I figured there was a story, a war story, behind the woman wrapped tightly in a bright yellow parka.
And I found one, the kind that rages inside a mind, not on a beach or a jungle.
Her name was Janet Shaw, and she stood alone in front of a particular head stone at New Hampshire Veterans Cemetery, the site of Friday’s annual Veterans Day ceremony. Her silvery blond hair, similar to the color of her coat, peeked out from under her hood, helped by a very strong wind.
She was crying, yet she allowed me into her private space, telling me she had come to visit the grave of her husband, Richard Shaw. Richard died from pneumonia last Dec. 4. He would have been 72 on Veterans Day.
Richard, Janet told me, served on a submarine near Cuba in the 1960s, during the height of the Cold War, shortly after the failed Bay of Pigs invasion. He returned home, and the real war started.
“They called it a tin can, Navy talk for submarine,” said Janet, who lives in Somersworth. “He wasn’t in the service for long; he had to get out because of post traumatic stress disorder. At that time they called it shell shocked or something like that.”
They also called it a weakness. They told you to pull yourself up by your boot straps, shake it off, stuff like that. They never told you how to get help. Or even if you needed it.
But while getting your bell rung was once code for concussion in the NFL, PTSD is now, finally, recognized as a very real illness.
“On the death certificate PTSD was listed as a contributing factor,” Janet told me.
Theirs was a love story, condensed yet strong, and Richard’s troubled mind surfaced right away. They met at a church function in 2012, seniors who must have wondered if they’d already had their last dance.
She was a retired hospice nurse, he a retired general manager. They clicked and married the next year.
Janet said Richard was skinny, with long limbs. “I don’t know how he walked on his little pelican legs,” she told me.
She said was he was very patriotic, a lifetime member of the VFW. His obit states at 27 he “became the youngest All American commander in the nation at VFW Post 9347 in Manchester.” He cooked the roast beef for church suppers the second Saturday of each month.
By time they’d met, both at around age 70, Richard’s symptoms from patrolling the waters near Cuba, in that smothered, cramped environment, had had plenty of time to percolate. In fact, paranoia and mistrust were already part of who he was.
“When we first met I could see he was having a hard time feeling good about himself,” Janet told me. “If anyone had anything to say, he would take it as a criticism, extremely defensive.
“If we went some place in a crowd, he wanted to sit near the door, not have his back to the door,” she continued. “He covered up a lot of his issues with his sense of humor. He had terrible issues with nightmares. Just a difficult time.”
Shortly before they married, Janet gave Richard some advice: get help.
“We talked about it immediately,” Janet said. “I told him we can’t go forward with this marriage unless you get help. That was first and foremost. I wanted to see him well, and if he wasn’t well, the marriage couldn’t be well.”
Richard sought counseling, and medication helped. But decades of trying to ignore his demons, or at least nudge them aside, had taken its toll.
“It had gone on too long,” Janet said.
Last fall, shortly before Veterans Day, Richard began coughing a lot, caused by what would turn out to be pneumonia. Before checking into the hospital, though, he had responsibilities, like flag ceremonies at churches and schools.
With Veterans Day functions behind him, Richard visited the Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Manchester on Nov. 13, then was taken to Concord Hospital, where he died less than three weeks later.
He missed his stepdaughter’s wedding last May, but enjoyed time with his step great grand daughter, who was 2 when he died.
“I have a picture of him at home sitting with her all decked out in his commander uniform,” Janet said. “He was a very patriotic person. He had some happiness in his life and he fulfilled his obligations.”
Janet declined to provide details on what exactly her husband had experienced in that tin can.
“You don’t even want to know about that,” she told me. “I wouldn’t want it in the press.”
During the ceremony, while Sens. Kelly Ayotte and Jeanne Shaheen and Gov. Maggie Hassan gave speeches about gratitude and the ultimate sacrifice, I looked around and saw old men and those approaching retirement, World War II and Korean and Vietnam veterans who had seen the unimaginable in places really far from home.
I wondered about their emotions and fears and nightmares after serving, during a time when men simply were not permitted to let their guards down.
I wondered about the defense mechanisms needed to get through their days, like the sense of humor Richard had used to socialize, before and after meeting the woman of his dreams.
“He had issues,” Janet said. “Our marriage was difficult because of that. People could consider that as a weakness, but he was just such a proud American, so proud of everything.
“He didn’t want to be considered that way.”