This is Jack Hayes. He did not turn 4 this past year. He died while Colter was in Afghanistan in 2018. I read him Bradley’s favorite books while holding onto him, taking deep breaths, locking him in my memory, through my brain’s sensory connections… before I said goodbye to my baby boy who I will never hold again on this earth.

A child represents a future. Love. Joy. Promise. Hope. Fulfillment. Wonder. A child is worth all the love in their heart, the joy in their smile, the dreams in their mind, and the spirit of their soul. Their value is an infinite, intangible, boundless answer.

In 2006, the Military’s Death Gratuity became $100,000. This is the amount of money our nation provides the primary Survivor of a Service Member who dies while on active duty. Given to children, fathers, mothers, wives, and husbands, this tax-free payment represents our gratitude for their loved one’s sacrifice. It does not represent the value of a life.

Paying respects to the dead is solemn. The sadness is uneasy. It’s distressing. There is discomfort. It’s derived from within our bodies and minds, traversing what lies within us before being mentally sent off to wherever we believe souls live.

Whether a Service Member died on the battlefield, while training, or by suicide, I believe that individuals in our nation practice paying their respects to those who stood at the ready to protect us and everything we value as a country.

Paying respects has evolved to ‘honoring and remembering.’ This modern turn of phrase, through no fault of its own, risks becoming trite. Consider ‘thoughts and prayers.’ This visible offering of impersonal text after a tragedy is not disingenuous. Yet when posted over and over again to live among the bellows of social media, the phrase became trite.

Social Media encourages more remembrance, more honor. In a future post I will illustrate that these words aren't always used properly, reverently. Social Media's ability to connect us to one another to share memories is valid. The practice of honoring and remembering, however, can lead to socially acceptable appropriation of loss and grief.

A Navy spouse and NGSP employee at Naval Construction Batalion Center Gulfport [Mississippi, home of the “SeaBees”] decided Colter would serve the Navy as Allison’s “husband” in 2020 for a marketing campaign on social media meant to ‘honor and remember.’

This paid employee driven by emotion, subjectivity, and her version of what is “unimaginable,” forced our family’s hand further than we as a family were prepared to go, emotionally, publicly, and privately. Yet, I presume, she fancied herself righteous, as she ignored several Navy and DoD policies.

In the Venn Diagram of this incident, there is the Navy and our family. The union represents Colter’s service and the Navy’s influence on our life. This employee, represents the Navy. She represents Navy Leadership as her role, her department are under the umbrella of the Navy and CNIC.

She determined how our family must serve, and what our ”duty,” Colter’s “duty” is. This convoluted power she has over our family is disturbing. She didn’t know our family existed. She doesn’t know where Colter’s life has taken him since 2009.

Had she just looked through the “bound journal notes” per NGSP policy (see below) she would see that Colter provided the NGSP with explicit instructions to not be included in anything to do with the NGSP.

What is your family’s privacy, sanctity worth to you, Vice Admiral Lindsey, current CO of CNIC HQ? Ms. Leslie Gould, current Director FFR?

We are Colter’s legal and loving family that the Navy supports per DoD and Navy Policy. The Navy neglected us for social media marketing, without clearing it with us, as a family, without clearing it with Colter. The Navy appropriated his loss, his grief against his written instruction, at a time when we were privately mourning the loss of two children.

I do not respect the Navy as an entity. I am livid with them for more reasons that we have not gotten to yet. They have failed us time and time again, despite their purported support for Navy families.

Either the Navy Family promise isn’t true, or it isn’t true for our family. If the latter is true, this would be discrimination.

Thank you for reading. Christmas is always sad and happy for me. I long for those who aren’t here, yet revel in the present, grateful for what we have and the memories we continue to make, and the love we share. It's normal to experience this mix of emotions. We are human.

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