That first year Shana Chappell lost her boy, her world was a nightmare.
Chappell's son Kareem Nikoui, a Marine lance corporal, was killed by a suicide bomber in Afghanistan in August 2021. He was safeguarding evacuations at the Abbey Gate entrance to Kabul's international airport amid America's chaotic withdrawal at the end of the country's longest-ever war.
Nikoui died that day along with 12 Marines and other service members and scores of civilians. He was just 20.
"Every day my slate was wiped clean because I was trying to make sense of losing my son," Chappell, 53, says now, more than four years later.
Looking back, she recalls how her days and nights after the bombing were filled with guilt that she hadn't protected Nikoui, fury at the U.S. government for what she saw as its role in placing Nikoui in harm's way and concern for the well-being of her four remaining children, shattered at the loss of their brother.
Especially Nikoui's oldest brother, Dakota Halverson, a young man living with challenges linked to autism and substance abuse, his mom says.
The brothers were very close, and before his deployment Nikoui had pushed Halverson to make changes in his life: to leave behind the drugs and alcohol. He did -- even getting a job and a place to live, too.
But within a year of Nikoui's death, Halverson began to ask his mother unsettling questions, such as whether there were any signs in the Bible that vilified suicide.
If he died, could he have a space in the family plot next to Nikoui and Chappell? And would his mother get a tattoo in his honor if anything happened to him, like she had in Nikoui's memory?
The retrospection tortures her.
Two weeks before the first anniversary of Nikoui's death, Halverson, then 28, killed himself.
"I don't really remember anything from the first year because of the shock, which is great," Chappell says. But once that shock wore off, "I was on my knees. I wouldn't wish this pain on anybody, not even my worst enemy -- and I don't even have a worst enemy."
Chappell says she was "feeling crazy" and too exhausted to get out of bed. "At the very beginning there's rage," she says. "I was just off my rocker."
Chappell took to social media to vent some of her ire, lashing out at the Biden administration. She also expressed support for Donald Trump.
But once Trump began campaigning for another term in the White House, Chappell redirected her anger at him -- for using the airport attack's anniversary to criticize former President Joe Biden's handling of the withdrawal while framing the commentary as a commitment to veterans and military families.
"I was at one point very political, very far right," Chappell says,"but now I'm in the middle." She says she regrets her supportive comments toward the current president.
"I felt like Trump and Congress disrespected me and my son," says Chappell. "I don't care that you wanted to use our 'Fallen 13' to help Trump get reelected. I didn't want Kareem used politically, and I carry a lot of guilt because I couldn't stop it from happening. Kareem didn't lean right and he didn't lean left. You were making people dislike my son because they think he's a Trump supporter and he's not."
Congressional hearings about the Abbey Gate attack began in March 2023, following initial investigations by the Department of Defense in late 2021.
In August 2023, military family members of the dead were invited to a roundtable to discuss the aftermath of the attack. Chappell didn't attend, citing a combination of mostly health-related issues (including atrial fibrillation, or irregular heartbeat) that kept her away.
The attention grew to be too much.
"Reporters would be contacting me and I'd go ahead and do the interviews," she says. "But slowly in the second year I started declining them because I realized the people who were asking to interview me didn't care about me or my family."
Years later, what has changed for Chappell? First, she is no longer a news junkie and has mostly disengaged from social media.
She also connected with one of Nikoui's friends, Tadeo Guerra; the two married and moved to Riverside County outside Los Angeles.
It's maybe a 25-minute drive from the cemetery where Nikoui and Halverson are buried, and their mom visits a few times a week.
"I kiss each one of their pictures and tell them hi and talk about my day," she says. "I talk about their siblings and the things I think they'd find funny. It calms my nerves."
Of her marriage, she says, “We stay private.” But she says that Guerra, 25, was one of Nikoui’s “Marine Corps brothers” who’d been present at Abbey Gate on the day of the bombing.
“He’s very kind and has helped me through so much and he’s been here when I’ve needed him most,” Chappell says.
“Even though he was there when his Marine brothers were killed, he helped carry them to get them help [and] lost some hearing from the explosion,” she says. “He has all of those bad memories in his mind because he was there, but yet he still manages to have so much patience and understanding with me and does his best to help me through my rough days. He’s amazing in every way.”
She says that although she'll never heal from losing her sons, her husband "has taught me I'm allowed to live."
Chappell's other children live nearby, and she says her six grandkids are a joy: "There's something about getting a hug and being around them and playing with them. It brings me some type of peace."