Her Husband Was Killed in Afghanistan. She Went Skydiving to Celebrate Him.

ARLINGTON, VA — The woman walking in front of Alicia Dickinson at Arlington Cemetery that September day in 2012 was old. She was also there to bury her husband.

At age 30, Alicia Dickinson was a widow.

“I remember walking behind her, thinking, ‘This is what it’s supposed to be,’” Dickinson said. “Not me.”

Her husband, Scott Dickinson, died August 10, 2012, in what’s called a “green on blue” attack, shot by an Afghan soldier the U.S. forces were training. He was due to come home in 10 days. He was just 29 years old.

“Going to Arlington, you’re reminded of how many young men and women gave their lives and how many young men and women they were married to and now were left to face a new life that you don’t expect at such a young age,” Alicia Dickinson said in an interview.

She’s part of the American Widow Project, a mutual support organization for a new generation of military widows. “There should be a different term when you’re so young,” Dickinson said. “’Widow’ just seems so old.”

She met Scott Dickinson when she went to visit a friend who had joined the Marines at his base in Cherry Point, North Carolina.

“That first night, I met Scott and in that instant I was like, ‘There’s something about this guy; I have to know this guy,’” Alicia Dickinson said. “I probably talked to him a handful of times; not very much. But I went home from that trip and told my mom, ‘I met the man I’m going to marry.’ My parents thought I was crazy because I was only 20. But I was right.”

She said Scott Dickinson was a positive, optimistic person with an electrifying smile that lit up the room. “You just felt better when you were around him,” she said. “Even when they were in Afghanistan and having these long, horrible, trying days, Scott was always the guy that was happy-go-lucky, [with a] smile on his face.”

When he died, Alicia Dickinson felt like she had to start over. “I feel like after four years, I’m finding a new me,” she said. “I’m becoming a new me.” She says along with the profound pain she still feels, she also has experienced profound enlightenment.

Three months to the day after Scott Dickinson died -- November 10, the Marine Corps birthday -- Alicia Dickinson decided to do something they’d always said they would do together.

“I went skydiving,” she said. “And that kind of catapulted me on what I called ‘The Journey of Us.’ Every tenth of the month for about two years I did something we’d said we were going to do. I’ve gone bungee jumping. I went to Australia.”

Having something exciting to look forward to every month – something she felt she shared with her husband -- also helped her get through the numbness and the dread she was feeling.

He had been the adventurer of the duo, but she wanted to make him proud.

She eventually stopped commemorating the tenth of every month when it became more of an effort. “I realized I didn’t need it as much,” she said.

Every Memorial Day, Alicia Dickinson goes to Arlington Cemetery with her parents, who come down from upstate New York.

“It’s personally very hard for me to go to cemetery,” she acknowledged. “But Memorial Day is a day that I just have to be there. It’s a day that I just want him to know that I’m there. And to know that he’s loved and he’s missed and he’s remembered.”

“Because that’s a fear,” she said. “You’re afraid you’re going to forget. You’re afraid others are going to forget. Even though you know you never will.”

Photo of Scott and Alicia Dickinson in the Outer Banks, North Carolina, in 2009. Courtesy of Alicia Dickinson.