“War is not strictly the province of those fighting it,” Tim O’Brien, the author of The Things They Carried once said. “The lives of all of us are changed forever. The aftershocks go on and on and on.”
For that matter, any significant event can have the same effect; the aftershocks rattle and shatter families.
Once, when I was explaining to a friend that one of the most defining events of my life happened long before I was born, he nodded in complete understanding.
“The same was true for me,” he said. “My mother lived through the Great Depression and, in a way, I feel like I lived through the Great Depression. Every loaf of bread raised the question of whether our family would have enough to eat tomorrow. She lived in constant fear.”