My Grandpa James fought in World War II.

I’ve known that my whole life, but the older I get, the more I understand what it cost him.

I did a research paper my senior year of high school, and I interviewed him for it. I asked him for some memories of the war. Nearly everything he shared with me was about his time as a brand-new recruit, still on US soil – a train ride out west for basic training, signing up in the first place, waiting and waiting. And then, on the way to Italy, his ship almost broke apart. But that’s as close to Europe as he brought me. What I know now, I know because my he told my uncles, who told my mother, who told me.

I won’t share his stories here. They’re not truly mine. And they’re hard and heartbreaking.

I understand why he never told me, never talked about them.

I will tell you he had nightmares. I didn’t know that either, for a long time. And when he woke up in the morning, he didn’t talk about them.

I wonder now – he’s been gone since 2015 – I wonder now just how much he never said. I wonder how much he carried, how heavy it sat on his strong mountain-man shoulders, how horrible that silence felt, and how much of him I never got to see because those parts were busy carrying that terrible weight, in total silence.

Silence and silence and silence, for all the years of his life. He lived to 90.

When I take a moment of silence now and remember the veterans, his is the silence I feel in my bones. His is the silence I can’t get out of my head.

It’s incredible how loud silence can be.

I’ll never know all his war stories. But I know that he fought, and that he lost friends, and that we, our country, won. I know he came home and built a family and loved them with everything he had. I’m proud to be part of that family.

I’m proud of him.