On a Southern California beach, young war widows come together to grieve
Feeling alone after their husbands' deaths, they find one another through the Internet and meet to share their stories.
When a married soldier dies, the military removes his wedding band to send to his widow.
Taryn Davis of San Marcos, Texas, learned this just after her husband, Army Cpl. Michael W. Davis, was killed last year by a roadside bomb in Iraq. His widow, 22, rushed to contact the casualty assistance officer assigned to help her, begging him to make sure the ring never came off his finger. He promised her he'd keep it on.
When a married soldier dies, his belongings are shipped home in black boxes. Every piece of clothing is washed and folded, every movie and CD put in a white case, every picture stacked in a plastic bag. Beth Tomczak, 23, of Fort Bragg, N.C., didn't know the Army would do this until she got the boxes holding the belongings of her husband, Staff Sgt. Zachary B. Tomczak. She had hoped to get his things as he had left them.
There is no official list of U.S. war widows, but there are thousands -- nearly half of the 4,155 soldiers killed in Iraq and Afghanistan were married. Most of the dead were young, as are the women they left behind.
Over the weekend, Tomczak, Davis and a few other military widows, all in their 20s, gathered in a rented beach house in Santa Monica.
The women, who found one another on the Internet and come from cities across the country, talk nearly every day. They share their experiences, including planning funerals, figuring out what to do with their husbands' things, and dealing with relatives who don't know what it is to be 20 and a widow.
Davis -- who founded the group now called the American Widow Project -- Tomczak and Nicole Hart of Burbank, whose husband, David, was killed in Iraq this year, are featured in an online documentary called "We Regret to Inform You." It premieres tonight in Culver City.
Later this month, the women will take their stories across the country. In a rented RV, they will travel to military bases, trying to find other young widows, hoping to spare them a bit of the overwhelming loneliness, isolation and helplessness that they felt in the weeks and months after their husbands died.
Davis, after hearing that her husband had died, spent weeks on the couch in the home she had shared with him. She refused to eat, refused to get up.
"Everybody went back to their day-to-day life, and I found myself not getting better," she said. "I knew there were others like me. I wanted to know their stories. I wanted to know how they met their husbands; I wanted to know what gets them up every day."
