5 February 2007:
Once a month, Laura Youngblood takes her 6-year-old son Hunter to Arlington National Cemetery to visit "Daddy's garden."
"We bring stuff, pictures. He runs out first to his daddy's stone," she said. "He runs to his stone and gives it a kiss and says 'I love you, Daddy,' and gives him the gifts."
Hunter was 4 and Youngblood, 28, was eight months pregnant with her second child when she learned her husband, Travis Youngblood, a Navy medic, had been hit with an improvised explosive device in Iraq in July 2005. Though she'd at first been told he was expected to recover, she found out five days later that he'd died.
At first, she said, she lost interest in the baby she was carrying and started losing weight.
"I didn't even want my child, and I know it sounds sad. I didn't want anything, I wanted to take care of Hunter and I wasn't thinking about the child," she said. "And then I kept thinking, I still have this part of him inside me."
She drove herself to the hospital for a cesarean section. During the surgery, she kept her husband's portrait on her chest. She called her daughter Emma, a name her husband chose in his last letter home as "fitting for his little princess," and placed the portrait in Emma's bassinet.
Fifteen months later, Laura Youngblood now lives in Columbus, Ohio, where she and her children can be close to the base of those who served alongside her husband. Laura, who spent five years in the Navy and is currently in the reserves, grew up in Long Beach and remained there with her family for months after her husband's death, but said she could not afford to stay in New York on her Social Security and husband's disability income.
"I'd love to, I grew up there and I know where everything is, I have friends and family there to help me, but I can't afford it right now," she said.
Raising her children alone is difficult, she said, but she has dedicated her life to them and to his memory. "I live my life in honor of my husband, I raise my kids in honor of my husband. I'm still married, I'm happily married. All I do is take care of my kids," she said. "We talk about him every day. We have pictures in everyone's room. He's still my husband, he's still their daddy."
For Emma, who will never meet her father, Laura has made 15-minute videos of photographs and home movies. "She'll point to the pictures and we say, 'Daddy,' and she'll say, 'Daddy.' "
Laura said she hopes to return to school eventually and get a job, but "right now I don't have the time and energy to do anything."
"Hunter knows how his daddy was killed, and he knows where and by who, and he knows everything," she said. "I'm not going to lie, I'd rather he know the truth before I lie to him. He'll always tell people that his daddy's a hero, and then sometimes he cries and says he wishes Daddy was alive, and every time he'll make me make a wish."
"He says, 'I know what you wished for. I know you wished Daddy was alive.' I cry, of course. All the time, but it's our life, and I'm proud of my husband and I stand behind him for everything he did and what all of our troops did."