May 2021 Newsletter

6 | MHCE - News www.mhce.us MAY 2021 EDITION
Moving Forward
But she pushed through that pain and continued living her life. When Chad was
dying, he told his wife he wanted her to be happy after he was gone, and to find
a partner who would be a good role model for Savannah.
She found exactly that in her now-fiancé, Mike Brewer, whom she met a little
more than a year after her husband's death.
Mike was also in the Army and lost friends of his own in battle, she said, so
he understands what Chad's memory means to her and Savannah. He wears his
dress uniform to visit Chad's grave with the Wriglesworths, and sits down with
Savannah to watch videos of her late father, so she remembers her dad.
Savannah even calls Brewer "bonus dad," Wriglesworth said.
Gold Star Spouses
Describe Pain of
Losing Bereavement
Benefits in Remarriage
For Gold Star spouses, the pain of losing their husbands in the line of duty can
be almost unbearable.
But sometimes, after widows and widowers of fallen service members have
grieved and moved forward with their lives to find love again, they find
themselves facing a difficult choice: whether to marry and lose the survivor
benefits the government granted them to compensate for the loss of their spouses.
Gold Star spouses now lose their Survivor Benefit Plan, or SBP, benefits if
they remarry before turning 55, as well as their Dependency and Indemnity
Compensation benefits if they remarry before 57.
Last month, two veterans in Congress, Reps. Seth Moulton, D-Mass., and
Michael Waltz, R-Fla., introduced a bill -- the Captain James C. Edge Gold Star
Spouse Equity Act -- that would remove these age limits.
In interviews with Military.com, spouses whose husbands died in the line of
duty described the pain the risk of losing their survivor benefits causes them.
"My husband fought for our country twice, and he died because of it," said
Gold Star wife Aimee Wriglesworth, whose husband died of melanoma in 2013
caused by exposure to burn pits in Iraq. "He's the one ... who did all those things
for those benefits. But ... I was his caregiver for a year. And taking that away, if
I choose to get married again, takes away everything I did as well. It says that
all the things I did as a military spouse don't matter. And I feel that is a big deal."
But though she longs to marry Mike, the loss of benefits that would come with
that would upend their lives -- and jeopardize the steps they've taken to heal
since Chad's death.
Wriglesworth worked as an EMT until her husband's 2013 death, after which
she went back to school to become a social worker. Her survivor benefits pay
for her schooling but would go away if she remarried now.
Savannah receives Social Security benefits, but those alone wouldn't be enough
to pay for everything she needs, Wriglesworth said.
"Life shouldn't be about money, but let's be honest: Money is what allows me
to put clothes on my kid's back and feed her and make sure she lives in a good
neighborhood and [goes] to a good school and [has] good quality child care,"
Wriglesworth said.
Wriglesworth also has a medical condition that Tricare now covers, but if she
lost those benefits, her treatments would become very expensive. Her fiancé's
insurance would not cover her condition as well as Tricare does if they got
married.
The benefits also make it easier for both Wriglesworth and her daughter to go to
therapy to deal with the pain of losing Chad. As Savannah neared middle school
age, Wriglesworth said, the weight of her loss started to hit her, and she needed
to talk to a therapist about it.
And, Wriglesworth said, getting remarried wouldn't erase her own depression,
anxiety and post-traumatic stress she has suffered since losing her husband and
for which she requires treatment.
"No amount of money makes this not hurt," Wriglesworth said. "But it helps
a lot to be able to take my daughter to therapy or to be able to take myself to
therapy, and have insurance to cover that. It helps a lot to know that I can go to
school to better my life. And that security is something I feel my husband gave
me, because my whole world was taken from me when he died. Everything."
'Absolutely Devastating'
Emily Feeks, who lost her Navy SEAL husband, Special Warfare Operator
1st Class Patrick Feeks, in the August 2012 crash of a Black Hawk helicopter
The SBP pays the surviving spouse of a service member who dies on active
duty 55% of what the service member's retirement pay would have been, if
he or she had retired at 100% disability at the time of death. The Dependency
and Indemnity Compensation benefit pays $1,357.56 each month to eligible
survivors of active-duty service members who died in the line of duty, and
survivors of veterans whose deaths are deemed service-related.
Wriglesworth began dating her late husband, Army Maj. Chad Wriglesworth,
when she was 18. She fell in love with his kindness and dry sense of humor,
she said. They married on her 20th birthday and soon had a daughter named
Savannah.
Chad Wriglesworth deployed to Joint Base Balad in Iraq in 2008 and 2009,
and to Afghanistan in 2011 and 2012. He received the Bronze Star and Combat
Action Badge during his Afghanistan deployment.
But he also developed melanoma, which Wriglesworth said was confirmed to
have been caused by the burn pits he was exposed to in Iraq. His Nov. 20, 2013,
death is officially listed as having occurred in the line of duty, she said.
Not only had she, at 27, lost the man she had known almost her entire life. But
Savannah -- at the time, just two weeks away from turning five -- had also lost
the father who doted on her, who she snuggled with on his hospital bed and
during his treatments, and didn't flinch from when he lost his hair and started
looking sicker.
"And that's still the hardest thing today," Wriglesworth, her voice breaking, said
in an interview. "I miss him, but what it took from my kid is the worst thing. It
altered her life in a way that can't be fixed."