He survived Iraq. But every night at dinner, I watched him disappear.
The boy who used to chase fireflies in our backyard, who’d laugh so hard he’d snort milk through his nose, was gone. In his place sat a man in a pressed uniform, medals pinned to his chest, but his eyes—those blue eyes that once sparkled like the lake we fished in—were hollow.
My son, Tommy, came home from the war, but something else came with him, something I couldn’t name at first. It wasn’t until the VA doctor said “PTSD” that I understood, and even then, I didn’t. Not really.
Back in the ‘70s, when I was young, life was simpler. My husband, Ed, worked the steel mill, and I raised Tommy and his sister, Jenny, in our little brick house in Youngstown.
We’d sit on the porch after supper, Ed with his beer, me with my iced tea, watching the kids ride bikes until the streetlights flickered on. The mill paid steady, and folks respected a man who put in an honest day’s work.
We weren’t rich, but we were proud. The world made sense then—work hard, raise your kids, go to church, and everything would turn out fine.
But the world changed. The mills closed, and Ed’s hands, once strong from hauling steel, grew idle. We scraped by, me taking shifts at the diner, him fixing cars in the garage.
Tommy was our light, though. He was a good boy—played football, helped old Mrs. Carter with her groceries, always had a story to tell.
When he enlisted after 9/11, I was proud but terrified. “It’s my duty, Ma,” he said, standing tall in his uniform the day he shipped out.
I clung to that image of him—strong, sure, my boy—through every letter, every call from some desert half a world away.
When he came home in 2008, the town threw a parade. Flags waved, the high school band played, and folks clapped like he was a hero from an old war movie.
I thought, This is it. He’s back. We’re whole again. But that night, at the kitchen table, I saw it. He pushed his food around, stared past me, flinched when a car backfired down the street. “You okay, Tommy?” I asked.
He nodded, but his hands shook. I thought he was tired. I thought he’d adjust.
He didn’t.
Days turned to weeks, then months. Tommy got a job at the auto parts store, but he’d come home smelling of whiskey, his temper sharp as a blade. He’d snap at Jenny when she asked about the war, then apologize, his voice breaking.
At night, I’d hear him pacing, muttering, sometimes shouting in his sleep. Once, I found him in the backyard at 3 a.m., staring at the stars, tears streaming down his face. “I can’t get it out of my head, Ma,” he whispered. “The things I saw… the things I did.”
I tried to help. I called the VA, waited months for appointments, sat through sessions where they gave him pills that made him foggy but didn’t stop the nightmares.
I read books about PTSD, but they were just words—clinical, cold. They didn’t tell me how to hold my boy when he woke up screaming, or how to stop feeling like I’d failed him. Ed tried too, in his way, but he was old-school, thought Tommy just needed to “man up.” That only made it worse.
Tommy stopped talking to us, stopped coming to Sunday dinners. He’d sit in his room, the TV blaring war movies, like he was trying to drown out the war in his head.
The town didn’t help. The same folks who’d cheered at the parade whispered behind his back when he got drunk at the VFW hall or quit another job. “He’s not right,” they’d say, like he was broken machinery, not a man who’d carried their flag into hell and back.
I wanted to scream at them, He’s my son! He’s still in there! But I didn’t. I just kept cooking his favorite meatloaf, hoping one day he’d eat it and smile like he used to.
The years blurred. Ed passed in 2015, heart attack, quick and quiet. Jenny moved to Columbus, got married, had kids. I was alone with Tommy, who was 35 but seemed older than me some days.
The world kept changing—factories gone, replaced by warehouses and robots, kids glued to phones, nobody sitting on porches anymore.
I felt like a relic, a woman from a time when family meant something, when you could fix things with a hug or a home-cooked meal. But I couldn’t fix Tommy. I’d look at him, his uniform hanging in the closet, gathering dust, and wonder where my boy went.
One night last winter, I found him in the garage, sitting in Ed’s old truck, the engine running. The air was thick with exhaust.
I yanked the door open, screaming his name, and he looked at me, eyes empty. “I just want it to stop, Ma,” he said. I dragged him inside, made coffee, and sat with him until dawn.
I didn’t know what to say, so I just held his hand, like when he was little and scared of thunderstorms. That was the worst night, the one that broke me open.
But it was also the start of something. The next day, I called Jenny, told her everything. She came home, brought her kids, and we sat Tommy down. No yelling, no demands—just us, his family, saying, “We love you.
We’re not giving up.” Jenny found a therapist in Columbus, a woman who’d worked with veterans, who didn’t just hand out pills but listened. It wasn’t quick, wasn’t easy.
Tommy resisted, stormed out sometimes, but he kept going. Slowly, he started talking—not about the war, not yet, but about small things: the way the lake looked at sunset, how he missed Dad’s bad jokes.
Last month, Tommy took his niece and nephew fishing, like he used to with Ed. I watched from the porch, my heart so full it hurt.
He wasn’t fixed, not like a car or a broken chair. The war was still in him, maybe always would be. But he laughed that day, a real laugh, and I saw a flicker of my boy, the one who chased fireflies.
I’m 68 now, and I’ve learned something: the world doesn’t owe you anything—not respect, not ease, not even your own kids the way you remember them.
But love, real love, it’s like the steel Ed used to forge—it bends, it holds, it endures. I can’t save Tommy from his demons, but I can sit with him through them. I can keep the porch light on, the table set, the door open.
For all you out there, raising kids, losing spouses, watching the world change faster than you can keep up—don’t give up on your people. They might come home different, carrying burdens you can’t see, but they’re still yours.
Keep loving them, even when it hurts. Especially then. Share this if you’ve ever waited for someone to come back to you, in body or in spirit. Maybe it’ll remind someone else to keep their light on, too.
The first time Tommy held his baby niece, he froze.
She was six months old, pink-cheeked and gurgling, reaching up with soft fists from Jenny’s arms. “Want to hold her?” Jenny asked, like it was any other Saturday, like we weren’t tiptoeing through a minefield every time we asked Tommy to feel something.
He looked at the baby, then at me. “I might drop her,” he said flatly.
“You won’t,” I whispered. “She’s light. Just like a football, remember?”
That got half a smile. He took her, stiff at first, like she might explode. But then—God, then—she sneezed.
And he laughed. A short, shocked sound, like a man remembering he still had lungs.
I thought we were turning a corner. But trauma isn’t a straight line—it coils, doubles back, waits.
Two weeks later, he didn’t come home.
I found his phone in the kitchen, still charging. His coat was gone. His truck, too. The snow was falling sideways, thick and fast.
