After everybody in Jordan's group finished writing down their words, Jay had the group reassemble the torn pieces and then tape them together.

Jordan studied the reassembled paper and looked at his mentor, Lesette Fraser, quizzically.

The tech sergeant leaned in: "No matter how hard you try to put it back together, it's always going to look different than it was."

Jordan understood. It was always going to be different now.

The debrief

For the teens and their families, the end of the slide show marks the end of camp. The mentors, though, stay behind for one last meeting.

Smoots, Ashlyn's mentor, sits in a room with the other adults, drained. She had lost sleep during the camp, tossing and turning at night as she thought about Ashlyn. She prayed, asking for guidance for the right words to say.

Fraser is quiet, too. She thinks about Jordan, who pledged to stay in touch and swore he would return to camp next year only if she did.

"What you did this weekend was important," Jay says gently. "These kids are going to be my age one day, talking about what you did for them."

One by one, the mentors share what they learned, what they experienced.

Veronie thinks of Tyler. And then she thinks of her brother in the Army, serving in Iraq. She had never deployed to a war zone, though she had played her euphonium for the families and in the communities of fallen soldiers.

"I feel so much more connected, so much more aware of the sacrifice," she says.

Smoots opens her mouth to speak and is overtaken by sobs. "I'm sorry, I can't," she says.

Urged on by the group, she starts again.

It was the night of the "bash," a huge party for those at the grief camp -- complete with music, dancing, an obstacle course, a cupcake decorating contest and tossing around footballs.

Ashlyn, Smoots says, raced through the obstacle course with her older sister.

"She was so happy. She was laughing, really laughing. And I stood there watching her," she says.

"All I could think is that if I could freeze-frame it in my mind, that's the moment I want to remember. It was almost like she forgot for a minute what brought her here. She just got to be a kid."