For those left at home, life is a waiting game

Marine Major Sean Dynan with his mother, Lauren Dynan (left); his wife, Dena; and dog, Trooper, at his parents' home in Hanson. (Matthew J. Lee/Globe Staff)

HANSON - As a nurse case manager specialist at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, Laurie Dynan sometimes sees trauma patients from veterans' hospitals and knows all too well what war can do to young Americans.

"No mother wants their child to fight in a war - it's hard," she said. "I didn't breathe until he got back on US soil."

Because her son, Marine Major Sean Dynan, was spotted so much on "NBC Nightly News" last spring while fighting in Afghanistan, it was somewhat easier. During his first tour of war duty, in Iraq the year before, contact was confined to e-mails and letters - all of which she saved.

His father, William, a retired Marine reservist, spent much of his 32-year service at South Weymouth Naval Air Station. He often brought Sean and younger sister Kelly, an actress, there. "There was no question he'd serve," said William Dynan, who works at Quincy's C&S Wholesale.

The Wall of Honor, in William's den, was Sean's Christmas gift to his father in 1999. "I had all these photos and stuff in boxes. Sean had them mounted, did the research for the photos, and put it all up."

Kelly Dynan, 30, calls her big brother "my personal hero - he was the one person I looked up to my whole life. I'm not sure how many little sisters say that."

Dena Dynan met Sean at a San Diego Padres game in 2004. Their first official date was the Marine Corps ball that year, and a year later, they married. Not knowing is the big enemy of a soldier's wife, she said. "Because the news reports are so vague . . . you'd hear things like six died in Iraq. I couldn't take it. "You just sit and wonder if a day later, someone from the Marines will walk up to your door."

Early on, she and other wives learned to divert worry into energy to help others, including conducting fund-raisers, or organizing wives to notify one another with news from abroad. She also teaches on the base. "If you're going to be the other half of someone who shoots and blows things up for a living, you have to detach yourself somewhat or you'll go insane," she said.

She also takes in rescue dogs; she now has three. With her husband home for at least a year, they hope to start a family.

"Maybe a year from now," she said, "I'll have a baby on my hip instead of a dog."