CRESTVIEW — The memory of Staff Sgt. Pat Griffin has faded softly from his children’s minds.
They don’t really remember the daddy who sobbed as he tucked them in the last night before he deployed.
His wife, Michelle Griffin, has let go of the anger that defined her after Pat was killed in Iraq.
She bought a house, went back to school and slowly, step by step, made peace with the path her life has taken.
In 10 years, everything has changed.
“I just want a peaceful life,” says Michelle, sitting on the back patio of the home she bought after Pat died. “It takes so much work I can’t even begin to describe how much work it takes.
“I have to constantly put myself under a microscope if I don’t want Pat’s death to define who we are.”
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Pat was 31 when he was killed May 13, 2003, by shrapnel from explosive ordnance in Iraq.
As part of the 728th Air Control Squadron, Pat was Eglin Air Force Base’s first and only casualty of the Iraq War.
When military personnel came to tell Michelle that Pat had died, she cursed them and tore the ribbons off their uniforms.
That emotion sustained her for years.
“Anger’s a funny thing,” she says. “Anger can get you through the day. It makes you say and do things you normally wouldn’t.
“But it can be your friend. I was in so much pain, it helped me cope.”
In the first two months, she lost 70 pounds. For the first year, she slept only in 15- to 20-minute increments.
Family members helped with the children, who were so young they dealt with Pat’s absence by turning their faces toward the heavens and talking to him there.
“My world was gone,” Michelle says. “I lost my identity as a wife; I lost my identity as a military spouse. And the one person I most wanted to talk to was the person I couldn’t have.
“That right there kept me stuck for a long time.”
‘Instant best friends’
Michelle’s first relationship to Pat was as his little sister’s best friend. She was 8; Pat was 10. They lived next door to each other in the small town in upstate New York where Pat is buried.
When she was 15, Pat ran into her at the local bowling alley and asked the blonde, blue-eyed high school cheerleader if she would be his girlfriend.
No, she fired back, because you’re a jerk.
By the next day, she had changed her mind. They became “instant best friends,” who couldn’t bear to separate when it was time for Michelle to go to college and Pat to join the military. They stayed together, working a series of low-paying jobs.
In 1997, they got married and started talking about whether Pat should enlist. One day, on his way home from work, he stopped at the Air Force recruiter’s office and signed up.
“Who comes home from work and, on the way, enlists in the military?” Michelle asked.
“I found myself there and I just had to do it,” he told her.
They arrived at Eglin on Sept. 11, 2001.
He was patient and gentle with their children, teaching Corey, who was 4, to throw a baseball and watching Toy Story with 2-year-old Makensie again and again and again.
They buried him with his small daughter’s Buzz and Woody dolls.
In pictures, Pat is a smiling, soft-faced man with wire rim glasses.
For years, Michelle couldn’t bear to look at his photos.
“I still struggle with looking back at my whole life,” she says. “For a long time, it was just missing Pat, missing Pat.”
Honoring Pat
Pat’s death came at a particularly difficult time for his family. Michelle’s mother had been diagnosed with cancer. Makensie had broken her nose and cut her finger to the bone in two separate accidents.
Michelle had blood poisoning and was sent home with an IV because she had no one to watch the children. Pat requested medical leave, but it was denied.
After he died, Michelle lashed out at squadron leaders. She grimaces recalling what people have told her from that time, about how the airmen designated to help were afraid to go to her house.
“I didn’t know who I was mad at but I was mad at everybody,” she says. “I’m embarrassed at how mean I was. I forgot they were hurting, too.”
She found some comfort in knowing that Pat believed in what he was doing in Iraq.
“That’s so hard about being a military widow,” she says. “It hurts so much but you’re so proud at the same time and they’re conflicting emotions.”
The squadron continued to honor Pat. They named the camp in Iraq after him, erecting a sign dubbing it Camp Griffin.
They renamed Nomad Way on Eglin Air Force Base to Griffin Way.
They put a monument in his honor outside of the 728th squadron on Eglin.
But over the years, there was little contact between Pat’s family and the squadron leadership.
“They’re used to the widow having a memorial, tying it up with a bow, moving back home,” she says. “That’s not me. I was a handful. I wasn’t going to go away.”
Now Michelle realizes her anger helped to alienate her from the people from whom she most wanted support.
“There’s always been a part of me that’s been sad the kids lost an opportunity,” she says. “If I was one of them looking at me, I wouldn’t want to deal with me either.
“No matter what they tried, I wouldn’t have been happy with.”
Moving Forward
A year after Pat’s death, she bought the home in Crestview.
Later, she began to date a single father who had been in Pat’s squadron. The two remain close and a framed picture of them sits on a shelf in Michelle’s kitchen.
His kids call her Mom. Her kids call him Dad.
But they maintain separate households and plan to continue to do so.
“I’ll never get married again,” Michelle says. “Never. I’ll never bury another man.”
This spring, 14-year-old Corey asked about Pat’s collection of NASCAR diecast cars. He doesn’t remember making the rounds on Saturday mornings to find the latest models.
Michelle does. She has become the sole keeper of the memories.
It still hurts. She avoided Corey’s request, terrified of opening the bins that had been sealed for nearly a decade.
Finally, at 11 o’clock one night, she got out of bed, went to the garage and opened the first box. Folded on top was Pat’s World’s Greatest Dad T-shirt. She smelled it, threw it down, closed the bin and walked away.
Then she talked herself into going back and finding the cars Corey wanted.
“This is not about you,” she remembers telling herself. “This is about a boy who wants his dad’s stuff. Don’t touch it if it’s not NASCAR stuff.”
The next morning, she found Corey in the dining room with Pat’s old collection.
“I said, ‘Corey, the last person who touched this stuff was your dad. Does it make you sad?’ ” she asked.
“No,” he told her. “It makes me happy.”
Finding her own way
In 2009, Michelle went back to school, starting with just one class and worried that she would fail. Six years after Pat’s death, she still wasn’t sleeping most nights.
But concentrating on that first class, it was easier to let go of her grief.
“I was finding my own way,” she says. “I was doing something that was just for me.”
Next spring, she will graduate with two bachelor’s degrees — one in social work and the other in criminal justice — and will immediately start graduate school.
She defines her life now by her quest for peace.
It’s a step-by-step, slow march away from mourning what would have been and toward what is. She still catches herself trying to make decisions based on what Pat might have said or done.
“I have to stop listening to him and listen to myself more,” she says. “If I concentrate on what Pat would do, I’m going to miss what I need to do.
“I’m not going to see it for what it is because I’m going to take advice from a ghost.”
Her journey of healing led her back to Pat’s squadron after hearing rumors last summer that it was closing and Pat’s monument might be moved out of state.
She called and spoke to the commander, Lt. Col. Jon Rhone, who had never met Pat. He assured her he wanted her input on what to do with Pat’s memorial.
He also invited her and the children to a formal party the squadron hosted in September to bring past and current members together one last time. Surprised and pleased, she accepted.
“This is what I’ve been wanting and I’m not angry anymore,” she remembers thinking. “Maybe this is a good opportunity for the kids to be more involved with the squadron and where their dad worked.”
Rhone said he hadn’t realized Michelle and her children were still in the area. Once he learned that they were, he saw the party as a chance to reunite the Griffins with the squadron.
“I wanted to give Michelle and the kids an opportunity to see that we still remembered their sacrifices,” he said. “It’s even more important for our airmen to keep connected with the Griffin family.
“It’s a reminder that any one of us could leave a spouse behind with a teenager and a pre-teen,” he adds.
Corey wore a tuxedo. Michelle and Makensie got their hair done together. At the party, they were guests at the commander’s table and received a large framed photograph of the Camp Griffin sign in Iraq.
Together, Rhone and Michelle decided to move Pat’s memorial to the site of the Khobar Towers memorial on Eglin. A ceremony will be held dedicating its new location May 16. The next day, the squadron will be deactivated.
At Michelle’s request, squadron members have taken on the role of big brother and big sister to Makensie, taking them on special outings.
“It’s all worked out,” she says. “It’s helped with that closure, that peace I’m trying to find.
“For it to end like this with my kids being a part of it makes me really happy for them.”
Last month, Michelle turned 40, marking the end of a decade mourning her husband and, she hopes, the beginning of a new era.
“It’s not what I pictured. It’s not what I wanted, but still it’s a good life. Overall I’m happy, and I can say that for the first time in a long time.”
Contact Daily News Staff Writer Wendy Victora at 850-315-4478 or wvictora@nwfdailynews.com. Follow her on Twitter @WendyVnwfdn.