YUCCA VALLEY — As he approaches the second Christmas since his father was killed in Iraq, 6-year-old Blake Rowe seems to be coming to terms with his loss as well as a child can.
"The best thing is that I know he's in heaven," said Blake, his usually sprightly voice dropping to a whisper. "The worst thing is that I want him here with me."
Blake's sister, Caitlin, 4, is not as far along in her understanding. She wishes her father could still throw her into the air and catch her in his strong arms.
She has only recently emerged from knowing that her father, Marine Maj. Alan Rowe, is dead today but being unclear whether he will be dead tomorrow.
For Dawn Rowe, 37, helping her children cope with the death of their father is a day-to-day process. She receives counseling at the nearby Marine base at Twentynine Palms, but there are no manuals -- each family is different.
"It's so hard to know the right thing for us to do to move on," she said. "I walk a balance between maintaining his memory without the house becoming a shrine to him."
She does not want her children to be consumed daily with mourning and grief that they cannot assimilate.
But neither does she want them to be deprived of knowing that their father was a loving parent and a brave Marine who believed in leading from the front and died for a cause he supported wholly. Her own support for that mission is unchanged by her husband's death.
"For Blake, the hardest thing for him to understand is why there was a cause greater than our family that his daddy gave his life for," said Rowe.
Christmas makes the emotional balancing act more difficult.
Rowe has placed her husband's Christmas stocking near a Nativity scene on the opposite side of the living room from where the family's other stockings hang over the fireplace.
She recently removed some of his Marine Corps mementos from a wall in the kitchen. His clothes are now stored in the garage.
But she encourages Blake and Caitlin, before bedtime, to listen to a tape that their father sent them in 2003 from Najaf when he was on his first deployment to Iraq.
In it, he talks about his concern for the Iraqi people and how their deprivation should make all Americans feel lucky, and how the Marines are in Iraq to help the Iraqis have a better life. He mentions giving candy to the Iraqi children and showing them pictures of his family.
