Darrell Griffin Sr. has gotten down to work on his final collaboration with his son and namesake.

The book taking shape beneath his hands is a compendium. It will blend an account of a father's melancholy journey to Iraq with the dire experiences and searching meditations of a son, the latter written down by Darrell Griffin Jr. before a Sadr City sniper's bullet pierced the back of his head in March.

Darrell Jr. was an Army infantry staff sergeant, 6 feet 2 inches of muscled warrior. Married, with no children, he'd been an emergency medical technician in Compton before finding his life's work as a soldier.

Although he had eschewed college, he was an avid reader, the owner of -- among hundreds of other books on religion and philosophy -- a 23-volume set of the works of John Calvin.

So, hoping to somehow soften his anguish, Griffin resolved to go to Iraq to get a sense of the final phase of his son's life, to speak with the men he died fighting alongside and "to feel a little of the danger."