Thank you to National Missing and Unidentified Persons System (NamUs) for your recent efforts in contacting me to add DNA to my mother's file in your database!  A local law enforcement agent swabbed my mouth today in order to help compile a DNA profile.  Even though there is no body with which to compare the DNA at this time, at least I got to share the story with a couple more people.
My siblings will also be contributing their DNA soon.
We do still think about you Mom! :)

Photo with Dad

Craig, Stoney, Melanie, & me with Dad

The Sign

My friend said she saw it still hanging

on the wall of a supermarket the other day.

It surprised me.

But I can still see that familiar photo,

even though I haven't actually seen it for quite awhile now.

She's smiling back at me through the black ink

although it's shamefully grainy.

Her name is in big letters across that page

but it's not like I could ever forget it,

even if they did take it down.

My friend said maybe they leave it up

for seven years or something...

If they do, that sign has one and a half years left.

Why is it still up there anyway?

It's not like anybody is trying to find her...

I push it to the back of my mind.

I act happy

and my friend says I laugh like her.

The only thing I can see is her face--

She's laughing.

But I don't remember what she sounds like.

It makes me mad--Why did I forget?

What happens when I forget everything,

when every memory I tried to keep 

floats away like all the other signs?

For now, I force old thoughts to hang in my mind

Just like

that 

one 

last 

sign.

I tell myself over and over,

People aren't supposed to forget their own mother.

---written by Jodi Hudson, 3/1/99--

The original handwritten draft won a medal in poetry competition 

at Pittsburg State University. I was in 9th grade. 16 yrs old.

Missing

Click here to see: The Doe Network Case 1161DFKS
Click here to see: The Charley Project: Ginger Hudson
Click here to see: Let's Bring them Home.org

MISSING

Age 33. Auburn hair. Hazel eyes...
    That was the way she was described on the missing signs that were posted up around town.  They were almost like all the other missing signs, but these certain signs always seemed to catch my eye more than any of the others.  Printed in bold black lettering across the middle of the page was: Ginger May Hudson, a name I knew too well.  It was the photograph though that made me stop in my tracks.  It showed a face that had appeared a very great number of times in my past and, as far as I knew, it would never appear again.  As I stared at that black and white sign, I could do no more than hope the eyes staring back at me belonged to someone else, someone I did not know, someone whom I had never met.  Hoping was all I could do, for I knew, even with a passing glance, who it was on that sign.  And no matter how hard I tried not to know, I was not able to forget.  I could not just walk into the store like any ordinary person. It seemed far too difficult to go on with life acting like I had no worries at all.  I could not help looking back as I started to move on.  I wondered if anybody else ever took the time to notice that sign or if people tend not to stop and read things like that.  Most of all, I wondered how many of them knew that this missing woman had four children--one of them being a little girl, nearly 10 years old, who just happened to be me.

    In August 1993, the nightmare began. Or maybe I just woke up to reality.  It was a Wednesday night, just after dark when my mom pulled into the gravel driveway of my dad's house, where my older and younger brother, younger sister, and I spent half our time those days.  My mom used to live there, but that was before she got a boyfriend.  That night, as everyone else took their time loading up their little kid arms and telling our mother the usual goodbye, I ran inside the house to put down my backpack.  When I hurried outside again, I found my mother crying in her parked car.  I was puzzled, but she told me that she only thought I was not going to say goodbye.  After what I thought to be our normal hug & kiss, I went back inside the house.  That night when my mother drove out of our driveway, she drove out of our lives.  She was last seen at her home on Thursday, wearing a white sleeveless shirt and dark colored shorts.  That Friday, when I heard the news, a part of me said to cry and scream for my mother, but the other part, the part I listened to, said to stay calm and wait.

    I had no way of knowing I would be waiting for years.  Whatever happened to my mother that Thursday caused her to leave behind not only her material belongings, like her purse and her car, but also her most prized possessions, her children, whom she loved more than anything else in the world.  I often think, if only there had been something, something that would have been able to lead us to what happened, anything at all, as long as it revealed at least a small amount of the truth. Such a thing was never found though, and every unanswerable question was left unanswered.

    I just don't see how everything can be fine one minute, and the next minute someone who means so much to you can be gone forever.  I know now what the saying 'You don't know what you have until you lose it' is all about.  It is as though people aren't even thankful for the family and friends surrounding them until of a sudden, those very ones are not with them anymore.  It is when that someone is gone that you remember all the times you forgot to say "Thank you."  Then you try to recall the last time you told them "I love you" and for some reason these words have always slipped your mind.  It is so easy to think back to the last time you saw them and list all the things you could have done to make it better and how you wish you were with them one last time.  I have done it too many times to count.

    I never notice anymore missing signs with my mother's name on them, and maybe everyone has given up on her, but that will not cause me to forget her.  As I picture her curled hair and her smile, I realize that it is all the little things that are the hardest to remember.  The harder I think of them, the more they are fogged in my mind in a cluster of so many things that I cannot separate one from another, and yet, at the same time, it is as though I have nothing at all.  I cannot make a clear picture out of anything.  I cannot help but wonder why I never thought to notice certain things.  Those things at the time meant nothing at all but now would mean so much.  However, if I were asked what certain things, I would have no way of answering, because I am not even sure what it is that I am wanting to know.  It is hardly anything, yet everything she ever was.  I know I may never find her, just as the Police may never find her, but perhaps if I keep searching within myself, my mother may be found in another sense, one that may be even more important than the one everyone else is searching for.  They see her as another missing person, but to me she will always be my mother.  I only hope now that her image will not float away as a paper sign in the wind.  I whisper, "Mom," but I hear no answer, and as I sit in the threatening silence, I feel a tear sliding down my cheek.

---Originally written for an 8th grade English essay assignment.  It was 1997 and I was 13.  On the day I turned in my rough draft, my English teacher came across the hall to find me in my Science class just so she could give me a hug and to tell me that she loved it!  This was the first time I had ever written about what had happened, but my English teacher's reaction meant the world to me and this is what inspired me to keep writing!
Thank you Ms. Rhodes!!!

My Mother

Her name was Ginger Hudson
Her middle name was May
She was there to be my mother
but soon was snatched away
Without a word of warning
No time to say goodbye
She slipped away so quickly
without a reason why
No one knew what happened
Her body wasn't found
The missing signs didn't help
although they hung around
I never thought it could happen
It never crossed my mind
that my mother could be gone
and that I'd be left behind
The missing signs have gone
But the memories are still
And there's an emptiness in my heart
that no one else can fill

-written around 1997 when I was 13