thedrifter
03-24-07, 11:46 AM
Spouses of fallen heroes of Alabama keep faith
By Lisa Osburn and Tom Gordon - The Birmingham News
Posted : Saturday Mar 24, 2007 10:59:37 EDT
BIRMINGHAM, Ala. — In the very near future, Alashia Quick’s furniture and personal belongings will arrive at her Huntsville home from a military base in Germany. Quick will be relieved to have chairs to offer visitors.
But most days Quick, who lost her husband, Sgt. Marquees A. Quick, on Aug. 19 in Iraq, would rather be alone with their dog, Molly.
At least 43 Alabama spouses, mostly young women, have lost their husbands to the war on terror. Nationwide, 3,600 American service members have lost their lives in the fighting, most in the Iraqi war that began four years ago this week. Nearly half of the war dead left spouses.
Some, like Quick, 29, are alone with their memories, trying to pick up their young lives without their soul mates. Others find themselves single parents of children who will grow up without a father. The dead service members with Alabama ties have left behind more than 80 children, at least four of whom were born after their fathers were buried.
Pulling themselves up from the loss happens in different ways for different women. Support comes from friends, family and a network of people who are going through the same nightmare.
“He always said that eventually he would want me to move on, but never take his picture down,” Quick said, smiling. “I have friends who will say, ‘You’re young. You’ll find someone else.’ I don’t want to hear that. I still feel married. I find myself talking to him still. He was my best friend.”
Molly, her husband’s dog before they married, will still walk into the house and look for him, Quick said.
“Sometimes she will sit by the door like she is waiting for him to come home.”
Sometimes Quick wants to do the same. She knows when their belongings arrive she will finally have to go through his clothes and sort his belongings, a chore she could not handle right after his death.
Quick, a civilian employee who works in finance for the military, said it helps her to move on by helping other families work through the complications of survivor benefits and other pay to which they might be entitled.
She also wants to make sure her husband is never forgotten, speaking about him when she has the strength and working with other Alabama families to create a memorial for fallen soldiers.
Allison Cason, 24, said her decision to get up from her own crying couch had a lot to do with her children, Akilaah, 6, and Gabriel, 3, both of whom remind her so much of their father, Army Spc. Ahmed Cason of Birmingham. Cason was killed April 4, 2004, not long after arriving in Iraq. Only Akilaah remembers him.
“When you’re sitting on the couch and all you can do is cry and they come up to you and start touching your tears and asking you what’s wrong, you know there’s a problem,” Cason said in her Pelham home.
For a few months after her husband’s funeral she kept wanting to be put in the ground alongside him. But Cason came to realize her children not only needed her, they needed to have her without constant tears.
“This really, really hurts, but they don’t know why it hurts, they don’t understand,” Cason told herself. “So from that point forward, I said, ‘I’m not going to sit there and cry in front of my kids all the time because they’re not going to understand why I do it.”’
She also said she has drastically scaled back visits to her husband’s Hoover grave because she thought constant visits aren’t healthy for her family.
“You can start living there,” Cason said. “I don’t want them to do the same thing I’m doing.”
Where to live is another post-funeral question that widows have found themselves facing as they ponder a future without their husbands.
After Army Staff Sgt. Robert Thornton of Guntersville was killed in Iraq, Ellen Thornton chose to stay near her husband’s old military post of Fort Hood, Texas. She says that coming back home to Alabama, the place where her husband is buried, would make it hard for her and her two children to meaningfully move on.
“If I went back, then family would take over and you know, it would ... be too easy to regress, I guess,” Thornton said. “Here I have to do it on my own.”
But Marshawn Belser, who is Alabama’s most recent war widow, is coming home from the Fort Riley, Kansas, area to Birmingham so she and her children can be around her close-knit family and near the family of her late husband, Army Capt. Donnie Belser.
“I’m glad I got to come home, but you know, I hate the circumstances,” Belser said.
Her husband had planned to come home Thursday for two weeks of leave, and their seventh anniversary would have been March 31.
Nicole Wells, 34, never hit rock bottom after the death of her husband, Montgomery native and Marine Warrant Officer Charles G. Wells Jr., on March 30, 2005. As the mother of a 5-year-old girl, she could not quit living, she said.
“One of the things he liked about me is my strength,” Wells said. “He never had to worry about home because he knew I could handle it. I have a child who depends on me. She lost one parent. She cannot stand to lose another one.”
Wells, a lawyer who returned to her family in Atlanta after her husband’s death, makes sure their daughter, Cierra, will never forget her father.
Some days when she comes home from school, Wells will have Cierra go to a cabinet full of her father’s pictures and tell him about her day. The two also bake a birthday cake and take it to his Alabama grave on his birthday.
“She looks just like him. It is a blessing,” Wells said. “There have been some people in the family who have a hard time looking at her occasionally because she looks just like him. She is much like her father: free-spirited, independent and smart. Well, maybe she got some of that from me, too.”
As for moving on with her personal life, Wells is not ready for that step.
“I still feel married. I still wear my ring. I still consider myself Mrs. Wells. I believe that is who I will be forever,” she said. “I have had people tell me that I need a man in my life. I say I do have one — Jesus.”
Ellie
By Lisa Osburn and Tom Gordon - The Birmingham News
Posted : Saturday Mar 24, 2007 10:59:37 EDT
BIRMINGHAM, Ala. — In the very near future, Alashia Quick’s furniture and personal belongings will arrive at her Huntsville home from a military base in Germany. Quick will be relieved to have chairs to offer visitors.
But most days Quick, who lost her husband, Sgt. Marquees A. Quick, on Aug. 19 in Iraq, would rather be alone with their dog, Molly.
At least 43 Alabama spouses, mostly young women, have lost their husbands to the war on terror. Nationwide, 3,600 American service members have lost their lives in the fighting, most in the Iraqi war that began four years ago this week. Nearly half of the war dead left spouses.
Some, like Quick, 29, are alone with their memories, trying to pick up their young lives without their soul mates. Others find themselves single parents of children who will grow up without a father. The dead service members with Alabama ties have left behind more than 80 children, at least four of whom were born after their fathers were buried.
Pulling themselves up from the loss happens in different ways for different women. Support comes from friends, family and a network of people who are going through the same nightmare.
“He always said that eventually he would want me to move on, but never take his picture down,” Quick said, smiling. “I have friends who will say, ‘You’re young. You’ll find someone else.’ I don’t want to hear that. I still feel married. I find myself talking to him still. He was my best friend.”
Molly, her husband’s dog before they married, will still walk into the house and look for him, Quick said.
“Sometimes she will sit by the door like she is waiting for him to come home.”
Sometimes Quick wants to do the same. She knows when their belongings arrive she will finally have to go through his clothes and sort his belongings, a chore she could not handle right after his death.
Quick, a civilian employee who works in finance for the military, said it helps her to move on by helping other families work through the complications of survivor benefits and other pay to which they might be entitled.
She also wants to make sure her husband is never forgotten, speaking about him when she has the strength and working with other Alabama families to create a memorial for fallen soldiers.
Allison Cason, 24, said her decision to get up from her own crying couch had a lot to do with her children, Akilaah, 6, and Gabriel, 3, both of whom remind her so much of their father, Army Spc. Ahmed Cason of Birmingham. Cason was killed April 4, 2004, not long after arriving in Iraq. Only Akilaah remembers him.
“When you’re sitting on the couch and all you can do is cry and they come up to you and start touching your tears and asking you what’s wrong, you know there’s a problem,” Cason said in her Pelham home.
For a few months after her husband’s funeral she kept wanting to be put in the ground alongside him. But Cason came to realize her children not only needed her, they needed to have her without constant tears.
“This really, really hurts, but they don’t know why it hurts, they don’t understand,” Cason told herself. “So from that point forward, I said, ‘I’m not going to sit there and cry in front of my kids all the time because they’re not going to understand why I do it.”’
She also said she has drastically scaled back visits to her husband’s Hoover grave because she thought constant visits aren’t healthy for her family.
“You can start living there,” Cason said. “I don’t want them to do the same thing I’m doing.”
Where to live is another post-funeral question that widows have found themselves facing as they ponder a future without their husbands.
After Army Staff Sgt. Robert Thornton of Guntersville was killed in Iraq, Ellen Thornton chose to stay near her husband’s old military post of Fort Hood, Texas. She says that coming back home to Alabama, the place where her husband is buried, would make it hard for her and her two children to meaningfully move on.
“If I went back, then family would take over and you know, it would ... be too easy to regress, I guess,” Thornton said. “Here I have to do it on my own.”
But Marshawn Belser, who is Alabama’s most recent war widow, is coming home from the Fort Riley, Kansas, area to Birmingham so she and her children can be around her close-knit family and near the family of her late husband, Army Capt. Donnie Belser.
“I’m glad I got to come home, but you know, I hate the circumstances,” Belser said.
Her husband had planned to come home Thursday for two weeks of leave, and their seventh anniversary would have been March 31.
Nicole Wells, 34, never hit rock bottom after the death of her husband, Montgomery native and Marine Warrant Officer Charles G. Wells Jr., on March 30, 2005. As the mother of a 5-year-old girl, she could not quit living, she said.
“One of the things he liked about me is my strength,” Wells said. “He never had to worry about home because he knew I could handle it. I have a child who depends on me. She lost one parent. She cannot stand to lose another one.”
Wells, a lawyer who returned to her family in Atlanta after her husband’s death, makes sure their daughter, Cierra, will never forget her father.
Some days when she comes home from school, Wells will have Cierra go to a cabinet full of her father’s pictures and tell him about her day. The two also bake a birthday cake and take it to his Alabama grave on his birthday.
“She looks just like him. It is a blessing,” Wells said. “There have been some people in the family who have a hard time looking at her occasionally because she looks just like him. She is much like her father: free-spirited, independent and smart. Well, maybe she got some of that from me, too.”
As for moving on with her personal life, Wells is not ready for that step.
“I still feel married. I still wear my ring. I still consider myself Mrs. Wells. I believe that is who I will be forever,” she said. “I have had people tell me that I need a man in my life. I say I do have one — Jesus.”
Ellie