Grief Denied : A Vietnam Widow's Story

Rating:
Summary: A Must Read For Nurses and Vietnam Veteran Wives
Review: A Grief Denied is a profound study in complicated grief, spiritual healing and self-care. As an advanced practice nurse, I highly recommend this book for all those who have lost someone to a sudden trauma such as war, those interested in the Vietnam war and its aftermath in personal lives, and for caregivers who often lose sight of how people cannot really bury trauma and loss. Those who do spiritual counseling, formation, and work in the grief field should take special note: This is a shattering book full of many truths that we often don't see and only with help can begin to feel. Keep the tissue box handy. The author exposes her raw emotion and pain. To read this book, helps ALL of us understand the story beyond the obituary and our own often inept ways of making sure that the survivors really do survive.

Rating:
Summary: Grief Denied
Review: Book that shows soul and expresses real emotions from the heart. I was touched by the feelings the book brought up and the emotions I feel. I hope this writer continues to write and share form the heart. Thank You Pauline Laurent

Rating:
Summary: Deeply Touched My Shattered Heart
Review: For the past 31 years, I experienced the same dreams; the same unspoken grief, the same inability to love fully again; the same inability to let go of my grief. I sobbed for hours while reading this book and for many hours afterwards. Pauline opened my eyes to the immense pain that my thirty-two year old son is living with due to my inability to discuss or deal wtih our total grief over his Dad's death in Vietnam in 1969. Thanks to Pauline for having the courage and fortitude to write and publish this extremely necessary book.

Rating:
Summary: Beyond Victims of War
Review: Grief Denied is an engrossing and profoundly-moving account of one of the Vietnam War's hidden casualties. This book goes beyond the victims of war with lessons that apply throughout American culture, which has long denied the primacy of grief.

Rating:
Summary: "Grief Denied: A Vietnam Widow's Story"
Review: I was so touched by the reading of this book, that I cried like a baby for the first time since I returned back from Vietnam. I was there myself and knew many men, such as Pauline's husband. I just never realized how much grief and stress that those left behind had suffered. Pauline is an example of someone who has had to learn how to cope and deal with the death of her husband, without any road maps. She lead with her heart and let her emotions take her to places she had never visited before. She allows us to take that journey of her spirit, though the pages of this wonderfully, well written, book of her emotional expereinces. I could not put this book down once I began - not until I reached and read the final word on the last page. I highly recommend buying and reading of this book. It will move you in ways you thought possible.

Rating:
Summary: I could feel her pain
Review: In November 2002 I had the pleasure of meeting two special women while I was in Washington, DC-Pauline Laurent and Mary Reynolds Powell. Both of these women have become authors about their experiences during the Vietnam War but from different aspects of the war.

Pauline Laurent wrote Grief Denied: A Vietnam Widow's Story. I'm glad I had the opportunity to actually meet Pauline before I read her story. It's hard to believe she has had so much sorrow in her life and yet she keeps an upbeat attitude. This excellent book shows Pauline's struggle to deal with the loss of her husband, the birth of her child, her pain for more than 20 years and how she coped.

Pauline began her book by telling everyone that she was pregnant and living home with her parents counting the days for her husband to return. He had been in-country since March 1968. Then came a knock on her door and a soldier saying her "husband, Sergeant Howard E. Querry, was fatally wounded on the afternoon of May 10." Her world fell apart that day.

Pauline and Howard had met during the summer of 1965. They worked together at a bank and started dating. Then in August 1966 Howard received his draft notice.

He went through Basic Training and Advanced Infantry Training then onto Officer Candidate School which postponed his departure for Vietnam for a little while. When he was dismissed from OCS because he "lacked organization and was indecisive" he asked Pauline if she would still marry him. Howard was then sent to the NCOC Academy to train to be a sergeant.

Pauline and Howard were married on 27 September 1967. They left that same night headed for Fort Benning in Georgia. Because they arrived there late "the Army made Howard stay on base during the entire first week of our marriage as punishment. Thus began my initiation into being an Army wife."

She wrote of how Howard changed during this period. How they were "afraid to be alone together." And how they "couldn't muster up the courage to talk about the possibility of his death." Howard was headed for Vietnam and Pauline was about to "have our baby-alone." They "planned to meet in Hawaii on his first R&R." Pauline was going to bring the baby there so Howard could see her. That never happened.

"It took the Army five days to find me." Pauline couldn't believe Howard hadn't provided the proper location of his wife to them. Had the Army screwed up once again?

When his remains arrived Pauline, like so many other widows and mothers, was told he was "Non-viewable." Her mother-in-law shrieked. Pauline somehow held herself together. "The only thing that kept me going during that time was the life I had growing inside me." Pauline also admits that she "didn't have a name for it then, but denial was pretending that he'd come back someday....But pretending didn't make my grief go away."

When their daughter was born Pauline felt she "was in the presence of a miracle." Michelle "looked exactly like Howard." Pauline wrote of Michelle's growing up years. How no matter where they moved she always carried the box of Howard's personal effects that had been shipped to her from Vietnam but never opened.

Pauline was lost for many years. She held several jobs to get by but she never really dealt with her grief. She finally was diagnosed as having a "major depressive episode." She had "lost hope and wanted to die." Michelle was the connection she had with reality.

But Pauline knew she couldn't hurt Michelle by taking her own life. "I loved her too much." So she did everything she could to make Michelle's life a happy one including walking her down the aisle the day she got married.

Pauline wrote about finding a book The Courage To Grieve. She felt that "opening that book was like opening Howard's coffin." She soon realized that she "hadn't even begun to touch the deep-seated grief" she still carried.

She came upon "Chapter #223 of Vietnam Veterans of America" booth at a festival one day. She found "the courage to approach the booth and identify myself as a Vietnam widow." It had taken Pauline 25 years to get to that point and she made a big leap of faith. She went to the chapter's Directors and then to the chapter's general meeting. She opened up for the first time.

It wasn't long before she became involved with Sons and Daughters In Touch. "Many of them spoke of the identity crisis they suffer when they approach the age at which their fathers died." Pauline found that "Coming out of isolation was good for me...I learned to finally honor the voice of the young widow inside me."

Pauline also began writing during those years. She would often write letters to Howard. It was like a healthy thing to do. She realized that "My own personal denial of Howard's death was compounded by my country's denial. We all pretended that Vietnam was behind us. But in our silence the war's impact continued to deepen."

To help Pauline heal herself she began a quest. She tracked down members of Howard's unit. She wanted to know exactly what happened to her husband. It took her awhile but she found some of the guys he served with.

AND she and Michelle finally made a journey to Washington, DC to visit The Wall. They went to touch Howard's name upon it.

This book showed what this one woman went through and I'm sure so many others did too. BUT Pauline has had the courage to write about how Howard's life and death affected her and her child. It is a well-done book and should be read by everyone. I sincerely hope that it helps other widows heal also especially now that we have another generation of young widows among our population. Pauline should be proud of this book.

Rating:
Summary: The Truth About Being Left Behind
Review: Laurent has written a searingly painful portrait of the endless pit of despair and intermingled rage engendered by a senseless death. Such a death involves a murder of the soul, and her writing about the combat death of her husband after a pitifully short marriage is terrible to read. Seven months pregnant, she loses the center of her life forever in one short moment, and must somehow find the strength to go on and raise their little daughter born so soon after her father's death.

While her husband died in Vietnam, the experience of coming to terms with the death of a loved one is universal. No one who has not felt the hopelessness and the bleakness of the unending sorrow is fully capable of knowing what it is like, but the beautiful writing of Laurent makes it as close as is humanly possible to understand. It is the writing which distinguishes this book; Laurent expresses the pain and anguish of all losses in her words. Difficult to read; yes. Worthwhile; absolutely. And somehow cathartic, for we have all experienced loss, even if not a husband lost to combat in a senseless, meaningless political debacle as Vietnam. Read it; you'll be glad you did.

Rating:
Summary: Will deepen your compassion toward others
Review: Pauline Laurent's "Grief Denied: A Vietnam Widow's Story" struck me more profoundly than any book I've ever read. I have dealt with grief in my own life and that of others, but never have I been moved to such outpouring of tears. The book hit a deep emotional chord as I read of the non-embraced grief that Pauline endured through years when society was angry and rejecting of anything related to the Vietnam War. I mourned for Paulne's loss and for her fatherless daughter. And I mourned in personal shame how righteously intolerant I was during that era. Pauline's story is about more than grief. It is about courage, resilience, and recovery. This book is poignant and gripping; it will live in your heart. Michael DeMarchi, hospice volunteer

Rating:
Summary: Courageous and long overdue
Review: Pauline Laurent's beautifully written "Grief Denied- A Vietnam Widow's Story" is a brave gift to a country that needs to look at the long-term traumatic effects on loved ones of those who answered the call to Vietnam. As a former wife of a Vietnam veteran who physically survived the war, but was scarred mentally and emotionally, I have longed for books that tell of the trauma behind closed doors on American soil, long after the end of the Vietnam war. Sadly, I have found very little written on the subject. I used to think I was alone in the madness of grief and confusion. Thanks to Pauline Laurent, I know there are many others out there who have suffered similar experiences, with no recognition. It is time for America to wake up, look at the ugly aftermath and acknowledge it. There has been too much shame born by those of us directly affected by Nam. I thank and applaud Pauline for adding a most important work to the "women on the homefront" point of view. It is high time we give credit to those women who have paid a high price for loving Vietnam vets!

Rating:
Summary: Tears Like Rivers Were Meant To Flow
Review: Pauline Laurent's Grief Denied: A Vietnam Widow's Story is a compelling, memorable, superbly written, candid, and intimate account of her coming to terms with the grief of her husband in the Vietnam War when she was 22 years old and pregnant. Grief Denied is a simply wonderful book, the writing as compassionate as it is sincere. From first page to last, Grief Denied will prove rewarding, insightful reading on the human condition and what we can do when inevitably confronted with loss and pain in our own lives and families.