ESCONDIDO - Nearly four years after her son became the first North County resident killed in the Iraq war, Rosa Suarez del Solar is still wracked with pain.

Speaking publicly for the first time since the death of Lance Cpl. Jesus Suarez del Solar, she said she cannot shake the memory of the day the Camp Pendleton Marine was buried in Escondido's Oak Hill Memorial Park.

While the four-year anniversary of the war is a chronological marker spurring more debate over the continued U.S. occupation, for mothers such as Suarez del Solar, the milestone is a dark reminder of loved ones lost in battle.

"There is a desperation that you feel when they are burying your only son," she said, recounting his March 27, 2003, death, during a tear-filled interview last week at a park near the cemetery. "When a family loses a son, it is the mother who goes through hell."

Suarez del Solar carries not only a massive grief for her son, who at age 20 was the 52nd U.S. troop to die in Iraq when he perished one week after the U.S. invasion. She also harbors a monumental resentment toward her former husband, Fernando Suarez del Solar, who in the months after Jesus' death became a leading and internationally known opponent of the war, often appearing at rallies and leading marches.

Her rancor is based on what she contends are misleading statements her former husband has made about his relationship with Jesus, his account of the family's history of how it came to move from Tijuana to Escondido in 1997, and his use of Jesus as a vehicle for his message.

Speaking in her native Spanish throughout the interview, Suarez del Solar said that unlike her former husband, she said she has remained silent until now because of her sense of privacy.

"I guard my pain," she said. "I'm not screaming at the world that my son has died."

Fernando Suarez del Solar acknowledged Tuesday that he is not Jesus' biological father but said he raised him from infancy and was legally registered as his father. He has not gotten rich from his anti-war work, he said, adding he respects his former wife's opinions.

"But he was our son and I have the right to use his picture on posters and I am never going to stop speaking out against the war," he said.

'I promised her I would return'

Rosa Suarez del Solar now lives with one of her two daughters and works as a caretaker and house cleaner. Most days upon finishing her work, she visits her son's grave. The plot next to his is now hers, purchased so that no one but she can be buried next to him.

She wears his dog tags around her neck along with a heart-shaped pendant he gave her shortly before leaving for Iraq, mementos rarely removed. She freely admits she cannot let go of her pain, despite encouragement from friends and family to seek help and move beyond his death. There have been no Christmas or birthday celebrations since 2003.

Words attributed to Jesus by a fellow Marine who cradled him in his arms moments after he was injured were later told to his mother.

"Tell my mom I'm sorry," she recounted the Marine telling her. "I promised her I would return and now I won't."

A sister's memories

Jesus' older sister, Olivia Swaim, said this week that she remembers the pride her brother exuded when wearing his Marine uniform.

Now living in Palmdale with plans to relocate to Escondido with her husband and children to be closer to her mother, Swaim said his death "still doesn't seem real to me."

Jesus' widow, Sayne Suarez del Solar, and the couple's 5-year-old son, Erik, live in Texas, moving there shortly after he was killed, in part to escape media attention that swarmed around the family in 2003.

Swaim said her nephew sometimes asks about his father.

"He just knows his daddy is in heaven," she said. "He sometimes asks why the other little boys in his class have daddies and he doesn't."

With friends in the Marine Corps who deployed to Iraq last week, Swaim said she worries about their fate and questions why American troops remain in Iraq.

"I just don't see the point in it anymore," she said. "Every day you hear about another person dying and I think about the families. We're still going through it and no family can ever really recover from it."

'Waiting for you in heaven'

Rosa Suarez del Solar carries in her purse a laminated copy of a poem she said her son wrote and gave to a fellow Marine to give to her if he didn't make it home. The last line reads, "Never be afraid to die because I'll be waiting for you in heaven."

She supported her son's enlistment in the Marine Corps, she said, believing it was a solid career choice. Jesus talked to her about becoming a policeman, but she counseled against it.

"He wanted to do something to help people but I told him being a policeman is so dangerous. I know through a friend of his that held him in his arms before he died that he said 'I love being a Marine and if I return again I'd be a Marine.' "

On March 31, she will visit his grave once again. It will be another difficult day for a mother still enveloped in pain 48 months after losing a son in a war that shows no sign of waning.

"Sometimes, I just want to scratch at the earth and take him out," she said.

- Staff writer Yvette Urrea contributed to this report. Contact staff writer Mark Walker at (760) 740-3529 or mlwalker@nctimes.com.