OTTAWA - Annabelle Hamilton is four years old.
Under the best circumstances, when she grows up she will have only grainy memories of her father, Cpl. Thomas Hamilton, who was killed by a roadside bomb in Kandahar last December.
That Annabelle doesn't forget her dad -- and why he volunteered to fight in Afghanistan -- is vitally important to her mother, Heather Peace.
That's why Peace is pushing for children to automatically receive the Memorial Crosses awarded to their slain fathers or mothers -- or at least some other honour.
In this case, the tragedy of losing a parent is compounded by the fact the New Brunswick girl is a child of divorce and has been diagnosed with autism.
"Her memories of him aren't going to be very strong (because) she was really three the last time she saw him," Peace said from Fredericton, N.B.
There are personal mementoes of his life around the house, but Hamilton didn't name his daughter as one of three designated Memorial Cross recipients. Instead, the honours went to his parents and the mother of the woman he was dating at the time.
Peace doesn't begrudge any of them receiving the crosses and she said Hamilton was a good father who called from Afghanistan just a week before his death to talk to his daughter on her birthday.
In the months after he was killed, Peace set out to see if there could be some kind of official recognition for their daughter.
"I want her to have one so that she'll have something to remember her father by," said Peace, who wrote the military and Defence Minister Peter MacKay asking for a Memorial Cross.
"I can't change the fact he didn't change his paperwork before he left ... But when it comes right down to it, she doesn't have anything to remember him by and this would be at least one thing that she'll have of him.
"She might not care about medals right now, because she's not in elementary school yet, but as she grows up she will."
The military -- which had only a few years ago revised the criteria for the honour which used to be called the Silver Cross -- turned her down on the basis that Hamilton's paperwork was complete and correct.
"We consider the form, when it is signed by the member, to be like a will," said Maj. Carl Gauthier, director of policy at the honours and awards directorate.
"These are the wishes of the deceased. We are not going to second-guess and try to modify what is there."
There are provisions to allow either the executor of the estate or the defence minister to designate who receives Memorial Crosses, if the forms are missing or not filled out correctly.
In his response, MacKay said he was sorry that the regulations had complicated the family's grief and suggested a replica cross might be purchased from a commercial agent.
Peace, 29, tried to get an official memorial quilt wall hanging or other mementoes, but discovered that much of the military's remembrance system is geared toward the parents and spouses of soldiers -- not their children.
"With families being different (today) -- not as clear cut -- the children end up with nothing," she said.
Ottawa should either change the regulations for the Memorial Cross, she said, or create a separate medal for children of soldiers, sailors and aircrew killed overseas in the service of their country. And it should be awarded automatically.
"A lot of the children are only newborns or babies when they've lost their parents. They'll never have memories of them. At least it's something they could receive in recognition."
Peace said she believes it's important the country officially recognize what these children have given up.
If there is anyone who understands that kind of loss, it's Peace.
Her father, Warrant Officer Michael Michael Peace, was a veteran soldier who spent years away from home on peacekeeping missions in the former Yugoslavia.
He died of brain tumour in 2000.
