“SPC Jay Kroboth. June 26,1988-July 25,2010. Spent 4 years in the US Army. One tour to Iraq for 18 months. My beloved son, I miss him every day. Gone way too soon. I love you my son.”
Jay was born here in Lawton, Oklahoma when I married his adopted father, we lived in Florida, Virginia and Mississippi. After hurricane Katrina I moved back home and he finished high school in Ocean Springs, MS and graduated in 2006. After that he came back home to live with me and his little sister. He loved his little sister very much – she was always going with him. He was very much family orientated – we would ride horses together all the time. His favorite hobbies were spending time with his friends and family; he also enjoyed video games as all boys do.
Then he wanted to follow in his grandfather’s footsteps and join the Army. As a mother all I could do was stand behind him and support him with the decision that he had made. He could have done almost anything in the Army but he choose to be an MP. As a mother I didn’t want him to do that job, but I never told him. So I sucked it up and stood beside him even when he married a woman that was 13 years older than him and told me that he didn’t need his mother anymore, that he was married.
When he went to Iraq for 18 months I could only get one phone call a month – she would get mad if I would talk to him more. I knew the war over there was changing my son, and I saw that after he came home. The Army just would put him on more and more pills and then he just stopped taking them and with PTSD you cannot do that unless you are under a doctor’s care. I know I am in the nursing field. So not quite a year after his return he saw his wife having a party in front of their quarters and he did the worst thing that a mother could ever have to deal with – he took his own life on July 25 2010 at 2:50 in the morning. Life has not been the same for me or his sister since. My daughter will tune 21 this year and she said “I just wish Bubba was here” and I told her “I know we all do but he is with you each and every day.” I tell her that all the time. I feel that the army faulted my son, but then again I feel that they have faulted many of our veterans that have PTS; they do not give them the care that they need to help them.
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