Ulysses sat near one of the bearing-posts, looking upon the ground, and waiting to see what his brave wife would say to him when she saw him. For a long time she sat silent and as one lost in amazement.
~ The Odyssey - Book XXIII (Samuel Butler Translation. p313)
Euryclea, the aged nurse, informs Penelope that Ulysses is back and has killed all the suitors. Penelope does not believe. She comes down and is in shock despite seeing Ulysses in the flesh. Her son scolds her, but she still doesn’t believe her husband is back. Ulysses tells Telemachus that his mother will give him a test to verify and that he would better clean up in the meantime. Penelope asks the maid to remove the bed from their bedroom, to which Ulysses answers that it is immovable, that ‘there is no man living, however strong and in his prime, who could move it from its place’. Ulysses had built the room around an olive tree; the bed was the tree trunk. Penelope now believes him. They go to bed and recount each of their stories. Athena makes the night long. After they wake up, Ulysses and Telemachus leave for Laertes’ orchard. Minerva conceals them in darkness so that others don’t see them going since no one outside the home knows that the suitors got killed.
I thought a lot about the shock that Penelope felt upon seeing her husband. She had been hoping for his return for so long and had given up. She looks at Ulysses and keeps silent for a long time. She thinks it could be some trick the gods are playing on her. When someone returns after a long time, especially the war veterans, they experience PTSD and have difficulty in adjusting to their previous life. I think the family also experiences trauma, especially if the veteran is presumed dead. They go through the intense pain of loss, mourn, and finally muster the courage to move on with their lives. But when the veteran comes back, all the past hurt that they went through comes back.