Widows at the wall: An exploration of the letters left at the Vietnam War Memorial

The exploration of widows' grief following the Vietnam War has been little researched apart from that of veterans returning from the conflict. Yet I will argue that their letters, written over the years since the war, are indicative in many cases of a unique experience of bereavement, related to the extraordinary circumstances of loss or, in many cases, multiple loss. This article will explore how such losses are engaged with by the creation, and releasing, of letters at the Vietnam War Memorial in Washington DC. I will show how the use of an object, in this case a written narrative, can be seen as an expression of a ‘continuing bond’ that serves to renegotiate the relationship with both the widows' former husbands and a radically changing society. I will explore the use of narrative in terms of a ‘teleogenic plot’ in the story line producing a resolution that aims to elicit an emotional response from the reader. By deconstructing the narrative threads in some examples of these letters, I will seek to demonstrate how they become fulcrums in a complex and evolving grief conversation.