ARUN RATH, HOST:
All this week we've been talking about our nation's military children. Today we'll hear from a few of the approximately 5,000 who have lost a parent in the past decade. To help these kids, the Tragedy Assistance Program for Survivors, or TAPS, holds what they call good grief camps around the country. From member station WAMU in Washington, D.C., Kavitha Cardoza has more.
KAVITHA CARDOZA, BYLINE: It's Saturday morning, and I'm at a TAPS camp in Philadelphia.
(SOUNDBITE OF CHILDREN PLAYING)
CARDOZA: This could be any standard hotel room filled with cute five- to seven-year-olds, until you look at the pictures they're drawing.
GRAYSON: This is my dad watching TV and this is a graveyard.
CARDOZA: He's watching TV in the graveyard?
GRAYSON: Yeah.
CARDOZA: Six-year-old Grayson Garber is from New York. His father Richard was serving in the Navy when he died in 2011.
GRAYSON: He got hit by a bomb. And also he died because a big missile hit him.
CARDOZA: Catherine Clark is sitting next to Grayson, furiously coloring with blue around a winged figure. She's five and a half.
CATHERINE: My dad's an angel, and he's about to swim in Hawaii.
CARDOZA: Have you been to Hawaii with your dad?
CATHERINE: Yes. It was hot. He likes to tickle people.
CARDOZA: And what would you do?
CATHERINE: I would tickle him back.
CARDOZA: Catherine's father Kevin died in Afghanistan in 2012.
DYLAN: Dear David, I miss you so much.
CARDOZA: Dylan Bayless is 8. He's written his name on a bright yellow star and right next to it is the name David.
Can you read what you've written?
DYLAN: Dear David, I miss you so much. I want you to come back, please.
CARDOZA: That's his stepfather who died in combat in Afghanistan in 2009.
DYLAN: I really didn't want him to die. And I said don't go out there because you're going to die, and he didn't listen.
CARDOZA: Vanessa Daley, who helps run the camp, says the children see each other's badges with pictures of their loved ones who've died and feel less alone.
VANESSA DALEY: One of the parents came down and said thank you so much. This was her daughter's first time. And she said she came up to the room and she said mom, everybody in my room, all of them have a button on like me. And so they just connect with that.
CARDOZA: Children here do an activity during which they write a letter to whomever they're angry at.
DALEY: If it was in Iraq or Afghanistan and it was the bad guy that shot them or threw a bomb at them and they're just, you know, really angry. And why did you have to do that? Why did you have to throw it at my dad?
CARDOZA: Fourteen-year-old Madison Cheever says this is the only place she can talk about her dad, Rob, as much as he wants.
MADISON: You don't have to worry about oh, what if someone makes fun of me. Because they know how hard it is.
CARDOZA: Just three days after Sergeant First Class Robert Cheever returned to the U.S. after his third tour of duty in Afghanistan, he had a stroke. When his family was told he wouldn't recover, they moved from an Army base in New York to rural Minnesota, where Rob's family lived. His wife Jill Bailey says her children's sorrow was compounded by leaving the only home they had known.
JILL BAILEY: The military, they're a family. You all come together. You have your Army sisters, Army brothers, you're family.
CARDOZA: Now his daughter Madison says she can't relate to other children in her public school.
MADISON: They're like, oh, yeah, I lost a grandparent. They don't know how it feels to lose someone who would possibly walk you down the aisle some day.
CARDOZA: Cheever fills her journals with letters she's written to her dad because she's sure he reads them.
MADISON: Because then I still can remember him, and he's not slowly fading away into just being a memory.
CARDOZA: She says when they visit his grave, she sits down and talks to him.
MADISON: Until my mom finally says we need to go.
CARDOZA: When you hear the children giggling and playing tag at this TAPS camp, you're so glad they found a space where they can giggle and play tag and just be children. Grayson Garber is waiting for the next activity to start. I ask about the stress ball he's made out of balloons and Play-Doh. It's meant to help him cope with anger.
Grayson, what do you usually do when you get angry at home before you had your stress ball?
GRAYSON: Um, wrestle my brother.
CARDOZA: And now what are you going to do?
GRAYSON: I'm going to throw it at Aiden.
CARDOZA: You're going to throw your stress ball at your brother now? I think you're supposed squeeze it.
Vanessa Daley with TAPS listens as children share what they've learned at this camp.
DYLAN: Even somebody died in your family, you can still have fun.
CATHERINE: You can share your feelings that you never shared with people.
DALEY: What I learned was that you guys are really, really brave.
CARDOZA: Daley herself lost her father 11 years ago when he was deployed in Iraq and was hit by an RPG. She wants these children to know there are two paths they can take.
DALEY: You can take that grief and you can hold it inside and it can be very negative. I just want the kids to see that there's another road, and that's the road that their parents would want them to take.
CARDOZA: Daley wants these children to know that it's OK to be sad about their parents' death while also being proud of their service. For NPR News, I'm Kavitha Cardoza.