Dawn was still almost two hours away but already Roanoke Regional Airport bustled.

A line formed behind Sandra Carter as she stood at the check-in counter with two 50-pound suitcases wrapped in duct tape. With her were her husband, John, and their 24-year-old daughter, Whitney. Takeoff was set for 6:15 Monday morning.

With the escalator broken, they walked up the steps toward the security checkpoint. They didn't say much.

A few hours later, in a Botetourt County courtroom, a judge heard testimony in the case of Dion Algernon Payne, 35, the man accused of killing Steven Edwards Carter early on Thanksgiving morning.

Steven was Sandra's 20-year-old son but she was not in the courtroom. She was on her way to China, where she will teach conversational English to college students for four months.

At 55, with more than a quarter-century of teaching under her belt, Sandra Carter was finally living out her dream of teaching overseas.

But, deep down, she had another, more visceral reason for leaving: She had to get away from this place where everything points to her dead son.

In China, people who have lost relatives ceremonially burn paper, which represents an offering of money to the deceased. In Greece, families hold regular memorial services and eat a hard pastry known as paximadia. Muslims wash the body of the deceased, wrap it in white cloth and observe a three-day communal mourning period.

"It's pretty coherent and clear what you're supposed to do and people find that pretty comforting," said George Bonanno, a psychology professor at Columbia University Teachers College.

Most Americans don't have those rituals, he said. Most are on their own. And sometimes, the way we deal with loss can be difficult for others to understand.

This is how one Roanoke woman mourns her son: by traveling 7,000 miles to live a solitary life in a different culture.

"An outside person could look at it and think, 'Oh my gosh, she's leaving the country that soon after her son,' " said Brenda Simmons, a close friend of Carter's. "I think it's a way of grieving for her son to give back to other people."

n n n

Early Nov. 22, Steven Carter, Thomas Redden and Cherie Black were hanging out at Dion Payne's apartment in Cloverdale. Carter knew Payne from work, at a Southern States warehouse. It started out as a laid-back evening of drinking Jagermeister and smoking marijuana.

Here is how Redden and Black described that night at Monday's court hearing:

They were in the parking lot, taking Payne's bicycle out for a spin. Carter tried to pop wheelies but fell.

Payne suddenly got angry and shoved Carter. They threw punches until they were out of breath.

Afterward, Carter, Redden and Black started to drive off but turned around when they realized Carter had forgotten his cellphone. Redden went back to the apartment to get it. Payne followed him back into the parking lot, something glinting in his hand.

Carter got out of the truck. He and Payne fought again.

Then Carter screamed. "I've been stabbed, I've been stabbed."

He was taken to Carilion Roanoke Memorial Hospital, where he died. He had been stabbed in the right arm, the groin and the abdomen, puncturing a lung and his heart.

The doctors would only let Sandra Carter see her son from the neck up.

"He looked wonderful. He looked so good," she recalled. "Not a scratch."

A few hours later, as families across the area sat down to their Thanksgiving dinners, the Carters were struggling to understand how their son could have been killed over a bicycle.

n n n

When Sandra Carter was 19, she wanted to join the Peace Corps. Later, she dreamed of going overseas to teach. But the time was never right. She raised a family and taught special education for more than 25 years. First in Roanoke County and then in the city, at William Fleming High School. Still, she was able to squeeze in three summer mission trips to Russia. She's a petite woman with curly hair, deep eyes and a sharp wit.

Last year, before her son died, she applied for a yearlong teaching program in Korea. But when she realized she'd be leaving Fleming short of a much-needed special education teacher she felt "like such a heel" that she decided to put off the trip and stay one more year.

After Steven died, however, the urge to leave hit again. She found a four-month program teaching English at a university in Linyi, a city of 10 million in eastern China.

She quit her job at the end of January. It was a difficult decision but once made, Carter found it liberating.

She probably won't be in the Roanoke Valley when the man accused of killing her son goes on trial. That's a relief to her.

"What I need is to devote my energy elsewhere because I think about my son daily and I've got a lot of anger toward the man that took his life and I needed to get away."

She didn't want any parties to send her off. The last time she went out with friends they said she sounded bitter.

n n n

Steve Claris popped open the back of Carter's new cellphone, took out the chip inside and handed it to Carter.

This tiny, weightless wafer will be her family's strongest link to her, he said.

"They can call you direct and they get you and not somebody else and that gives you great security," he gently explained.

Carter felt ambivalent about the phone. If it were up to her, she would just disappear for a while. But she knew her family needed to hold on to her. Hence the phone.

"But it's a 12-hour difference so she [daughter Whitney] will call me when I'm dead asleep because I'm old," she laughed.

It was Friday evening, three days before her trip. Carter had met her friends Claris and Brenda Simmons at a Denny's to learn how to use the phone. But she couldn't help talking about her son

He was a good-natured kid, she said, who loved being outdoors, hunting and riding dirt bikes. He'd also been hyperactive and got into scrapes with the law. But nothing violent. He once spent a few weeks in jail for eluding police. He cried when his family visited him, she said.

Claris reached out across the table and took Carter's hands.

"I think going and serving and following your dreams, which is probably what Steve would want, is a much better way to acknowledge what's going on," he said.

"You're exactly right, Steve," Carter said. "I need to focus on something else."

n n n

Her friends and family supported her decision to leave. They knew how much she wanted to teach abroad.

"She's got to do what she's got to do to get through this and move on with her life," said Traci Dalton, whose son, Robert, was a student of Carter's at Fleming.

Mary Campagna, a former Fleming teacher now teaching in Korea recalled Carter telling her: "Mary, I want to leave all of my possessions behind for a while. That's freedom. I want to have an adventure."

But it was hard on Whitney, her daughter.

"Nobody wants their mom to leave for four months but it's what she wants to do so you have to let her go," Whitney said.

n n n

Less than 24 hours before her plane left, Sandra Carter was in her final adult Sunday school class at Bonsack United Methodist Church.

"We have to remember that children are a gift from God. That they're not ours," she said, as though trying to convince herself.

Dennis Snell, who was leading the class that day reminded her that she won't be challenged with anything she can't face.

"They're fine. God has them now. God has them sheltered and comforted and that's comforting in itself," said Snell, who has lost a son himself.

"We're the ones that are struggling but God's here with us. We struggle but we're comforted."

n n n

Sandra Carter hugged her husband and her daughter before getting in line at the airport's security checkpoint. Then she hugged her daughter again. She tried to lighten the mood with humor.

"I promise I won't eat anything that's moving on the plate."

Father and daughter walked away. Sandra put her backpack and coat through the X-ray machine and stepped through the metal detector.

A crowd of travelers swallowed her on the way to the gate.