After the war-legacy
This is a temporary placement- my Medium account has disappeared since posting this there this morning After every war, the fighting doesn’t end when the soldiers come home. It moves into the kitchen, the nursery, the silence between people who once loved each other. My father came back from World War II decorated by the King, later a naval commander for Canada. To the world, he was a hero. To his family, he was a man trying to live with the noise still in his head. He certainly had what we now call PTSD, though back then it was just “bad temper,” “discipline,” or “ungratefulness.” He hit the older brothers, quite badly assaulting them. He pushed my mum downstairs when pregnant and cut her. No one used the word trauma. They just carried it. He felt ambiguous about her- she was nice- but pretty dumb (but fun at times) and poorly educated- he was quite the scholar with many associates- she was lost and isolated in a foreign country- a woman born in North London- with 4 k...