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Grief Denied: A Vietnam Widow’s Story |
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 Grief Denied: A Vietnam Widow’s Story byPauline Laurent Catalyst for Change Press 229 pages, 1999 ISBN 0967142407 Reviewed by Julie Failla Earhart Like many boys of his generation in the late 1960s, twenty-two-year-old Howard Querry answered his country’s call. In his first letter home he wrote: "Vietnam is unbelievably hot and dirty. At night, mortars are going off all around constantly. It’s a good thing I’m a sound sleeper or I’d probably crack up." In another letter he wrote: "I’m a little nervous today. I guess the place is starting to get to me." Howard wrote many more letters to the young wife he left behind. On May 10, 1968 Howard died fighting in the jungles of Southeast Asia. His young wife Pauline was twenty-two years old and seven months pregnant when she received official notification of Howard’s death. For the next twenty years, Pauline would suppress her grief. In this powerful new memoir, Pauline describes how Vietnam almost cracked her up, though she was thousands of miles away. Grief Denied is said to be the first of its kind - a memoir that examines the war from the widow’s point of view. Although she went to the military funeral, the fact that Howard’s body was deemed "unviewable" did not afford the opportunity for closure. Two months after Pauline buried Howard, she gave birth to their daughter Michelle. After Michelle’s birth, Pauline returned to college and graduated from SIU-Carbondale. She taught high school for a few years before the late John Denver’s music drew her to explore Colorado’s Rocky Mountains. For the next twenty years, her private life became devoted to raising Michelle. Her professional life took her to the education, both in the public and private sectors. She suppressed her grief with overworking, with bad relationships, and eventually with a battle with food. She describes raising Michelle, a life alone, her need to be constantly on the move both physically and emotionally. Only with the events leading up to Michelle’s wedding did that grief surface and demand that she deal with Howard’s untimely demise. In poignant clarity and candor, Pauline takes readers from her California home to Washington, D.C. where she and Michelle witness Howard’s name on The Wall for the first time. She describes vividly her pride and courage taking part in a Veteran’s Day parade when she wears Howard’s military uniform. Grief Denied is about healing; about coming to terms with the pain and violence unleashed by War. It is also a love story, and the personal triumph of one woman's life. |
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