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Others -- Democrat and Republican -- sent aides or declined to meet with someone who wasn't a constituent, she says. "My answer to that was, my son didn't die for North Carolina. My son died in the U.S. Army. Were they or were they not U.S. senators?" she recalls.

Sen. Elizabeth Dole, she says, did send a letter 10 weeks after Steven's death that said she was respecting Lipford's privacy. "My son died in a very public war. He went to war during the day, yet his body wasn't allowed to be returned home until after dark," she says. "Do you not think I wanted the bands and the roads closed and his body brought home with honor?!"

But when she requested meetings with her senators, aides for Dole and Sen. Richard Burr met with her at once to save time. "I found this to be extremely insulting ... What about my time? What about my time at the cemetery?" she asks, starting to cry. "What about the time I'm not going to have with my son? Doesn't that count for anything?

"I'm the mother of a dead soldier," she says. "Give me the respect of meeting with me."

J. Shep Jeffreys, author of Helping Grieving People: When Tears Are Not Enough, says grieving people often struggle to have their loss acknowledged. "I think the primary way that death of someone in the military differs from death of nonmilitary children has to do with how we make meaning of the death," he adds. "When a loved one dies in a situation where it fits your assumptions about the world, then there's less problematic grieving than if it's in great dissonance with your assumptions about what's right or what's wrong ... If a military parent has been or becomes opposed to a military action, it creates a high risk for problematic grieving."

In such context, parents struggle for meaning. Says Lipford, "This government did not look at my son as a hero but looked at him as just an expendable piece of property. And that's exactly the way he was treated, like a pair of old shoes. When he was no longer able to give, he was just tossed home."

Politicized death, Gilbert says, complicates the grieving process. "You're not just grieving over the loss of your son; you're grieving over the loss of your belief in your country. Maybe you're grieving over the sense of loss of control over your life. Every single loss complicates your grief and makes it longer and more involved."

As she drives back from the cemetery, Lipford runs through a litany of ways she feels her son was disrespected. It turns to night and the rain pours, and Lipford shows no desire to get out of her car after she's pulled it back behind her house.

"The world lost a great human being when they lost Steven," she says at one point before heading back into her house, alone. "I ask myself every morning, how to get through today. How am I going to live through today without Steven? And I just want accountability for that."