Fatima Nettles was just 21, a new mother and a young soldier , as she blinked in disbelief at the sorrow unfolding before her.
There was a small casket being lowered into the ground. It held her daughter, who had graced her parents’ lives for only six months before her body was placed in this coffin, wearing a spotless white dress, a white bonnet on her little head and tiny shoes on her feet.
It was a loss that ripped the mother’s heart, and forever marked her life to come. The same burden was borne by the father.
Now, the parents say, their daughter is lost again.
Twenty-two years later, there is nothing left of Jada Kai Hickman at Hillcrest Memorial Park in Augusta, Georgia, her parents say. No casket, no dress, no shoes, no tiny body or skeleton.
Fatima and her ex-husband, Kamaron Hickman, both long-serving members of the military , are disconsolate. They had requested their baby girl’s remains be exhumed from the cemetery, so her body could be cremated and the ashes shared by her parents, who no longer live anywhere near what they believed was Jada’s final resting place.