A Love without a Place: A Mother-in-Law’s War

Every day, I find myself staring at a blank screen, opening WhatsApp to check one thing: the last time you were online. It has been two weeks now, and there is nothing. No timestamp, no message, no trace of you. You are in Lebanon, caught in the grip of war, and I am here—far away, yet consumed by fear. My only tether to you is a faint hope that technology might somehow bridge the impossible distance. But even that remains silent.

I am your mother-in-law, a title that feels so trivial in moments like this. In this war, my worry seems to have no space. My fears have no audience, no outlet. Yet they exist, immense and all-encompassing. I worry because I love you—not as an in-law, not as an outsider, but as my family. You are my son, though I did not give birth to you. You are part of my blood, my heart, my life. And still, my role here feels invisible, inconsequential.

War has a way of erasing boundaries, and yet it sharpens them too. I know I am not the first person anyone will think of when the worry sets in. I am not your mother, nor am I your child. I exist on the periphery of this conflict, close enough to feel its tremors but too far to make a difference. There is no space carved out for me, no place where my worry can rest. And yet I am here, my heart heavy with love and fear.

The pain I feel is not just for you but for my daughter and grandchildren, whose world would shatter if anything were to happen to you. Their future, their peace, their joy—all of it feels precarious, hanging by a thread I cannot protect. I feel responsible, not for the war but for the pain it might bring to them. It’s a strange kind of guilt, one I cannot explain or escape.

This space I occupy—neither central nor irrelevant—feels impossibly heavy. I am a mother-in-law, a grandmother, a quiet observer of a world upended. My worry does not have a place, but it is as real as the air I breathe. It fills every corner of my mind, every moment of my day. It is the price of love, this unbearable, invisible weight.

In this war, I am inconsequential. I know that. And yet my worry feels monumental, because you are monumental to me. I pray for your safety, not just for your sake but for all of us who love you. I pray for the day when this war is over, and my role can once again be one of joy and connection, not of silent dread. Until then, I carry this worry quietly, because it has no place—but it is mine, all the same.

You see, my son-in-law—my love for you feels like a pale offering against the chaos you’ve been plunged into. It feels small and insignificant when stacked against the towering losses of war, the shrapnel of fear that may lodge itself in your dreams forever. How can a hug from a mother-in-law, a warm plate at the table, a whispered “I missed you” measure up? How can it ever be enough to quiet the storms raging inside?

And yet, it’s all I have. It’s everything I have. This love that has no place in your battlefield but every place in your homecoming. This worry that cannot shield you but stretches itself thin, spanning the distance between your boots and my prayers. This hope, fragile but persistent, that my small efforts can be a bridge back to some kind of peace—not the peace you left behind, but a new one. A tentative, hard-won peace that weas a nation  build together.

I remind myself, as I sit in the stillness of these sleepless nights, that I am not alone in this. That your wife, my daughter, worries too, though she rarely lets it show. That your children, too young to name their fears, feel the weight of your absence and the hope of your return in their small, tender ways. Together, we are the keepers of your place in this world, the protectors of a home that waits for you, unchanged in its love even if everything else is altered.

So stay safe, dear son-in-law. Stay safe, dear soldier. Stay safe and come back, not to the person you were before—because that person, I know, may be forever changed—but to the family that loves you as you are.  Come back so we can create a new home for the you that returns.

Because no matter how broken you may feel, no matter how far away you think you’ve gone, you are ours. You are loved. And you always have a place with us.