: ‘Was This All Worth It?’ Grieving the Death of One of the Last U.S. Soldiers Killed in Afghanistan #WorldNEWS Sergeant First Class Javier Jaguar Gutierrez is buried in Grave 104B of Section 14A

‘Was This All Worth It?’ Grieving the Death of One of the Last U.S. Soldiers Killed in Afghanistan #WorldNEWS
Sergeant First Class Javier Jaguar Gutierrez is buried in Grave 104B of Section 14A at the Fort Sam Houston National Cemetery in San Antonio. The white marble headstone is shaded by a willowy oak and adorned with a miniature American flag and a fistful of red, white and blue flowers.
On Aug. 27, Sylvia and Javier Gutierrez make the 29-mile trip to their son’s grave site, just as they have done dozens of times since his death 18 months earlier. Time and again, they’ve come here carrying photographs and fresh bouquets and family gossip. They’ve also carried a burden inside, one no parent should have to bear: their son was one of the last two American soldiers to die fighting in Afghanistan.
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Jaguar, 28, and an Army Ranger were shot and killed on Feb. 8, 2020. An Afghan service member turned his gun on them just three weeks before the U. S. signed a landmark peace deal with the Taliban. Despite the tragedy, the Gutierrez family managed to take a measure of solace in the fact that Jaguar would be one of the last soldiers to die in the nation’s longest war. The pain, they thought, would stop with them.
But now they were passing on their burden. The day before their visit to the cemetery, a suicide bomber had killed more than 170 Afghans and 13 U. S. service members at the Kabul airport. The grief Sylvia and Javier had endured over the past year and a half would now be felt by yet another group of shattered U. S. families, a new set of bereaved parents.

Photograph by Peter van Agtmael—Magnum Photos for TIME
Becoming a Gold Star family is an honor that nobody seeks. No one can fathom the heartache endured by the mothers, fathers, wives, husbands, daughters and sons of the fallen. “There’s an emptiness,” Sylvia says. “I feel like I’ll never be whole again. This war—although it’s coming to an end—will not end for me. ”
The Taliban’s sudden takeover of Afghanistan is a bitter reality for all Americans after a generation of war. But the jarring spectacle hit especially hard for veterans, active-duty service and the families of the 2,461 service members who have died in Afghanistan since 2001. Many questioned whether their sacrifices mattered. The Department of Veterans Affairs and military vet groups reported an uptick in calls to suicide hotlines as the catastrophic collapse of the Afghan government and rushed U. S. exit from the country unfolded on national television. “My son and those that have spilled blood there, or come back with missing limbs, they gave everything,” says Javier, a former Marine. “We’re better than this.