After her own father died in Vietnam, writer Karen Spears Zacharias learned what it was like to be a survivor of war. Zacharias detailed her own experience in a new family memoir, “After the Flag has been Folded: A Daughter Remembers the Father She Lost in Vietnam and the Mother Who Held the Family Together” (William Morrow Co.). She has also taken on a freelance counseling effort, reaching out to the children of today’s fallen servicemen and women with sympathetic letters, late-night phone calls and quiet visits to their homes. They see her as someone who truly understands–just another kid who lost her father in a faraway war. At NEWSWEEK’s request, Zacharias has written them an open letter.

Dear Sons & Daughters of Today’s Fallen:

I read your names: Zane, Tegan, Kadence, Brandon, and Esetavave. And the names of your surviving parents: Sally, Andrea, Linda, Ron, and Latisha.

Then I figure your age, to see if you are yet old enough to remember the parent you lost to war. Or if you are too young to have any memories, like so many of my friends who lost their fathers in the Vietnam War.

I was 9, old enough to have lots of good memories. Such as the way Daddy gently tossed the baseball across home plate so my older brother Frankie could swing for a base hit. Or the time he brought us kids silky soft rabbits for Easter and laughed off Mama’s protestations that our yard would soon be littered with critters. After supper I would sit on Daddy’s lap and rub the palm of my hands across the coarse stubble on his face. It’s in the quiet after supper that I recall my father best. I miss sitting on the front porch and drinking a cup of coffee, reminiscing with him about our family’s growing-up years.

We got word of Daddy’s death on a sun-scorched day in July 1966. We three kids-Frankie, 12, me, and Linda, 7-gathered around Mama, as she bent over the backend of the trailer tending to a bulldog pup.

Grandpa Harve, Mama’s stroke-disabled father, sat nearby in a lawn chair. A white-woven hat and green-lensed sunglasses shielded his eyes.

I don’t know if he was watching us or the military jeep headed up the entrance to Slaughters’ Trailer Court in Rogersville, Tenn.

I can remember endless details of that day, yet, trying with all my might, I still cannot recall the exact moment when the soldier told us that Daddy had been blown up in the battlefields of Vietnam. I hear with aching clarity the wails Frankie made as he punched the walls of that trailer and the sobs of my mama as she walked up and down the hallway, pleading, “Why me, God?”

You might be wondering the same thing: Why you? Why your parent? Why your family? It’s normal to ask, but, trust me, there isn’t an answer that will ease the ache in your gut. Or the anger and frustration that such a loss ignites. Mine was the first generation of children to have war blasted into the living room each night. And, like many of you, I lacked the tools to articulate the confusion I felt as I watched it unfold. So, I retreated to a place of woundedness and began to self-destruct. First out of fear, then anger, then sheer rebellion. At 17, desperate for male attention of any sort, I became pregnant and had an abortion. Frankie was just as confused. He tried to numb the hurt with alcohol then drugs. That only created more problems.

Once she was handed that flag Mama never spoke of Daddy. As a child I resented that. I needed to hear his name, Dave, the way I’d heard it every single day of my life until then. But I was afraid such talk would hurt Mama or Frankie or Linda. Decades passed before our family learned there was healing in talking. The friends I made at Sons & Daughters in Touch and the veterans I’ve befriended have encouraged me honor my father’s memory. They don’t ridicule my tears. They don’t prod me to find closure. I don’t miss my father less with each passing year, I’m simply more aware of all the life he’s missed. You don’t need closure.

You just need acceptance.

To find that you must remember your parent. The jokes they retold, the meals they savored, the way their arms felt upon your shoulders, or the way they smelled when they hugged you close. In other words, they way they loved and cherished you. Your parent died in an effort to bring freedom to others. Don’t misuse your own freedoms to self-destruct.

Honor James, Pamela, Orlando, Bennie, Michael-your mothers and fathers–with a life that will make them as proud of you as you are of them.

Ransom the sacred moments, so that your daddy or mama will be remembered as much for the way they lived as the way they died.

God bless you,

Karen