LEWISTON – When the war took Nancy Cunningham’s son, Daniel, she wished aloud for some other soldier to die, for another mother to suffer her loss.

She blamed the government. She blamed God.

“I was so angry and confused,” Cunningham said this week, as she marked the first anniversary of her son’s death. “I can’t even tell you what I did that first week. People tell me that they were at the funeral, and I don’t remember.”

On April 4, 2003, Spc. Daniel Cunningham Jr. was killed in Baghdad. The Army said it was an accident. He was one of three soldiers who were riding in a Humvee when it plunged into a ravine, drowning them.

The Lewiston native was 33 years old. He left behind a wife, Heather, and a son, Connor, now 11.

On Sunday, his mother plans to visit his grave. She may spend a few minutes at a downtown war memorial, where his name is listed with his father, Daniel Cunningham Sr. And she’ll pray.

During the past year, the lifelong Catholic has learned to forgive God, she said. She found a way to keep going.

“I’m not the same person,” she said. “Not at all.”

Her Lewiston apartment is decorated with reminders of her son. An engraved wooden box holding an American flag sits atop a cabinet filled with small statues of angels. Among them are copies of Daniel’s ribbons and his Bronze Star. There is also a photo of him, wearing his dress uniform.

It was taken at his father’s funeral, only seven months before his own death.

“That was the last time any of us saw Danny,” said his mother. He left for the Middle East a short time later.

“I was against the war because I knew what happened to my husband,” she said. Daniel Cunningham Sr. was a Vietnam veteran who was wounded in combat. When he returned home, he was haunted by what he’d seen, she said. There were nightmares and depression.

“There were some dark years,” said Nancy Cunningham. And war had already changed her son.

Daniel Cunningham Jr., whose job included loading tanks and delivering artillery, had spent time in Kosovo. He saw people’s homes and witnessed how they lived.

“He saw people with nothing,” she said. “He came back with love of life, just ordinary life.” The family agreed.

“He was my hero,” said his brother, James, shortly after Daniel’s death. “He liked sports. He liked racing. He liked beer. He just really liked to live life.”

Living life since his death has been the greatest challenge, his mother said. Only a month after her son’s death, her mother died.

Nancy met with a priest again and again. Even if she didn’t forgive God, he told her, God would forgive her.

By January, she knew she would live on. The rest of her family needed her. Today, she thinks about her son every day, remembering him in little ways.

For instance, whenever she leaves her home, she wears on her coat a button with his face and a yellow ribbon. Often people ask her about it, failing to see the strip of black around the ribbon.

“I try to break it to them gently,” Nancy said. Sometimes, the strangers become speechless. Other times, they become surprisingly emotional, she said, recalling a specific encounter at Wal-Mart.

“When I told her, she stood there and started to cry like a baby,” said Cunningham. “She cried the whole time until I walked away.”

The mother still cries sometimes, she said. And she prays every night.

At 55, she was diagnosed with heart trouble last December. She learned she is at high risk of an attack.

“I just keep telling everybody that my heart’s broken,” Nancy said. “I don’t know if they can fix it.”

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