“Hey, Joe,” a quiet but familiar voice said to me from the doorway of a small room with plush furniture. The room was meant to provide as much comfort as possible for the families of military members on the worst day of their life: the day the remains of their loved ones are returned to them at Dover Air Force Base.

I had been alone in the room for only a few minutes and was exhausted but restless; the previous three days felt like three years and three minutes all at once, because so much had been taken from my family so quickly and irrevocably that I felt like I was back at war and had just gotten attacked, but unlike in war, I couldn’t fight back.

That voice from the doorway, though, was familiar because it belonged to a man I had seen on television countless times: President Donald Trump. As he approached me, he extended his right hand to shake mine, placed his left hand on my shoulder, looked me in my eyes and said, “I’m so sorry for your loss. Shannon was an amazing woman and warrior.”