Monday marks the 20th year since the U.S. war in Iraq began and the children of soldiers lost in that eight-year war are now adults.
In some cases, those gold-star children are now older adults than their parents were at the time of their death.
"It would have been way better if he were around," Erik Suarez, 21, told The Washington Post of his father, who was killed in Iraq younger than he is now, and whom he had only had a faint memory of. "Things would not have been as hard as they were."
Brandon Whiterock, 24, is older than his late mother Lori Piestewa was when she was killed in March 2003 in the earliest days of the Iraq War. He told the Post he learned of the way she died researching her death for a college essay.
"Not the way I wanted to find out," he told the Post.
The Iraq War ended officially in 2011 with almost 4,500 U.S. troop fatalities, and estimates suggest more than 3,000 children lost one of the their parents, according to the Tragedy Assistance Program for Survivors nonprofit.
But that total is ultimately an undercount, because of the post-war deaths due to toxic exposure or suicides, TAPS founder and President Bonnie Carroll told the Post.
Whiterock's last interactions with his late mother were featured in Jessica Lynch's book "I'm a Soldier, Too."
"Piestewa put him on her lap," Lynch wrote, "and told her son, 'Baby, I'll be back. I'll be back real soon, and we'll be a family, together.'"
Piestewa was driving the Humvee to rescue Lynch, who is the famed prison of war from Iraq, when an RPG hit their vehicle. Piestewa died of a head wound from the crash, while Lynch was captured, held captive, and raped and abused by Iraqis.
Unlike Afghanistan — the longest continuous war in U.S. history — under President Joe Biden, there remains 2,500 U.S. troops in Iraq as the 20th year anniversary approaches Monday and Congress weighs repealing the authorization for war.
A final vote on the bill is expected to be taken up by the chamber early this week.
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