Maureen Anderson lost both her sons to their overseas service in the Canadian Army, even if they died years later and a continent away from the hot dust and violence of the Afghanistan war.
Growing up, Ron Anderson was more serious, “a little fighter,” his mother recalls. His younger brother Ryan was quieter, softer. Both joined the military before they finished high school, already certain of what their career paths would be.
“My boys were very kind to me, and I miss them terribly,” Anderson said in an interview this week from her home in Oromocto, N.B.
Sgt. Ron Anderson, a father of four, died by suicide in 2014 at the age of 39. Ryan, also a sergeant and a father of two, died in 2017 at 38. Anderson doesn’t like to discuss specifics of how they died, but she attributes both deaths to the post-traumatic stress disorder they suffered as a result of their extensive overseas military service, including in Afghanistan….