Customer Reviews

Grief Denied: A Vietnam Widow's Story

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"Grief Denied" is a competently written book by a Vietnam widow, Pauline Laurent, who for many years lived a life defined by her husband's death. In telling her story, she provides support as well as a roadmap on how to remake herself as woman whose life did not end with her husband's. Forming a life around death does not ultimately sustain the will to live.

A young widow, expecting her first child, Laurent did not know how to grieve. Everyone told her to be strong and, implicitly, to get over it. She had nightmares and persistent thoughts that her Howard wasn't in the coffin they weren't allowed to open. Instead of the thanks of a grateful nation, she received a silence that evoked a sense of shame. Laurent coped by developing a stoicism and anger that kept her husband's death unfinished business.

The effort cost her. One chapter is titled "The Lost Years." The book is very detailed on how she recognized things weren't right with her and her efforts to change that. She says: "It seems as if the experiences that we, the survivors of that war, have tried to forget, deny, and ignore are now knocking on the door of our unconsciousness, asking to be remembered and finally dealt with so that we can truly move forward with our lives." That she has done with this memoir.

Not forgotten in her book is the importance for a child to grieve, maybe especially for a posthumous child as all the father represents is loss. I particularly recommend it, not just to widows, but to anyone who had a family member killed in Vietnam.

Pauline's account of her early days of being a young military war widow and pregnant with the child that will never meet her father touched me to the deepest part of my soul. It was the first, and only, account of what my world was like and spoke a language I thought no one knew. Her message of denying grief is strong and resounding, most with personal antidotes, struggles and triumphs. I recommend this book to any and every person that either experiences first hand the life of a military widow or knows a person who is walking the path of widowhood alone.

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.

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!

"Pauline Laurent's Grief Denied, A Vietnam Widow's Story is a must read for all of us who in some way experienced the Vietnam War. As a combat veteran who survived the war, I had never considered, much less appreciated what the loved ones of those killed in action have gone through. Pauline's compelling story takes the reader from an innocent war bride, to a young overwhelmed war widow, filled with the unborn child of her first love, through the depths of self-doubt and depression to emerge finally as a complete person secure in her womanhood. We can all benefit from reading Pauline's story as she takes us on the ride of her life, sometimes gently, sometimes shockingly, but always gripping. Every American will benefit from reading this experience of a war bride turned war widow and the struggles she encounters being both mother and father to the most important thing left behind by her war hero husband who died leading his fellow soldiers across a bridge in Gia Dinh province on May 10, 1968."

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

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.

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.

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.

Reading Pauline Laurent's book, Grief Denied, A Vietnam Widow's Story has helped me painfully yet better understand the denied grief that is within me - grief and fear that colors my values and lends a dark skepticism to my personality in ways that my own psychiatric training has failed to enlighten. It hurts to have our darkness exposed to the light of Truth. I don't like hurt. Pauline's text has inspired me to "flow on", not to worry about the tears! After all, tears like rivers were meant to flow. It is the stuff of life. When we try to stop the flow...stagnation! I still want to work with patients, but in a different way, a way that is more spiritual, more meaningful for both of us."