http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-son26dec26,1,1161557.story?coll=la-home-headlinesJoe Colgan glances at it almost every time he walks into his bedroom: a cardboard box sitting inconspicuously in a corner. It's a care package he had prepared for his son Ben.
Inside are items Ben requested: a couple of books, pistachios, canned salmon, beef jerky and a big bag of candy from Costco. Ben liked to pass out candy to children in the street. Joe assembled the package on Nov. 1, not knowing that on the same day, 6,800 miles away in Baghdad, Ben, a second lieutenant in the Army, would be killed by a roadside bomb.
More than a month and a half later, Joe still doesn't know what to do with the box. "I know I should give it away," he says, "but I can't seem to let it go yet."
The grief is still settling, like a slow sinking to the bottom of the ocean, and somehow, for Joe, the package is something to hold on to. In the midst of their anguish, Joe and Patricia Colgan have clung tightly to one other thing: the idea that their son Ben died a hero.
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