Five Years: A message from Garrett.

Five years.

I don't really know how five years can feel like yesterday and a lifetime at the same time, but somehow it does.

Five years ago, on August 26, 2021, my little brother, Corporal Daegan Page, was killed in the Abbey Gate attack in Kabul, Afghanistan. There are parts of that day I remember with incredible clarity, and other parts that feel like they happened to someone else. I suppose that's one of the strange things about grief. It doesn't move in a straight line. Some days it feels like I'm carrying five years of it, and other days it feels like I am right back there, missing my brother in a way that feels brand new.

I've spent a lot of these five years thinking about what it means to lose someone, and I don't have an answer to that. I don't think there really is one. What I have learned, though, is something about what happens after someone is gone.

I used to think legacy was something you left behind, a name on a building, a scholarship, a photograph, a story people told about you after you were gone. I don't think that anymore. I believe legacy is what keeps moving, and that has probably been one of the strangest parts of all of this. Daegan's life ended five years ago, but his impact didn't. In ways I never could have imagined, his life has continued to reach people he never met.

Sometimes I wish he could see it.

There is so much he missed. He missed birthdays and holidays and family dinners; he missed the stupid conversations and inside jokes that would have made no sense to anyone else, and he missed five years of watching the people he loved change. He missed family vacations and the little traditions that have happened without him. He missed engagements and all the excitement that comes with watching people you love take that next step in their lives. He has missed the birth of new nephews who he should have gotten to hold, spoil, and probably teach something they didn't need to know. He missed the ordinary moments that don't seem important until you realize you'd give almost anything to have one more of them.

He missed seeing what the Corporal Daegan Page Foundation has become.

I wish he could meet the people whose lives have been touched by this Foundation. I wish he could hear their stories and understand that a life that ended far too soon is still making a difference in the lives of people he never had the chance to know.

There are times when I think about what I would tell Daegan if I could sit down with him for an hour. I'd tell him about the Foundation, about the people we've met, the things we've been able to do, and the donors who have trusted us with their generosity and trusted us to carry his name forward. I'd tell him that I still miss him, that I'm still angry sometimes, and that I'm okay sometimes, too. I'd tell him that grief didn't go away; it just learned how to live alongside everything else.

And I'd tell him that his name still helps people.

One of the clearest examples of that is our Hardship and Emergency Fund. More than 110 people have been directly impacted through that one program alone, and every time I think about that number, I have to remind myself that it isn't really 110.

Because it never is.

When you help one person through a difficult season, you don't just help that one person. You help the people around them, too. Maybe it means a parent can keep the lights on, maybe it means someone can get through an unexpected emergency without everything else falling apart, maybe it gives someone just enough breathing room to figure out what comes next. One person gets help, and that help moves outward.

That's the ripple.

And that is what I have come to understand about Daegan's legacy. It isn't something sitting still somewhere, waiting to be remembered. It is moving. It is in the person who gets a little help when they need it, the family that gets a little more stability, the veteran who knows someone remembers them, the young person who gets an opportunity, and all the people who have been touched by this work even if they never knew Daegan and never will.

More than 110 people have felt that ripple through the Hardship and Emergency Fund alone, and I think about that a lot. Not because 110 is some impressive number we can put on a report, but because behind every one of those numbers is a person who was going through something, a person who needed help, and a person whose life was made a little easier because someone chose to give.

And then I think about the people around them.

The spouse, the kids, the parents, the friends, the people who got to breathe a little easier because that person got some help when they needed it. That's where the ripple gets bigger than any number we could put on a page.

Daegan isn't here to know any of them. He isn't here to hear their stories or shake their hands or understand what his name has come to mean to them, but his life is still helping them.

Five years ago, I thought losing Daegan meant the end of his story. I know better now.

His life ended, but his story didn't.

Other people have picked it up and carried it forward, and you have helped carry it forward.

Every time someone donates to the Foundation, every time someone shares Daegan's story, every time someone shows up for this mission, they add another little piece to something bigger than any one of us. You don't always get to see where that piece goes, and you don't always get to know the person it eventually reaches, but that doesn't mean it isn't there.

That's what I would want Daegan to understand if I could write him a letter today. I'd want him to know that people who never knew him have decided that his life matters. I'd want him to know that his name isn't just attached to a Foundation; it's attached to real people, real stories, and real moments when somebody needed help and found it.

I'd want him to know that five years later, people are still talking about him, but more importantly, they are still doing something because of him.

That's what five years has taught me about legacy. It's not about being remembered perfectly, and it isn't about building something that carries your name forever. It's about what happens because you were here.

And Daegan was here.

He was our brother, a Marine, a son, a grandson, a nephew, an uncle, a boyfriend, a friend, and a person with a life that should have had so much more time in it. I will always be angry that he didn't get that time. I will always miss the things he never got to see, the people he never got to meet, and the life he never got to live.

There are still moments when something happens and my first thought is, "I need to tell Daegan," and then I remember.

I hate that part.

I probably always will.

But alongside that grief is something else now, and that's pride. Pride in the person he was, pride in the people who continue to carry his name, pride in the work of the Foundation, and gratitude for every person who has decided that Daegan's story is worth remembering and that his legacy is worth continuing.

Five years later, I don't have a neat ending to this story. I don't think there is one. I still miss my brother, I still wish he were here, and I still have plenty of things I wish I could tell him.

But I also know that he is still helping people.

His life is still moving.

His story is still being written.

And because of you, the ripple is still spreading.

So on this fifth anniversary, thank you. Thank you for remembering Daegan, thank you for believing in the mission of the Corporal Daegan Page Foundation, and thank you for trusting us to take something incredibly painful and try to turn it into something good.

Thank you for being part of the ripple.

Five years later. I am incredibly proud of the life he lived, and even more grateful for the lives he continues to touch.

For Daegan,

Garrett