd Lt. James Cathey died to save his comrades in Iraq - 14 since the birth of the son he never saw. As Cathey's widow travels back to his hometown, his family finds hope inthe smile of a little boy who carries his father's name.
RENO, Nev. - Katherine Cathey still sleeps underneath the camouflage.
Each time the 25-year-old war widow visits the home where her husband grew up, she stays in his room, in his bed, and awakens to all that remains.
A makeshift shrine spills over his desk, which is covered with photos, dried flowers, a tin of Copenhagen, a shotgun shell and an empty Knob Creek whiskey bottle. An overflowing bookshelf near his camouflage-colored bedspread spills with titles ranging from Louis L'Amour to the Greek war philosopher Thucydides.
Inside his closet, his mother still keeps his second-grade Halloween costume she sewed herself - The Cowardly Lion.
"I talk to some of my friends and they say, 'Wouldn't that be rough, to be there in his room with all his stuff?' " Katherine said. "You would think it would be rough, but it's not. I sleep better here than I've ever slept at home in Colorado.
"Maybe I feel like I'm with him when I'm here."
The last time she slept near 2nd Lt. James Cathey, it was the night before they buried him. Inside the funeral home, she spent their last hours on a mattress in front of his flag-draped casket.
Saturday afternoon, she sat cross-legged on his bed, holding a teddy bear.
"Sometimes I'll take one of his pictures and lay in bed next to it," she said. "I'll pick up one of the books he's read and read it.
"The hardest thing about being in here is that it makes it feel like he is here. Being around all his clothes and things, it's hard to separate that from him.
"But he's not here."
Just outside the room, she heard a small voice and her face brightened.
"Hey there, Jimmy-doo," she said, cooing at the 14-month-old who waddled into the room, the boy Jim Cathey never saw.
Before her husband's death, Katherine had been in his parents' home only once before, and barely knew them. Since the baby's birth, she and her son have made several trips from her home in Erie to Jim Cathey's hometown.
Last weekend, more than 18 months after his death, Katherine returned to Reno to accept more honors that Jim would never see, and learn of a new scholarship in his name.
As she watched the baby, she saw his father's smile.
"I swear that when he's in this room, Jimmy can see his dad," she said. "He stands in this corner, just standing there and talking. I wonder if he can see things that we can't - that kids, in general, can see things that we can't because we've programmed ourselves to be more skeptical."
She lifted him onto the camouflage blanket that camouflages nothing.
"Jimmy's always felt right at home here," she said. "Like he had been here before."
Struggling to move on
Saturday morning, Caroline Cathey sat in her bathrobe, gazing at the giant photo of her son on the wall. She then scooted over to the boy who carries his name.
"Where's dada? Where's dada?" she said, pointing the toddler toward the photo.
"Da-da-da," said James J. Cathey Jr., as his grandmother clapped.
For Caroline and her husband, Jeff, the baby's presence transports them back to a time when another little Jimmy lived in the home. Caroline sings the songs she used to sing to her boy - the jingle from the old "Frito Bandito" commercial - and smooths his skin with her fingertips, passing down the neck rubs she used to give her son.
Jeff Cathey plays a soft head- butt game called "bonkers" with the boy and chases him around the house on hands and knees.
"He just brings that warmth back," Caroline said, and then looked down at the boy and spoke in a baby voice.
"Could you stay here forever?" she said, cuddling him, "Could you stay here forever?"
Since their son's death, things have not moved on. The Catheys still go to work. They try to keep busy. Sometimes they succeed.
"I still have a huge hole in my heart, and sometimes you feel like you don't have enough tears," said Jeff Cathey, who struggled with depression before his son was killed, and afterward contemplated suicide.
"A lot of times, the tears are suppressed by medications, but you feel you need to cry. Still, sometimes the tears flow. I don't know when it's going to happen."
Then it does.
"It's been more than a year," he said as he pulled out a handkerchief. "It's never going to be long enough ago."
When he is alone in his workshop, Jeff said, he still sometimes imagines the phone ringing.
"When I was at work, he used to just call up and say, 'Hey, Dad.' So sometimes, I'll just pick up the phone at work and say, 'Hey, Dad.' It's his words coming out of my mouth. 'Hey, Dad.'
"But there's nobody there."
Families united by loss
The Marines were at the door again. For the Catheys, it was a scene they had dreaded while their son was overseas.
Saturday, the mission was somber, as the men in the sharp blue uniforms brought the medals that Jim Cathey's parents never received and began preparations for a ceremony in their home to present the honors properly.
Shortly after the Marines rang the doorbell, another woman arrived with a toddler.
Theresa Tierney knows more than most local military wives about the Catheys and their struggles through the past 18 months.
It was her husband who told Jeff and Caroline Cathey that their son was dead.
Though it pales in comparison to the Cathey's pain, she said, that day changed her family's life, too.
"That night (after the notification call), he was crying, quiet. I didn't know what to say," Theresa Tierney said of her husband, Maj. Winston Tierney. "He was quiet for a long time. And there was nothing I could do. It affected him personally. Absolutely."
Eight months ago, Maj. Tierney deployed to Al Anbar province, one of the most dangerous areas of Iraq. Now, Theresa Tierney says, she looks into the face of the war every time she sits down for tea with Caroline Cathey.
"It had a big impact on me. It's more of a reality of what can happen," she said, then stopped. "I can't talk much about it without crying."
She wiped the tears, then continued.
"Every time I turn the corner, I wonder if I'm going to see that Marine Corps van. Lying in bed, I'm always thinking, 'Am I going to get the knock?' "
As Theresa followed her 2- year-old daughter into another room, she stopped to talk with the woman she hopes she never has to be.
"I want you to know that if there's ever anything I can do for you . . . anything," she told Katherine. "I mean that. If there's ever anything I can do. Anything."
The two women sat on the couch, watching the two toddlers.
"She's had a lot more problems than I thought," Theresa said, looking at her daughter. "She knows that Daddy's in Iraq. But one night, I put her down to sleep and she asked me if I was going to Iraq. I said, 'No, I'm going to the couch.' That's hard to hear from a 2-year-old."
The two women sat quietly for a few minutes.
"People ask, 'How do you get through it?' " Theresa said, smiling, "and I say, 'Firming Eye Cream.' "
"I use plenty of that, too," Katherine said.
Inside the room, Jeff Cathey chased the little girl on his 51-year-old hands and knees, playing hide-and-seek.
"She thinks Mr. Jeff is Jimmy's dad," Theresa said.
Surrounded by reminders
A few feet from Jim Cathey's boyhood bed, his parents constructed a field cross - a pair of empty boots divided by a vertical rifle, topped with an empty helmet, the same memorial the Marines set up during their son's memorial service in Iraq.
When people ask her about having so many reminders in the house, Caroline shakes her head. The word "closure" sets her off.
"I've had people tell me to get over it," Caroline said. "I politely tell them, 'How about if I chop off your finger and see if it grows back?' "
She says she notices people avoiding her, still uncomfortable about speaking her son's name. At the grocery store, she says, some people will deliberately walk the other way, pretending not to recognize her.
"Just say hello," she said. "Don't make me feel like I'm some kind of freak."
Katherine nodded.
"Everyone is really uncomfortable about it. How many people in their mid-20s were widowed and left with a child?" she said. "My friends don't know how to broach the subject. I just don't think that anyone can attempt to comprehend what I'm going through."
Katherine has tried to restart her life, building a home and going back to work part time in real estate. In the fall, she plans to start classes at the University of Colorado. Meanwhile, she mainly keeps to herself, blocking out news of the war, concentrating on Jimmy, and how to share him.
"I suppose I never could have come out here, never established a relationship with (Jim's parents)," Katherine said. "It's not easy to establish a relationship with your husband's family when you've never had one before. (But) being around Jim's family makes me feel like I'm with him. They make the same facial expressions. They have the same goofy stories and jokes."
Though Katherine and her husband differed in their views about the war - she was against the decision to invade Iraq, while he simply told her "I have a job to do" - she says their disagreements, in the end, bonded them more tightly together.
Inside his room, the war widow and Gold Star mother looked at the stacks of condolences from politicians that still rest in a corner. The only condolence letter displayed is from the commandant of the Marine Corps.
"That's what meant the most to my son. He couldn't give a s--- about the congressmen or the president. He cared for his men, and the Marines," Caroline Cathey said. "The president, congressmen, they don't have any idea. They don't have any clue as to what you're feeling."
Tribute to a young hero
The last time Maj. Steve Beck was in Reno, he walked through a blowing sandstorm that followed the funeral of James Cathey, after delivering the folded flag to Katherine. As the one who rang Katherine's doorbell in Brighton, he felt it was his duty to deliver the medals to Jim Cathey's parents as well, in a ceremony he calls "Remembering the Brave."
The military gave him Presidents Day to hold the ceremony, and Frontier Airlines paid for the family's travel.
"This is the way it should be done for every family," he said.
As the Catheys gathered on the couch, Beck began the presentation.
"Ours is a dangerous life but for good reason. We need our own dangerous warriors to ensure that our freedoms are enduring," he said. "No one wants peace more than the fighting man, for they bear the weight and ultimate consequence of war more than anyone else."
The formally dressed Marine looked back at the medals, pausing dramatically as Jimmy walked up beside him. The little boy bent over with his head between his legs and looked back at his family with a grin, adding a bit of levity that the family later said was trademark Jim Cathey.
Beck continued.
"Time and time again, we discover that our warriors who are in the arena serve one another first. And in doing so, they succeed in their higher missions," he said. "Jim . . . had a particular appreciation and love for his Marines. And so he shared in their pain, their loss and their danger. Ultimately, he cared less about himself than his Marines, which is a mark of our finest leaders."
Beck presented medals to the Catheys, and then brought out special Scholarship of Honor medallions from the Brian LaViolette Foundation. He announced a special $750 annual scholarship in Cathey's name, to be established at his high school in Reno.
After handing the medallions to the Catheys, Katherine and Jim's sister, Joyce, he placed one set of medals aside for Jim Cathey's first child, Casey, who was born while Jim was in high school. Though the little girl and her family have not visited since the funeral, the Catheys say they hope that one day she will meet Jimmy, and ask questions.
"I believe some day Casey is going to come to this home and want to know about her father," Beck said, as he handed over the medals. "If that day comes, these are for her."
Beck then picked up Jimmy and placed the last medal around the little boy's neck. On the back of Jimmy's medal, Beck had requested a special inscription:
"Your father is watching over you."
'He's here, too'
After the ceremony had ended and the medals were tucked away, Caroline sat in the shadows of the living room, cradling her grandson as he fell asleep.
"How ya doing?" Jeff said, knowing the answer.
The little boy's grandmother smiled back as she ran her fingers through the toddler's wispy hair and along his downy skin.
"You wouldn't have it any other way, would you?" he said.
"No," she said.
Then they both realized what that meant.
"Well, I guess you would have it some other way," Jeff said.
She closed her eyes and continued to feather her fingertips across Jimmy Cathey's face.
"He's here," she said.
"He's here, too."
Organizations benefiting fallen soldiers
• Remembering the Brave
Provides medals for family members of fallen service members. Information at www.rememberingthebrave.org.
• Brian LaViolette Scholarship Foundation
Provides scholarships in the name of service members killed in action. Information at www.briansjourney.com.
sheelerj@RockyMountainNews.com or 303-954-2561
Ellie
By Jim Sheeler, Rocky Mountain News
February 23, 2007
It's been 18 months since Marine 2nd Lt. James Cathey died to save his comrades in Iraq - 14 since the birth of the son he never saw. As Cathey's widow travels back to his hometown, his family finds hope inthe smile of a little boy who carries his father's name.
RENO, Nev. - Katherine Cathey still sleeps underneath the camouflage.
Each time the 25-year-old war widow visits the home where her husband grew up, she stays in his room, in his bed, and awakens to all that remains.
A makeshift shrine spills over his desk, which is covered with photos, dried flowers, a tin of Copenhagen, a shotgun shell and an empty Knob Creek whiskey bottle. An overflowing bookshelf near his camouflage-colored bedspread spills with titles ranging from Louis L'Amour to the Greek war philosopher Thucydides.
Inside his closet, his mother still keeps his second-grade Halloween costume she sewed herself - The Cowardly Lion.
"I talk to some of my friends and they say, 'Wouldn't that be rough, to be there in his room with all his stuff?' " Katherine said. "You would think it would be rough, but it's not. I sleep better here than I've ever slept at home in Colorado.
"Maybe I feel like I'm with him when I'm here."
The last time she slept near 2nd Lt. James Cathey, it was the night before they buried him. Inside the funeral home, she spent their last hours on a mattress in front of his flag-draped casket.
Saturday afternoon, she sat cross-legged on his bed, holding a teddy bear.
"Sometimes I'll take one of his pictures and lay in bed next to it," she said. "I'll pick up one of the books he's read and read it.
"The hardest thing about being in here is that it makes it feel like he is here. Being around all his clothes and things, it's hard to separate that from him.
"But he's not here."
Just outside the room, she heard a small voice and her face brightened.
"Hey there, Jimmy-doo," she said, cooing at the 14-month-old who waddled into the room, the boy Jim Cathey never saw.
Before her husband's death, Katherine had been in his parents' home only once before, and barely knew them. Since the baby's birth, she and her son have made several trips from her home in Erie to Jim Cathey's hometown.
Last weekend, more than 18 months after his death, Katherine returned to Reno to accept more honors that Jim would never see, and learn of a new scholarship in his name.
As she watched the baby, she saw his father's smile.
"I swear that when he's in this room, Jimmy can see his dad," she said. "He stands in this corner, just standing there and talking. I wonder if he can see things that we can't - that kids, in general, can see things that we can't because we've programmed ourselves to be more skeptical."
She lifted him onto the camouflage blanket that camouflages nothing.
"Jimmy's always felt right at home here," she said. "Like he had been here before."
Struggling to move on
Saturday morning, Caroline Cathey sat in her bathrobe, gazing at the giant photo of her son on the wall. She then scooted over to the boy who carries his name.
"Where's dada? Where's dada?" she said, pointing the toddler toward the photo.
"Da-da-da," said James J. Cathey Jr., as his grandmother clapped.
For Caroline and her husband, Jeff, the baby's presence transports them back to a time when another little Jimmy lived in the home. Caroline sings the songs she used to sing to her boy - the jingle from the old "Frito Bandito" commercial - and smooths his skin with her fingertips, passing down the neck rubs she used to give her son.
Jeff Cathey plays a soft head- butt game called "bonkers" with the boy and chases him around the house on hands and knees.
"He just brings that warmth back," Caroline said, and then looked down at the boy and spoke in a baby voice.
"Could you stay here forever?" she said, cuddling him, "Could you stay here forever?"
Since their son's death, things have not moved on. The Catheys still go to work. They try to keep busy. Sometimes they succeed.
"I still have a huge hole in my heart, and sometimes you feel like you don't have enough tears," said Jeff Cathey, who struggled with depression before his son was killed, and afterward contemplated suicide.
"A lot of times, the tears are suppressed by medications, but you feel you need to cry. Still, sometimes the tears flow. I don't know when it's going to happen."
Then it does.
"It's been more than a year," he said as he pulled out a handkerchief. "It's never going to be long enough ago."
When he is alone in his workshop, Jeff said, he still sometimes imagines the phone ringing.
"When I was at work, he used to just call up and say, 'Hey, Dad.' So sometimes, I'll just pick up the phone at work and say, 'Hey, Dad.' It's his words coming out of my mouth. 'Hey, Dad.'
"But there's nobody there."
Families united by loss
The Marines were at the door again. For the Catheys, it was a scene they had dreaded while their son was overseas.
Saturday, the mission was somber, as the men in the sharp blue uniforms brought the medals that Jim Cathey's parents never received and began preparations for a ceremony in their home to present the honors properly.
Shortly after the Marines rang the doorbell, another woman arrived with a toddler.
Theresa Tierney knows more than most local military wives about the Catheys and their struggles through the past 18 months.
It was her husband who told Jeff and Caroline Cathey that their son was dead.
Though it pales in comparison to the Cathey's pain, she said, that day changed her family's life, too.
"That night (after the notification call), he was crying, quiet. I didn't know what to say," Theresa Tierney said of her husband, Maj. Winston Tierney. "He was quiet for a long time. And there was nothing I could do. It affected him personally. Absolutely."
Eight months ago, Maj. Tierney deployed to Al Anbar province, one of the most dangerous areas of Iraq. Now, Theresa Tierney says, she looks into the face of the war every time she sits down for tea with Caroline Cathey.
"It had a big impact on me. It's more of a reality of what can happen," she said, then stopped. "I can't talk much about it without crying."
She wiped the tears, then continued.
"Every time I turn the corner, I wonder if I'm going to see that Marine Corps van. Lying in bed, I'm always thinking, 'Am I going to get the knock?' "
As Theresa followed her 2- year-old daughter into another room, she stopped to talk with the woman she hopes she never has to be.
"I want you to know that if there's ever anything I can do for you . . . anything," she told Katherine. "I mean that. If there's ever anything I can do. Anything."
The two women sat on the couch, watching the two toddlers.
"She's had a lot more problems than I thought," Theresa said, looking at her daughter. "She knows that Daddy's in Iraq. But one night, I put her down to sleep and she asked me if I was going to Iraq. I said, 'No, I'm going to the couch.' That's hard to hear from a 2-year-old."
The two women sat quietly for a few minutes.
"People ask, 'How do you get through it?' " Theresa said, smiling, "and I say, 'Firming Eye Cream.' "
"I use plenty of that, too," Katherine said.
Inside the room, Jeff Cathey chased the little girl on his 51-year-old hands and knees, playing hide-and-seek.
"She thinks Mr. Jeff is Jimmy's dad," Theresa said.
Surrounded by reminders
A few feet from Jim Cathey's boyhood bed, his parents constructed a field cross - a pair of empty boots divided by a vertical rifle, topped with an empty helmet, the same memorial the Marines set up during their son's memorial service in Iraq.
When people ask her about having so many reminders in the house, Caroline shakes her head. The word "closure" sets her off.
"I've had people tell me to get over it," Caroline said. "I politely tell them, 'How about if I chop off your finger and see if it grows back?' "
She says she notices people avoiding her, still uncomfortable about speaking her son's name. At the grocery store, she says, some people will deliberately walk the other way, pretending not to recognize her.
"Just say hello," she said. "Don't make me feel like I'm some kind of freak."
Katherine nodded.
"Everyone is really uncomfortable about it. How many people in their mid-20s were widowed and left with a child?" she said. "My friends don't know how to broach the subject. I just don't think that anyone can attempt to comprehend what I'm going through."
Katherine has tried to restart her life, building a home and going back to work part time in real estate. In the fall, she plans to start classes at the University of Colorado. Meanwhile, she mainly keeps to herself, blocking out news of the war, concentrating on Jimmy, and how to share him.
"I suppose I never could have come out here, never established a relationship with (Jim's parents)," Katherine said. "It's not easy to establish a relationship with your husband's family when you've never had one before. (But) being around Jim's family makes me feel like I'm with him. They make the same facial expressions. They have the same goofy stories and jokes."
Though Katherine and her husband differed in their views about the war - she was against the decision to invade Iraq, while he simply told her "I have a job to do" - she says their disagreements, in the end, bonded them more tightly together.
Inside his room, the war widow and Gold Star mother looked at the stacks of condolences from politicians that still rest in a corner. The only condolence letter displayed is from the commandant of the Marine Corps.
"That's what meant the most to my son. He couldn't give a s--- about the congressmen or the president. He cared for his men, and the Marines," Caroline Cathey said. "The president, congressmen, they don't have any idea. They don't have any clue as to what you're feeling."
Tribute to a young hero
The last time Maj. Steve Beck was in Reno, he walked through a blowing sandstorm that followed the funeral of James Cathey, after delivering the folded flag to Katherine. As the one who rang Katherine's doorbell in Brighton, he felt it was his duty to deliver the medals to Jim Cathey's parents as well, in a ceremony he calls "Remembering the Brave."
The military gave him Presidents Day to hold the ceremony, and Frontier Airlines paid for the family's travel.
"This is the way it should be done for every family," he said.
As the Catheys gathered on the couch, Beck began the presentation.
"Ours is a dangerous life but for good reason. We need our own dangerous warriors to ensure that our freedoms are enduring," he said. "No one wants peace more than the fighting man, for they bear the weight and ultimate consequence of war more than anyone else."
The formally dressed Marine looked back at the medals, pausing dramatically as Jimmy walked up beside him. The little boy bent over with his head between his legs and looked back at his family with a grin, adding a bit of levity that the family later said was trademark Jim Cathey.
Beck continued.
"Time and time again, we discover that our warriors who are in the arena serve one another first. And in doing so, they succeed in their higher missions," he said. "Jim . . . had a particular appreciation and love for his Marines. And so he shared in their pain, their loss and their danger. Ultimately, he cared less about himself than his Marines, which is a mark of our finest leaders."
Beck presented medals to the Catheys, and then brought out special Scholarship of Honor medallions from the Brian LaViolette Foundation. He announced a special $750 annual scholarship in Cathey's name, to be established at his high school in Reno.
After handing the medallions to the Catheys, Katherine and Jim's sister, Joyce, he placed one set of medals aside for Jim Cathey's first child, Casey, who was born while Jim was in high school. Though the little girl and her family have not visited since the funeral, the Catheys say they hope that one day she will meet Jimmy, and ask questions.
"I believe some day Casey is going to come to this home and want to know about her father," Beck said, as he handed over the medals. "If that day comes, these are for her."
Beck then picked up Jimmy and placed the last medal around the little boy's neck. On the back of Jimmy's medal, Beck had requested a special inscription:
"Your father is watching over you."
'He's here, too'
After the ceremony had ended and the medals were tucked away, Caroline sat in the shadows of the living room, cradling her grandson as he fell asleep.
"How ya doing?" Jeff said, knowing the answer.
The little boy's grandmother smiled back as she ran her fingers through the toddler's wispy hair and along his downy skin.
"You wouldn't have it any other way, would you?" he said.
"No," she said.
Then they both realized what that meant.
"Well, I guess you would have it some other way," Jeff said.
She closed her eyes and continued to feather her fingertips across Jimmy Cathey's face.
"He's here," she said.
"He's here, too."
Organizations benefiting fallen soldiers
• Remembering the Brave
Provides medals for family members of fallen service members. Information at www.rememberingthebrave.org.
• Brian LaViolette Scholarship Foundation
Provides scholarships in the name of service members killed in action. Information at www.briansjourney.com.
sheelerj@RockyMountainNews.com or 303-954-2561
Ellie