7 sailors died aboard the USS Fitzgerald.

First came the crash, then the rushing waters — and then, the wave of grief.

The grief swelled after divers found seven bodies in the wreckage of the USS Fitzgerald off the coast of Japan this weekend. It washed across the United States, through dire phone calls, texts and solemn visits.

It reached the family of a 19-year-old firefighter who had enlisted in the Navy the year before, and the wife of a 19-year veteran who had been planning his retirement, and fell upon households from Connecticut to the southern end of Texas — people with little more in common than a sudden, immense loss on the other side of the world.

A Navy chaplain brought the news to Halethorpe, Md., where Personnel Specialist 1st Class Xavier Martin had lived.

On Father’s Day, Martin’s bereaved father stood in front of a CBS WJZ news crew and covered his mouth with his hand.

“He’s my only child,” Darrold Martin said. “He’s all I have.”

The father looked at the tattoo on his arm. His son, 24, had one to match, he said.

He looked at his phone. “He was trying to — all the comms were down. He was trying to call me,” he said.

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