KILLEEN \u2014 Ashley Hudgins remembers the heartache of not only learning her husband of four-and-a-half years had been killed by enemy mortar fire in Iraq, but also watching her then-3-year-old daughter trying to come to grips with the news that her daddy was not coming home.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe would Skype with her a lot,\u201d said Ashley, a New York native now living in Killeen. \u201cShe knew how to go on my laptop, go to where the Skype icon was, find her dad\u2019s name on the contact list, and all you would hear is the Skype music trying to connect to the other caller.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat gets me every time I think about it. For her, being 3 years old and not understanding why he is not picking up (the call) was the hardest part. But it\u2019s OK because we had to go through those phases.\u201d<\/p>\n
Staff Sgt. Quadi Hudgins died on April 2, 2011, along with another soldier, when their living quarters at F.O.B. Kalsu was attacked. It was his third deployment to Iraq. Ashley and daughter, Nyima, had moved back to New York from Killeen to be with family while he was gone, and so she did not receive notification of his death right away.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen a soldier\u2019s family moves around during a deployment, they\u2019re supposed to let their chain of command know,\u201d Ashley said. \u201cAll they had was my old address, so it took them 24 to 48 hours to find me. After looking around and trying to figure out where we were, they contacted his mom, who was the second emergency contact. That\u2019s who got in touch with me.<\/p>\n
\u201cAll that stuff you see in the movies \u2013 soldiers walking up to the door and all that \u2013 that\u2019s what happened at his mom\u2019s house. So when she got the information, she called me immediately.<\/p>\n
\u201cShe was crying and really couldn\u2019t talk. I kept saying, \u2018What is wrong? Do you need something? Are you OK?\u2019 She never called crying like that. She handed the phone to my sister-in-law, and she said, \u2018Ashley, there\u2019s a guy at our door and he said that Quadi passed away.\u2019<\/p>\n
\u201cI hung up the phone and was just staring at it in disbelief. Then the phone rings again, and it was my sister-in-law. She was, like, \u2018Ashley, did you hear what I said?\u2019<\/p>\n
\u201cI was quiet. This was real. There was a captain there \u2013 a casualty assistance officer \u2013 who was part of the funeral detail and he got on the phone and he said, \u2018Ms. Hudgins, we need your address so we can send a C.A.O. to come to your home and help you through this.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
Quadi was buried at Arlington National Cemetery with full honors, including the horse-drawn Caisson Hearse, soldiers accompanying in dress blues \u2013 \u201cThey had taps on the bottom of their dress shoes,\u201d Ashley said, \u201cand they walked in sync, so there would be one tap (with each step).\u201d \u2013 a 21-gun salute and Taps.<\/p>\n
Ashley says she tried to hold it together during the service, but it was all too much.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was 23 years old, and I feel like even when we were going through the burial stuff, I was sad, but it\u2019s also bittersweet to see how beautifully they honored him. Then you look around, and you\u2019re in a cemetery,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
\u201cI feel like I numbed myself to be strong. I was in shock. I think that lasted for almost a year. I don\u2019t think anything hit me until after he was buried and at peace, and I could no longer get video calls on Skype or Yahoo. I didn\u2019t get any weird, long-digit numbers calling my phone at weird times of night. That\u2019s when it became real.<\/p>\n
\u201cHad we been having this conversation during the first year or two years (after Quadi\u2019s death), I wouldn\u2019t be able to do it,\u201d she said. \u201cSome memories still choke me up, but I can make it through and talk about it now. I can deal with most of the emotions.\u201d<\/p>\n
Something that still brings a flood of tears is talking about trying to explain things to little Nyima, who was too young to fully understand the situation, but also bright enough to know something was wrong.<\/p>\n
\u201cShe would always ask, \u2018Mom, when is Dad coming home?\u2019 She knew about God and the skies and birds. So I just pretty much told her that Daddy is now in heaven with God in the sky,\u201d Ashley said. \u201cShe said, \u2018Daddy\u2019s not coming home?\u2019<\/p>\n
\u201cI said, \u2018No, not anymore.\u2019<\/p>\n
\u201cShe says, \u2018Mommy, I wish I was a bird so I could fly up in the sky and see Daddy.\u2019 My mom and I looked at each other. We were like, \u2018What did she just say? Did she really put that together?\u2019<\/p>\n
\u201cI will never forget that.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ashley also served in the military for a time, joining the Army a year after graduating high school in Sodus, New York, in 2005. She was a standout basketball player on a team that went 21-0 her junior year, when a serious knee injury ended her career.<\/p>\n
\u201cI couldn\u2019t play basketball anymore, so it was, like, \u2018What do you want to do now?\u2019\u201d she said. \u201cA lot of my family members are military. My mom\u2019s father; my dad\u2019s sister, nephew, brother-in-law … all military. So I leaned on them. I thought, well, I\u2019ll get to travel, work out, and go to college for free. So I enlisted (in 2006).\u201d<\/p>\n
Basic training was at Fort Jackson, South Carolina, followed by AIT at Fort Lee, Virginia, where she trained in logistics. Then it was off to her first duty station at Fort Campbell, Kentucky, where she met Quadi. They got married in 2007, and after Ashley got pregnant, they started talking about her leaving the service.<\/p>\n
\u201cAfter we had Ny and he deployed \u2013 I didn\u2019t get to see him my whole pregnancy, and he wasn\u2019t able to be there for the birth \u2013 he came home a month after she was born and we had a long conversation,\u201d Ashley said. \u201cTo be accepted into the military with a blown ACL (knee ligament) and still be able to exceed their standards, I was looking at it as a career. But knowing that they were sending moms (overseas) six weeks after having a baby, that was it.<\/p>\n
\u201cI couldn\u2019t see myself leaving this little one, so we agreed he would stay in and I would stay home with the baby.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ashley and Ny started making annual trips to Arlington National Cemetery to visit the gravesite, and back in March of this year, they went to the 639-acre facility in Arlington, Virginia, largest cemetery in the country and final resting place of more than 400,000 people, to take senior pictures as Nyima, now 18 years old, prepares to graduate from high school.<\/p>\n
\u201cAny milestone that she has, we go and visit,\u201d Ashley said. \u201cIt\u2019s still important to take her where he is buried and keep him in the loop with everything. Any milestone that she reaches, that\u2019s where we go.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have some little rituals and traditions that we do. Whenever we bought roses or flowers, we would make it harder for the cleanup detail. We would take roses and peel the petals back and sprinkle them all around his grave area. At Arlington \u2013 and I think with any military cemetery \u2013 they have cleaners clean the headstones and around the graves, so we would make it difficult for them every time we went. We put flowers and petals on the ground all around his headstone \u2026 basically making a mess but having fun doing it.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was maybe year one through four, we cried. Then we decided to celebrate instead of crying. We didn\u2019t want to cry anymore. Let\u2019s just have fun with balloons and flowers and giving the cleanup crew a hard time.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s bittersweet. There have been times that we are there on a regular visit and you can hear the 21-gun salutes, the bugle being played in the distance \u2026 so sometimes it\u2019s almost like you can hear someone else\u2019s ceremony.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt definitely refreshes the memory of the day you had your ceremony.\u201d<\/p>\n
Along with taking senior pictures at the gravesite, Ashley surprised Ny back home in Killeen with a fully restored 2003 black Chevrolet Trailblazer that once belonged to her father.<\/p>\n
Ashley says the military did an excellent job supporting and helping her in the wake of Quadi\u2019s death. Now a mother of four, she and Ny are doing well, although the memories are always there, along with the occasional, \u201cwhat if?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI wonder where we\u2019d be today, if it had never happened,\u201d Ashley said. \u201cI think about everything that brought me to the point where I am right now.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy family believes in God, and that he doesn\u2019t make mistakes. When the F.O.B. came under fire with mortar rounds, if it had happened 10, 20 minutes prior to the time that it happened, he would not have been in his room. He was a boxer, so he was always in the gym.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe got to see him a week before that happened, when he came home on R and R. My grandma is very spiritual and she said, \u2018God allowed him to come home one more time before he passed.\u2019<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m thankful that my first time being in love, having my first child, I actually had a very good relationship with him and I thank God for that. You just want to cherish the time, because now you can\u2019t get that back. I want to argue again about who left the toilet seat up \u2013 little stuff like that.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m not going to say that I\u2019m not satisfied with how my life has brought me to where I am, but I have grown. I have learned to be a better mom. I have learned to be a better companion. Where I am in my mental space now, I am satisfied. I\u2019m OK.<\/p>\n
\u201cHere are a few words I\u2019ve held onto over the years:<\/p>\n
\u201cOur struggles do not define us. It may feel like the end, but it is just our new beginning. You are stronger than you know.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"KILLEEN \u2014 Ashley Hudgins remembers the heartache of not only learning her husband of four-and-a-half years had been…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":100405,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[35067,35066,17716,94],"class_list":{"0":"post-100404","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-iraq","8":"tag-burial","9":"tag-cemetery","10":"tag-god","11":"tag-iraq"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@iran\/116527241848830111","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/100404","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=100404"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/100404\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/100405"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=100404"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=100404"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=100404"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}