Sandy Hook victims' siblings coping two years later

Sarah D'Avino, 27, left and Hannah D'Avino, 24, are the sisters of Sandy Hook Elementary School victim, Rachel D'Avino. The sisters are photographed with a bench dedicated to Rachel on the town green in Bethlehem, Conn., their home town, Sunday, Dec. 7, 2014. less Sarah D'Avino, 27, left and Hannah D'Avino, 24, are the sisters of Sandy Hook Elementary School victim, Rachel D'Avino. The sisters are photographed with a bench dedicated to Rachel on the town green in ... more Photo: Carol Kaliff Buy photo Photo: Carol Kaliff Image 1 of / 27 Caption Close Sandy Hook victims' siblings coping two years later 1 / 27 Back to Gallery

Hannah D'Avino had the routine down perfectly: Crunch a couple of Tic Tac mints and follow them with a caffeine chaser, usually a cup of coffee, light and sweet.

That was it. Breakfast, lunch and dinner. For two weeks.

After losing her sister Rachel in the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting, D'Avino had no appetite for much of anything. The tragedy took that, too.

Rachel D'Avino, a behavioral specialist who loved working with kids and died trying to save them, was one of 26 victims -- six staff members and 20 first-graders -- killed Dec. 14, 2012.

The deaths brought profound grief to Newtown and the world, but the victims were mourned even more deeply by the brothers and sisters who lost their hearts that morning.

Two years after the second-worst school shooting in U.S. history, more than 40 siblings of the Sandy Hook victims continue to search for themselves and a road to healing that keeps twisting -- sometimes into the sun, sometimes into the darkness.

"Our future is completely different now because there's a major piece missing," D'Avino said at Nick's Country Kitchen in Bethlehem, not too far from where she grew up with her sisters, Rachel and Sarah. "Rachel and I promised to be each other's maid of honor, but that's not going to happen and that hurts.

"I still have a hard time sleeping. I still have recurring nightmares from an overactive imagination. You just have to rebuild your pyramid. I feel like I'm a completely different person now."

Because she is different.

For Matt Rousseau, of Southbury, the brother of slain Sandy Hook teacher Lauren Rousseau, the reality of her death is still difficult to grasp. It grew harder when he started applying to graduate school.

"When I've been writing essays for my applications, I've mentioned Lauren," said Rousseau, 29. "When you write it down and you read it, usually that's when I get emotional because it becomes more real.

"It's like, `OK, I'm reading this, and yes, it really happened.' It becomes more true because I'm reading it: My sister died that day."

Such reactions are familiar to Holly Aldrich, founding director of the Center for Homicide Bereavement in Cambridge, Mass. The center is part of the Victims of Violence Program at Cambridge Health Alliance, which is affiliated with Harvard Medical School.

"Very often, people will say in the second year after their loss, `It's getting worse, it's not getting better,' " said Aldrich, who works with siblings of all ages. "It's getting worse because as the shock recedes and the disbelief recedes, things start to surface, and that's very often when people around them are thinking, `Well, it's been however long and you're looking better and it's time to get on, move on,' -- all of the usual things that are understandable projections."

But understandable and helpful are two different things, especially for siblings. There are no instruction manuals or timelines here. There are only incremental steps on a Chutes and Ladders board.

Some days, some weeks, some years, progress is achieved square by square. Other times, progress is swiftly lost in a heart that won't heal because it can't heal -- at least not without help.

Next to three wicker chairs in Aldrich's sanctuary in the Central Square neighborhood of Cambridge are three small tables, each topped with a cube of tissues to blow noses, blot tears or ball up bolts of anger.

"For many people, it is well into the second year before there is even a real beginning absorption that there is a finality," Aldrich said, folding her hands like she's about to recite that nursery rhyme with a church and its steeple. "Often we hear from people -- very often -- that the hope is it will be linear and progress in a linear fashion, so if they can just hang on, they will reach an end point.

"It doesn't work that way. It's not, `One day, you will be who you were.' But very often, especially in adults -- and kids can do it, too -- there's a before and after. There's the before in my life and there's that demarcation, which begins the after in my life."

Embracing old memories, new roles

For 26-year-old Jillian Soto, whose eldest sister Vicki died protecting her students, the hurt has been compounded by conspiracy theorists who insist the shooting was an elaborate hoax to promote a national gun control agenda.

"I've been called a hoaxster to my face. I've seen terrible things written on the Internet. But I know my sister is real," said Soto, who even wears `Victoria' perfume by Victoria's Secret. "Our lives don't end. The world hasn't stopped. I try to live my life not in her memory, but for what she would have wanted for me."

Jillian grew up as Vicki's little sister, the shadow at school and the clothes thief at home. Despite Jillian's best attempts to turn a Stratford hallway into a catwalk, Vicki always knew when skinny jeans or a cute top were lifted from her closet.

Until the day she died, Vicki was the ringleader of the Soto kids, the instigator with the disarming dimples and the master plan. She was the one who stuck out her tongue in family photos. She was the one who bought lingerie for their grandfather's girlfriend.

But Vicki was also the rock and the role model, the one who walked off the stage at Eastern Connecticut State University with two degrees. And gave her life to save as many first-graders as she could that December day.

After the shooting, Jillian became the rock and the role model in the Soto family, the touchstone for her sister, Carlee, and their kid brother, Matthew.

"I wasn't meant to be the older sister. I was the screw-up sister. I broke all the rules and tested all the boundaries," said Soto, who is studying human development and family studies at the University of Connecticut after taking five years off from school. "I had to grow up in a hurry and be there for my family because they needed me.

"My brother, it's his senior year of high school this year. You're supposed to be looking forward to your prom and graduation and your homecoming, everything like that. But that's been taken away from him.

"My sister is married to a Marine and five months pregnant in North Carolina. Vicki will never get to see her new niece or nephew," Soto said, pausing to let the injustice of that image resonate. "When I see my parents cry, my grief is not important. Helping my parents make it through that moment, that's what is important.

"I'm the older sister now and I'm supposed to fix everything."

A distinctly shared sadness

And yet, some things in life -- and death -- are beyond fixing. The miracle then becomes the reclamation.

In a 1991 study published in the Journal of Clinical Child Psychology, authors Debra R. Applebaum and G. Leonard Burns of Washington State University explored "Unexpected Childhood Death: Posttraumatic Stress Disorder in Surviving Siblings and Parents."

What they found is that Jillian Soto's sense of duty to her family is a common and consuming response for children old enough to carry that mantle.

"Parents who are grieving the sudden loss of a child may be so absorbed with their own grief and posttraumatic stress that they may not be able to -- or may not want to -- see symptoms in their children," Applebaum and Burns wrote. "Another reason why parents were not cognizant of some of their children's symptoms may stem from the children's desire to shelter their parents from additional pain."

For those who lost a sibling Dec. 14, the demarcation that Aldrich describes can be unusually dark, darker than any night. It's the emotional eclipse that hides the light, and haunts with a sliver of hope.

"The three of us lived together," Sarah D'Avino said. "You want to talk about being close: That's close.

"When you go through something like this, I feel like there's nothing left to be afraid of anymore. What in our lives will we ever go through that's worse than this?"

Sarah, now 27, knew she couldn't save Rachel's memory without saving herself first. She had been, by her own account, "not likable for a very long time," largely as a result of addiction.

"I'm actually in recovery, six years now," Sarah said. "Everybody was certain when we found out what happened to Rachel that I was going to relapse. But it wasn't even an option. It wasn't even a thought. I mean, oh man, if I had dealt with it that way -- you can't even call that dealing with it."

There are many who mourn those killed at Sandy Hook, but the heartache -- that of a mother and father, a friend and co-worker, a sister and brother -- has an individual imprint.

"Family members can forget that each person had a particular relationship with the person who was killed. It's not all the same," Aldrich said. "It's very different for the sibling who loses a sibling. There's no one else in the family who had that kind of connection."

The sound track of healing

For Rousseau, who also has a 25-year-old brother Andrew, the grief can be filtered at times.

"I've told a lot of people that my sister died, but I didn't tell them she died at Sandy Hook," Rousseau said. "It's really more of a comfort-level thing for me. I'm trying to get more comfortable telling people what happened to Lauren."

But that's just the surface of Rousseau's sadness. Other struggles are tougher, the kind of soul-searching that goes on for years, maybe forever.

After graduating from the New England Conservatory of Music, Rousseau set off for a career as a jazz drummer in Brooklyn. It was tough to pay the bills and build a future, but it was nothing compared to losing his sister to a gunman.

"One thing I remember -- and it's more tragic than happy -- is from Christmas of 2012," Rousseau said. "Lauren had all of our family gifts wrapped up, but she hadn't put names on them yet. So we had to open up these packages and try to figure out who was supposed to get what.

"She got me a T-shirt with drums on it and a gray sweater. And I, you know, I haven't been able to wear that sweater yet. It's just too hard."

Matt, who is 3 1/2 years younger than Lauren, was her sidekick as much as her brother. As a little boy, he sat up straight while she played teacher. To this day, she teaches him about chasing what he wants in life -- a new career, a new direction, a new normal.

Instead of sitting behind a drum kit for a living, Rousseau is applying to master's programs to study occupational therapy. Someday, he might even work in a school, just like Lauren.

"After Lauren died, I was less inclined to go through the struggle of a musician," Rousseau said. "It just didn't seem that attractive and important anymore when I'm dealing with the loss of my sister and trying to figure out what that means."

The lamppost at the bottom of Rousseau's driveway is curved at the top like a question mark. It's the perfect metaphor for his journey.

The color of compassion

In the two years since his brother Jesse was killed at Sandy Hook Elementary, 14-year-old J.T. Lewis has followed his mother's model for grieving -- "choosing love and forgiveness over anger and violence (to) heal our hearts and our world," as her website says.

After Scarlett Lewis created the Jesse Lewis Choose Love Foundation, J.T. launched his own charitable mission, Newtown Helps Rwanda. He hatched the idea after orphaned survivors of the Rwandan genocide reached out to him after the shooting. In return, J.T. collected enough money to send one of the Rwandan orphans to college for four years.

And that's just the beginning, J.T. vows.

"He's grown so much in the last two years and it's through his service to others," Scarlett Lewis said. "I'm so incredibly proud of him. He did it from his heart, just like the kids from Rwanda."

But on the day before Thanksgiving, J.T. was all about script paper. He needed a stack of it. Or at least a hole-punch.

The kid with screenwriting and voice-over credits for Fox TV's "Family Guy" -- a door opened by a local connection to someone who works on the show -- refused to settle for second rate. He couldn't possibly hand out scripts for a table read at grandma's house unless they had three holes in the left margin, just like professional scripts.

"J.T. loves script-writing. He loves it," Lewis said. "And he's really good."

There was plenty of room around their table this Thanksgiving, including place settings for Rob Maurice, the state trooper assigned to the Lewis family after the shooting, and his fiancee.

"They're family," Lewis said. "We love him and he loves us. It's just an unbelievable connection."

As part of J.T.'s renewal of faith, Lewis has taken him to some of her speaking engagements, including one at a Massachusetts state prison. Sometimes, he has learned, the color of compassion is orange.

"We were in a big room before they brought the prisoners in and this woman asked if anyone needed to use the bathroom, so I said sure," J.T. said. "It was by a guard station where they let prisoners in through one door, close it, and then let them out the other door.

"So I went through, and the hallway was just filled with prisoners and the guard was gone. It was a little scary, so I backed into the bathroom. But then I felt bad and I came out and shook all their hands."

It was a simple gesture that passed humanity through locked eyes, not locked cells. It was a perfect message for J.T. Lewis, but not everyone.

For those who lost siblings two years ago at Sandy Hook, the grief and the grind is a private climb, one without a map, a calendar, or even, a destination.

Brian Koonz is the group sports columnist for Hearst Connecticut Media and a Newtown resident. Contact him at bkoonz@ctpost.com or @briankoonz on Twitter.