On the one-year anniversary of her husband's suicide, Barb Dill of Redding, CA breaks down at her husband's tombstone. Wade Eugene Dill is buried at Northern California Veterans Cemetery (NCVC), Shasta County, Ca. "He loved me. I know he loved me. He couldn’t help himself.", she said as she cried at his burial site. Wade Dill, a Marine Corps veteran, took a job in Iraq for a company contracted to do pest control on military bases. Three weeks after he returned home for good he shot himself in the head with a 9-mm handgun.
Francine Orr / Los Angeles Times
Barb Dill cries as she drives home from the cemetery in Shasta County, Ca. "Iraq killed my husband. Iraq killed my husband. I do not know what happened or what he saw.", Barb Dill said.
Francine Orr / Los Angeles Times
Barb Dill cooks in her kitchen as her daughter Sara Dill, 17 peers into the refrigerator in their Redding, CA home. Barb Dill noticed a change in her husband Wade when he returned home from Iraq for a visit in December 2005. He seemed moody and often angry, lashing out at her and their teenage daughter, Sara. ""He would say hateful things to me and our daughter. Things he had never said before." Dill said. "This was a man that loved his little girl and his wife. He always called us 'His girls.'"
Francine Orr / Los Angeles Times
Barb Dill goes through boxes of paper work in her living room in Redding, CA home. She suffered mostly by herself after her husband's suicide. Dill said that she felt abandoned by everyone: her husband's employer, the insurance company and especially the federal government, which oversees the Defense Base Act system through the Labor Department. ""Shouldn't our government be responsible for the companies they hire?" Dill said. "Shouldn't our government take care of its own people, who are doing jobs our government, ultimately, wanted them to do?"
Francine Orr / Los Angeles Times
Barb Dill holds out a photo of her late husband Wade Dill. No agency tracks how many civilian workers have killed themselves after returning from the war zones. A small study in 2007 found that 24% of contract employees from DynCorp, a defense contractor, showed signs of depression or post traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD, after returning home. The figure is roughly equivalent to those found in studies of returning soldiers.
Francine Orr / Los Angeles Times
Barb Dill lays on her living room floor as she talks about her husband's suicide. Dill finds her husband's suicide note. She said, "It leaves you with the most empty feeling. And there’s no band aid, there’s no drugs, there’s no operation, there’s nothing to make it better. They say time, but I’m waiting. And some days it was really rough."
Francine Orr / Los Angeles Times
Sara Dill, 17, lays in her bed in the middle of the day. Her father Wade Dill committed suicide when she was 16 years old. According to Sara's mother Barb Dill - Wade went to work as a contractor in Iraq to start a college fund for their daughter.
Francine Orr / Los Angeles Times
Barb Dill, 45, falls asleep in the middle of the day at her home. She is depressed, struggling to cope with her daughter’s grief and the sense that she had failed her husband in his time of need. She sold the cars and nearly lost her home after falling behind on mortgage payments. She later said, "You’re waiting to wake up. You’re waiting to wake up because this can’t possibly be real. Because the life I once lived, there was no way this could have happened, no way."
Francine Orr / Los Angeles Times
Barb Dill receives a hug from her friend Dawn Dishong of Hayfork, CA. Barb's husband committed suicide one year ago this week. Barb said his death has affected her, "Dramatically, physically, mentally. I mean, nothing is ever the same."
Francine Orr / Los Angeles Times
