A soldier named Lucky, part 4: Family left with questions and a maze of paperwork

These memories break her. Cynthia gets up from the love seat and grabs a box of tissues from the kitchen.

Those last days are back in focus.

Lucky grinned. It was weak but contained the traces of that brilliant smile. Moments before, Lucky had said her last goodbye to Ceylon, hugging her daughter for the last time.

It was Cynthia's turn. She was feeding Lucky.

"She ate well, better than the other days. I was happy," Cynthia says. "She ate a piece of steak and I told her tomorrow your father will get you Indian food.

"Then she laughed." Cynthia moans. "Ah-oh, I still can remember."

Two days before Lucky slipped into a coma, less than a week before she died, Cynthia gave her daughter a makeover.

"She asked me to apply cream on face, put lipstick on and comb her hair. It was very short hair by then," Cynthia recalls. "She looked in the mirror and gave it back to me."

To Lucky, Cynthia was "Ammi" -- mother or mommy in their native language. That final day, as they were talking quietly, Lucky asked Cynthia:

Ammi, are you happy?

Her final words to her mother.

"That was all. The doctors came and put her in the lung machine," Cynthia says. It was a Thursday.

Lucky died the following Tuesday.

"We hugged her, we embraced her. We hugged her. We hugged her. We hugged her."

Lucky's brother, Roshan, was there. A spiritual man who came to his faith in Christ through the help of his sister, he serves as an elder at his church in Buckinghamshire, England. He prayed over his sister's body. They all expected her to rise from the dead like Lazarus.

God had other plans, Cynthia said.

The funeral

Paul Mingus knew she was in that casket. He saw what Lucky looked like when he said goodbye at Walter Reed in January. He knew it would come to this, and soon. Still, he found it almost impossible to believe that the casket he was helping to carry to the gravesite contained his dear friend, a sister in arms.

Terry Dowdy, too, was a pallbearer at Lucky's funeral on that cold, overcast day on Feb. 22, 2010.

"It just about killed me," he said.

Ford and Sons Mount Auburn Funeral Home was packed. Hundreds came to pay their last respects to the soldier. Lines stretched out into the street. The funeral home's online condolence site was filled with thoughts, prayers and expression of love from family and friends all over the world.

The Patriot Guard Riders escorted the funeral procession to the Missouri Veterans Cemetery in Bloomfield, Mo.

Several weeks later, the Herath family held a service to thank their many friends.

They found comfort in the outpouring of support. But the pain could not be soothed.

Lal returned to Sri Lanka, and Cynthia stayed in Cape Girardeau to take care of Ceylon.

Lal was inconsolable. He spent hours crying on the phone to relatives, to Lucky's Washington, D.C., friend, Maureen. He couldn't understand why his daughter was taken from him.

On June 21, Cynthia got an urgent call. She needed to fly home to Sri Lanka immediately. Lal was sick. His heart was giving out.

Cynthia's flight was diverted and it took two days to reach Colombo. She feared her husband would not be alive when she arrived. He was, but he was fading fast.

Toward the end, in the early days of July, when the doctors said there was nothing more they could do, the nurses started to remove the pulse sensor from his finger. He resisted.

No, no, he told them. I want to die with that on because my daughter died with that on, my daughter had that when she died.

Lal died July 3. Cynthia is convinced it was from a broken heart. She and her husband were married 47 years.

---

On the brink of turning 70, Cynthia prays she will live long enough to raise her granddaughter.

Her friends, too, worry about what will happen to the girl if her grandmother dies. Her uncle certainly would take her in, but England is a long way away. Ceylon is an American, like her mother. She has a life in Cape Girardeau.

Cynthia is living with some regret, too. She wishes her daughter had never gone into the military health care system.

She says she and her husband didn't know that they could take Lucky out of Veterans Affairs, out of Walter Reed.

"We would have taken her anywhere," she says. "We would have sold everything we have to heal her."

Always independent, proud Lucky, may never have allowed her aging parents to pay for her medical bills.

The men who served with Lucky have varying opinions on just what happened in the chain of her health care.

Terry Dowdy and Chris Amacker think there's a cover-up, that the military doesn't want the potential liability that explained illnesses could bring. Both men say they have run into their own snares seeking VA health care.

Maureen Williams, veterans advocate and Lucky's close friend during her stay at Walter Reed, said she thought the care at Walter Reed and the VA hospital were standard, nothing out of the ordinary. She saw nurses coming in and out, checking charts, taking readings. She said it didn't look like Lucky was being ignored. But Williams said she can understand the Heraths' frustration concerning their daughter's illness, and what they saw as a lack of answers.

VA health care officials defend Lucky's care and treatment. Glenn Costie, chief executive officer and director of John J. Pershing VA Medical Center in Poplar Bluff, said Lucky received the "highest quality treatment you could get for someone in her condition," that she had "access to the best health care in the world." He said a team of 69 individuals were involved in Lucky's care, through 360 visits at the VA health care centers.

"We treated her as one of our more valued patients," Costie said Friday at the beginning of a teleconference interview with the Southeast Missourian.

"We know the outcome was not what everyone wanted, but we did provide the best quality care possible given her condition," the VA executive said.

Citing privacy concerns, Walter Reed declined to respond to the Southeast Missourian's Freedom of Information Act requests and requests for interviews.

Lucky's brother, Roshan, struggles with the question of his sister's care. He has no reason to believe that Lucky was the victim of malpractice in the military health care system. But, like his mother, Roshan believes Lucky was misdiagnosed and medical neglect was an issue.

"The fact that this went undiagnosed for so long, when my sister was crying out for help, I can't but imagine that, yes, there has been neglect," he said. "My sister is not receiving the care that she was entitled for or deserved, I do feel that."

As a pharmaceutical representative, Paul Mingus has seen lots of hospitals. The best and brightest in health care, Mingus said, don't go to work in the U.S. military health care system.

And as the VA and Walter Reed continue to deal with a flood of damaged soldiers, the problems will only become more pronounced for health care providers he says are 15 years behind the time. The bottom line, Mingus said, is that a dedicated soldier is dead, and it wasn't an enemy on foreign soil who killed her.

"She gave more than anybody else did. She gave her life," he said. "So it's frustrating that there wasn't more that could have been done to preserve her life.

"She didn't die in a combat zone. She died at [a VA hospital] of an ailment they couldn't diagnose."

While she declined to talk about her mother's story with the Southeast Missourian, Ceylon did share an essay on patriotism she wrote for a VFW contest. She took second place. Ceylon closes the essay noting the sacrifice her mother made for the country she loved.

"I am very proud of my mother who died as a heroine after fighting for her adopted country, having served 10 years in the Army," Ceylon wrote. "This shows the extent of patriotism and she did not die in vain."

Like her deceased daughter, Cynthia is battling for benefits from the U.S. government.

For months she had not received the $508 monthly Social Security payment she is entitled to as her granddaughter's guardian. The paperwork glitch recently was cleared up, however, and the first check arrived last month. It's enough, she says, to keep the heat, electricity and water on at the home she and her granddaughter share.

But Cynthia and Ceylon have no health insurance. Cynthia still is waiting for the VA to come through on monthly payments due to Ceylon, and she says she is stuck in a maze of paperwork trying to settle the Army life insurance policy, which should provide Ceylon hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Cynthia, like her daughter did, has appealed to U.S. Rep. Jo Ann Emerson to help her through the VA benefits paper chase. An official in Emerson's office said the congresswoman could not go into specifics of the case or what Emerson has done to assist the family. In an e-mail statement to the Southeast Missourian, Emerson said she got to know Lucky over the years as she became "personally involved in trying to help her receive the benefits that she earned."

"Veterans like Lucky, and their families, deserve so much more than we would ever be able to give them," Emerson wrote. "However, no family should ever be forced to endure the trials that Lucky and her family have had to deal with, especially a family that has given so much to our country."

Costie said the VA is trying to do what's best for Lucky and her mother, that it is working to "get through" benefits to Cynthia and Ceylon, the benefits, he said, that Lucky deserves.

"It's wonderful how good they appear to be now," Cynthia said sarcastically.

On Friday, Cynthia received a phone call from VA grief counseling. She said it was the first time such services had been offered to her and her granddaughter.

"They are asking me after one year, only after something is happening that they will get exposed for. Now they come to me," she said.

It's too late for Lucky. That fact is painfully present for Cynthia today, the anniversary of her daughter's death. Cynthia's mission now is to do all that she can to raise her granddaughter, to fight for her future, and, she says, to tell Lucky's story -- so that other soldiers won't have to endure what her daughter did.

"I want to open the eyes of the people who are in authority, to treat soldiers who come back home sick with dignity, to treat them the way that they deserve," she said.

"Then I know my daughter did not die in vain."

mkittle@semissourian.com

388-3627