“This is what they sent me,” Oneida Sanders said, kneeling next to a heavy wooden box in her living room. “These are Kennedy items.”
Sergeant Kennedy Sanders' belongings were sent to his parents after his murder, including his ID tag, his identity card, Polaroid photos of his family, gold jewelry, and a quarter that appeared to be stained with blood.
These items offer a glimpse into Kennedy as a soldier, a daughter and the person she was and wanted to be.
Less than 24 hours after an Iranian-backed militia launched a drone attack on the US military outpost in Jordan where Mr Kennedy was serving in January, two uniformed soldiers showed up at the door of Oneida and Sean Sanders' home in the small town of Waycross, Georgia.
Sanders wasn't home that morning, but her husband, Sean, was, and he told her to come home immediately, then began calling family and friends and asking them to come over.
When Sanders arrived, a soldier read him a statement informing him that his 24-year-old daughter had been killed in action.
“When I walked in and saw two officers standing in my living room, I just collapsed,” Sanders said.
The last time Sanders heard her daughter's voice was the day before she was killed, when the two talked about the type of Girl Scout cookies Kennedy wanted her mother to send and her daughter's decision to rejoin the Army.
Kennedy's unit, a team of engineering specialists trained to be deployed on short notice and build roads, runways and other infrastructure, arrived in Jordan shortly after Israel's war with Hamas began in October. The soldiers were supporting Operation Inherent Resolve, a mission fighting the Islamic State, which has claimed the lives of 113 U.S. soldiers since it began in August 2014, according to the latest Pentagon casualty report.
The drone strike in Jordan also killed Sergeant William Jerome Rivers and Sergeant Breonna Alexandria Moffett.
Kennedy's parents have since wrestled with the pain of outliving their child. “It's heavy,” Sanders said after a brief pause. When she spoke again, her voice was noticeably different. “It's heavy.”
Family has always been important to Kennedy. Even as an adult, she preferred to be a homebody. From an early age, she was the caring parent of her twin brother, Kendall. She was protective of her younger brother, Christian.
She was known in Waycross for her athletic ability, leadership, work ethic and style. She was polite but had no time for small talk, but those who got to know her usually found her to be outgoing and the life of the party, Sanders said.
During a solemn transfer at Dover Air Force Base in Delaware in February, Kennedy's flag-draped transport case was the last of three to be carried off a military cargo plane. President Biden stood on the cold, wet tarmac with his hand over his heart, paying his respects as commander in chief.
The Sanders said Biden spoke to them privately in Dover and expressed a deep understanding of their immense pain, having lost a child himself.
Biden posthumously promoted Kennedy from specialist to sergeant and awarded him the Purple Heart, one of the military's highest awards.
After a ceremonial transfer in Dover, Kennedy's body was returned to Waycross.
Kennedy's parents did not see their daughter's body until shortly before her public funeral on February 16. The family has yet to receive an official autopsy report from the Department of Defense and continues to speculate about the exact cause of death.
“A lot of things come to mind when I think about the victims of the explosion,” Sanders said. “I don't know what was in that box.” She said she was “relieved” to find her daughter's body safe.
People from Waycross and the surrounding area gathered in droves for Kennedy's memorial, and for hours, tearful friends and neighbors came to Sanders, hugging him, praying with him and offering their condolences.
“I feel like I'm not strong,” she said of the viewing day, “I feel like I could have a breakdown at any moment, any time. But it takes so much intentional, conscious effort to get up every day, take a shower, brush my teeth, do basic things.”
Hundreds of people attended Kennedy's funeral the following day at a local middle school, and Sanders appeared overcome with emotion as she walked slowly up the aisle with her family to see Kennedy one last time.
After the ceremony ended, pallbearers placed Kennedy's flag-draped casket in the back of a horse-drawn carriage and carried it to Oakland Cemetery.
At the grave, service members folded the flag and one officer knelt and presented it to Sanders, a former Marine.
Kennedy and her family – her father, cousins ​​and uncles – served their lives in the U.S. Army, Marines, Navy and Air Force.
As the city of Waycross comes together to preserve Kennedy's memory, his family knows they are not alone.
The street where she grew up is named after her, a vast mural has been painted on the side of a downtown shopping district, a scholarship program has been established in her honor, and her name was recently inscribed on the Waycross Veterans Memorial.
In the months since Kennedy's death, something as simple as opening the mail can suddenly bring home the harsh reality of his absence, as happened when Sanders received a letter from her county elections office in April informing her that her daughter would be removed from the voter rolls.
“When something like this happens, there's a long period of disbelief and shock,” Sanders said, “but then every now and then something happens that makes you realize that this is real and that she is really gone.”