Memorial Day in ‘the Saddest Acre in America’

Ami Neiberger will spend Monday morning sitting beside the white marble gravestone of her younger brother at Arlington National Cemetery.

As she's done for many years, she’ll take pebbles and place them along the top edge of his headstone—one for each family member who misses him.

It’s been almost 16 years since U.S. Army Specialist Christopher Neiberger was killed in Iraq. He died three days after his 22nd birthday. 

On Memorial Day, when Neiberger returns to Arlington to honor Christopher, there will be lots of hugs with other Gold Star families in Section 60. It's where many of the other soldiers killed in Iraq and Afghanistan are also buried—and it's been called the saddest acre in America.

“We know each other and are supporting each other,” says Neiberger, 52, of Purceville, Va. “There's just a lot of visiting that goes on.”

“Memorial Day for me is about remembering my brother's service and sacrifice—and so many others who have given so much for our freedoms," she says.

Neiberger and several of the Gold Star families she's close with shared their experiences together at Arlington in the 2008 HBO documentary "Section 60."

Last year, in a moving essay for Task & Purpose, she wrote about their bond, and how they "discuss how we survive the days carrying around giant holes in our hearts."

One year Neiberger brought the birth announcement of her daughter, now 13, to Christopher's grave.  

“I needed to share this important event in my life with him,” she tells The Messenger.

Neiberger also volunteers with the Memorial Day Flowers Foundation, and on Sunday she was at Arlington to help distribute 300,000 flowers, most donated, to a cadre of over 2,500 volunteers to place on soldiers’ graves.  

While the grief is no longer raw for Neiberger, Memorial Day stirs many emotions. And memories.

She recalls how as a boy Christopher always had firecrackers and a penchant for things that blew up—a jokester who wouldn’t miss a chance to sneak a whoopee cushion beneath someone. 

“At the same time, he was very patriotic,” Neiberger says of the Eagle Scout. “He always admired military service.”

After two years at Florida State University, Christopher enlisted in the Army, a desire fueled by the 9/11 terror attacks. 

In his second year as an infantryman, Christopher was out on patrol in Baghdad in a Humvee. An improvised explosive device blew up, killing him on Aug. 6, 2007.

“My parents will be bereaved parents for the rest of their lives,” she says.  “I will be a bereaved sister for the rest of my life." 

“I take comfort in the fact that he loved his country, he loved the people he served with," she continues, "and he very much loved being a soldier.” 

Despite her grief on Memorial Day, she tells The Messenger: "It's not that we sit around and cry all day." By Monday afternoon, Neiberger hopes to be home to take her daughter out for pizza and a visit to the pool.

“I needed to figure out ways leave room for things for my daughter," she says, "and to include an appropriate remembrance of my brother in the holiday."