Lavinia Gelineau's grief-filled odyssey began a year ago when her husband was killed in an ambush by Iraqi insurgents, just a few weeks before their second wedding anniversary. She spent the following months attempting to ease the pain by lending support to other widows of soldiers.
The story took a final, tragic turn last week: Gelineau's estranged father brutally strangled her with a rope in her home before hanging himself.
Police have said Gelineau's parents had a history of domestic violence in Romania, and she had voiced concerns about her safety to friends before she agreed to allow her father to visit her at her new home in Maine.
Spc. Christopher Gelineau was one of four soldiers from the Maine National Guard's 133rd Engineering battalion who were wounded in an explosion outside Mosul. Insurgents opened fire in the ambush and a U.S. medevac helicopter was sent for the victims. Gelineau, who grew up in Starksboro, Vermont, died April 20, 2004, while waiting for the helicopter to arrive.
The Gelineaus' marriage was one to envy, said Margaret Reimer, an English professor who taught both while they were students. Reimer remembers the palpable sadness at Gelineau's wake last April, when his widow stretched out along the length of her husband's coffin, rested her head on the cold metal and wept.
"I was looking at what it truly meant to have your heart break," she said.
Lavinia Gelineau sometimes visited the cemetery twice a day to sit by the heart-shaped granite marker bearing the couple's names and a poem written about their visits to Lake Champlain in Vermont.
The story took a final, tragic turn last week: Gelineau's estranged father brutally strangled her with a rope in her home before hanging himself.
Police have said Gelineau's parents had a history of domestic violence in Romania, and she had voiced concerns about her safety to friends before she agreed to allow her father to visit her at her new home in Maine.
Spc. Christopher Gelineau was one of four soldiers from the Maine National Guard's 133rd Engineering battalion who were wounded in an explosion outside Mosul. Insurgents opened fire in the ambush and a U.S. medevac helicopter was sent for the victims. Gelineau, who grew up in Starksboro, Vermont, died April 20, 2004, while waiting for the helicopter to arrive.
The Gelineaus' marriage was one to envy, said Margaret Reimer, an English professor who taught both while they were students. Reimer remembers the palpable sadness at Gelineau's wake last April, when his widow stretched out along the length of her husband's coffin, rested her head on the cold metal and wept.
"I was looking at what it truly meant to have your heart break," she said.
Lavinia Gelineau sometimes visited the cemetery twice a day to sit by the heart-shaped granite marker bearing the couple's names and a poem written about their visits to Lake Champlain in Vermont.
Lavinia Gelineau's grief-filled odyssey began a year ago when her husband was killed in an ambush by Iraqi insurgents, just a few weeks before their second wedding anniversary. She spent the following months attempting to ease the pain by lending support to other widows of soldiers.
The story took a final, tragic turn last week: Gelineau's estranged father brutally strangled her with a rope in her home before hanging himself.
Police have said Gelineau's parents had a history of domestic violence in Romania, and she had voiced concerns about her safety to friends before she agreed to allow her father to visit her at her new home in Maine.
Spc. Christopher Gelineau was one of four soldiers from the Maine National Guard's 133rd Engineering battalion who were wounded in an explosion outside Mosul. Insurgents opened fire in the ambush and a U.S. medevac helicopter was sent for the victims. Gelineau, who grew up in Starksboro, Vermont, died April 20, 2004, while waiting for the helicopter to arrive.
The Gelineaus' marriage was one to envy, said Margaret Reimer, an English professor who taught both while they were students. Reimer remembers the palpable sadness at Gelineau's wake last April, when his widow stretched out along the length of her husband's coffin, rested her head on the cold metal and wept.
"I was looking at what it truly meant to have your heart break," she said.
Lavinia Gelineau sometimes visited the cemetery twice a day to sit by the heart-shaped granite marker bearing the couple's names and a poem written about their visits to Lake Champlain in Vermont.
The story took a final, tragic turn last week: Gelineau's estranged father brutally strangled her with a rope in her home before hanging himself.
Police have said Gelineau's parents had a history of domestic violence in Romania, and she had voiced concerns about her safety to friends before she agreed to allow her father to visit her at her new home in Maine.
Spc. Christopher Gelineau was one of four soldiers from the Maine National Guard's 133rd Engineering battalion who were wounded in an explosion outside Mosul. Insurgents opened fire in the ambush and a U.S. medevac helicopter was sent for the victims. Gelineau, who grew up in Starksboro, Vermont, died April 20, 2004, while waiting for the helicopter to arrive.
The Gelineaus' marriage was one to envy, said Margaret Reimer, an English professor who taught both while they were students. Reimer remembers the palpable sadness at Gelineau's wake last April, when his widow stretched out along the length of her husband's coffin, rested her head on the cold metal and wept.
"I was looking at what it truly meant to have your heart break," she said.
Lavinia Gelineau sometimes visited the cemetery twice a day to sit by the heart-shaped granite marker bearing the couple's names and a poem written about their visits to Lake Champlain in Vermont.
