Mikey Stovall’s plane wasn’t scheduled to land at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport until about 9 p.m. He’d been gone a week, longer than his last hunting trip to Kansas, and was eager to see his wife and son.

“Miss you guys a lot I’m going to have to wake everybody up when I get home btw,” he texted his wife, Ashleigh, the day before the flight home a year ago.

Ashleigh expected him back in Waldorf by 10 p.m. She put their then-11-year-old son, Jake, to bed at 8:30, tossed her phone on the couch and laid back in her Papasan chair to watch an episode of “Shameless.”

Sometime a little while later — the details are murky — a weird feeling came over her. Mikey hadn’t been in touch. She grabbed her phone and saw dozens of missed calls.

That night, news of a horrific plane crash in D.C. was making its way around the world. An Army helicopter collided with an American Airlines jet on Jan. 29, plunging both aircraft into the icy Potomac River. Mikey and six of his Southern Maryland friends on the hunting trip were among the 67 people on board. There were no survivors.

Ashleigh can’t recall what Mikey’s mom said to her on the phone that night. She remembers crying out “No!” and ending up at her neighbor’s house, her hands shaking so violently she dropped her phone.

A year later, she still chokes up talking about that night, but she hopes talking will help her deal with the trauma. She’s learning how to move forward. Not on, but forward.

Sometimes it feels like he might come back — that she’s just trying life without him.

“This is not a trial period,” she reminds herself. “This is not a dream.”

She sees him everywhere. When she was untangling Christmas garland in December, she imagined hearing the front door open, followed by Mikey’s familiar “Hey.” Sometimes, she sees his picture, and the air is sucked out of her lungs.

All things considered, she’s coping better than she thought.

“I had always said that, if anything happened to Mikey, I wouldn’t be able to handle it,” she said. “I’ve said those words, but I have handled it, and I’ve handled it really well.”

A hunter who loved dancing and skiing

Mikey was born March 15, 1984. Growing up in Accokeek, he was a slight kid with big ears who was sometimes teased by classmates. That helped him develop a humble confidence, Ashleigh said. He decided early on he was always a part of the joke.

He was an active kid, a self-described “soccer stud.” He liked skateboarding, skiing, snowboarding and playing the drums.

He loved the thrill of hunting, which he’d been doing since about age 12. His heart raced when a deer he’d tracked suddenly appeared. But, more than anything, hunting was peaceful — just him in the woods, surrounded by animals and nature.

Nine friends were on the duck-hunting trip with him, some he’d known since childhood, others he met through work. Tommy Claggett was one of his childhood best friends and later a co-worker. The boys rode tractors together in high school to impress girls, Ashleigh said.

Claggett was one of the seven who died on the jet. Three others drove home.

Mikey and Ashleigh met at a bar about two decades ago. He was there with Jonathan Boyd, who was also on the American Airlines flight.

He approached her, but nothing came of it that night. She later saw him again twice, dancing at a bowling alley and at a tiki bar. The last time, their romance took off.

Three and a half years later, he proposed to her at sunset in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. They got married and bought a house that backed into the woods, where they’d take walks when she was pregnant.

At first, the couple contrasted one another. He was more of a redneck, and she was a hippie, Ashleigh said. He was a “meat-and-potatoes kind of guy” with a limited palate. She was the opposite.

“We kind of met in the middle and morphed into one person instead of two,” Ashleigh said. He was her best friend, and she was his.

A month and a half after the crash was Mikey’s birthday.

Ashleigh hosted a party at home, surrounded by taxidermied animals Mikey hunted. She asked guests to write down good memories with her husband.

She opened those notes for the first time a week ago, kneeling on the hardwood floor and letting tears fall.

A friend’s daughter remembered how “Mr. Mikey” jumped on a bouncy castle with her, sending her flying into the air. Someone else remembered how he always cracked jokes.

Another friend wrote directly to Mikey. “Your life is full, beautiful and persistent. You’d be so proud of your rock-solid wife.”

Raising Jake

The night of the crash, Ashleigh didn’t wake her son. He was sleeping so peacefully. She agonized knowing she’d soon break his heart.

She remembers Jake opening his door and saying, “Hey, Mom.” She asked him to come to her. She told him Daddy had been in an accident, and he had passed away.

Jake put his head down and cried. Then he asked three questions: Who’s going to take me hunting? Who’s going to play baseball with me? Who’s going to go to work?

Planning her husband’s funeral was the toughest. How does one plan a service for someone who wasn’t supposed to die?

“I kept feeling like, man, if I face what’s going on, I’m gonna lose it,” she said. “I’m not gonna be able to take care of Jake. I don’t even know if I’m gonna survive this.”

The family was supposed to go skiing together after the hunting trip. Ashleigh was considering canceling until her son said, “Daddy would have wanted this.”

The trip offered her the space and clarity she needed to plan the funeral her husband deserved. It also gave her an early glimpse of the complexities of grief: When she laughed at something funny a friend said, she was immediately wracked with guilt for feeling joy.

Her husband’s death has also made her less reckless. Ashleigh is hyperaware now that she is Jake’s only parent and what it means if something happens to her.

She worried when she saw Jake laughing with a friend soon after his dad’s death. A widowed friend reminded her that kids live in the present.

“If you’re gonna lose your dad, I feel like 11 is the age to do it, because he’s old enough to have established memories,” Ashleigh said. “You hope that you have a son who grows up to be like his father.”

Jake doesn’t talk much about his dad. They spent a lot of time together, hunting on weekdays before school or when Mikey coached Jake’s baseball team twice a week.

“It’s like he knew that he wasn’t going to be alive for a long time, because who lives like that?” Ashleigh said. “Who spends that much time with their kid? Who spends that much time with their wife and treats their wife like that? … It’s like he knew that he had to do it all.”

Once, on a vacation to Ocean City, Jake spent his tickets at the arcade on matching friendship bracelets for the family. They wore them every day. Mikey’s started fraying and turning white from wear.

It was one of the first things Ashleigh requested when he died.

Jake wore it for a little while before it broke. The bracelet now hangs in their living room beneath Mikey’s memorial prayer card.

Sharing Mikey’s story

In June, the Stovalls took a trip to Saint John in the U.S. Virgin Islands for the first time without Mikey. It was also the first time they flew on a plane after the accident.

Ashleigh looked out the window as the plane descended, picturing Mikey’s final moments and his view from the sky. They were briefly able to turn on Mikey’s phone after it was recovered from the river, and she saw he’d taken a photo of the National Harbor.

She was afraid to fly without Jake then, but now she might be ready to travel alone. She knows Mikey would want her to continue living loudly, boldly, adventurously — the way they planned to live together.

Ashleigh got Mikey’s ashes back a few weeks after the crash. She’d always imagined they would be like a fine powder, but they were more like sand with bits of shells. “This is insane to think that this is what’s left of my husband,” she thought when first seeing them.

She leaves pieces of Mikey at places he loved or “anytime I do something really cool.” She spread some of his ashes in the ocean while charter boat fishing and at the baseball field where he coached Jake.

Rather than going to the crash site Thursday, the one-year mark since the accident, Ashleigh and Jake went to D.C. and did things Mikey would have liked.

Ashleigh looks forward to seeing Jake grow older and maybe having kids of his own. He’s promised her four grandchildren.

“It all would have been way better with Mikey,” Ashleigh said. “But it’ll still be good, because everything that I loved about Mikey is still in me.”

Photojournalist Meredith Rizzo contributed reporting.