Writing About Traumatic Events
How many times have you heard people say in the aftermath of a traumatic event: “I just can’t talk about it right now.” They are mute, as if the right words have not yet been invented to pinpoint their feelings. Some eventually find expressive relief by writing poems, essays, memoirs, keeping a journal or even describing what happened on Facebook. Those who are visually oriented may speak through the creation of a painting or other art project. There are no rules or even guidelines for self-expression at the boundary of trauma but many who have been through the experience say that describing it to another person does help.
Finding the words
Our body tells us when we’re ready to unpack and codify feelings, to put words or other artistic expression around painful experiences. For some, even recollection of the experience can stay tucked away for years and emerge years later, perhaps when another life-changing event dredges up old memories. A Vietnam War veteran once shared with me that he didn’t speak about the war he experienced until years later when his son was about to be deployed to Desert Storm in the early 1990s: “It hit me like a ton of bricks – my son might be about to experience the same horrors that I had witnessed. I had to start talking, sharing my own experience, after twenty years of silence.”
Owning the story
Sometimes the burden of owning the story is so great that there is a need to fictionalize and tell it as if it happened to someone else. It can take months or years to become comfortable with the telling. Whatever the starting point, be kind to […]
The Vietnam War – Fifty Years Later
May 17, 2019, marks the 50th anniversary of the death Captain David R. Crocker, Jr. in Vietnam. We were married on June 9, 1966, the day after his graduation from West Point.
Each year, remembering his death on this date reverberates through whatever I’m doing. This “anniversary” is the only aspect of the experience of his loss that feels anchored in time. Each year I note the weather, then and now, and who I am, presently. I remember that in 1969 it was finally becoming spring-like and trees were blossoming, although it had been chilly in the northeast like this year. By Memorial Day, when his funeral was held, we were jettisoned into summer with temperatures in the 90s. My great-uncle wore a black suit and passed out from the heat when we gathered in the cemetery. I would have liked to have shared my secret then with Uncle Ephraim that Dave wasn’t really being buried that morning. Perhaps he wouldn’t have collapsed from sadness and the sun. Only our letters and other memorabilia were in the coffin. Dave’s sister and I would take his ashes to the Eiger in Switzerland later that summer. It was my attempt to control uncontrollable events.
I remember the commencement of disbelief and grief back then as I reabsorb the chain of events from long ago; the notification, the decisions, the identification of the body, the acceptance that it had really happened. Each year since, at this time, […]
Wanted: Words That Describe Experience
How many times have you heard people say in the aftermath of a traumatic event: “I just can’t talk about it right now.” They experience a muteness, as if the right words have not yet been invented to pinpoint their feelings. Some eventually find expressive relief by writing poems, essays, memoirs, keeping a journal or even describing what happened on Facebook. For those who are visually oriented, they may speak through the creation of a painting or other art project. There are no rules or even guidelines for self-expression at the boundary of trauma but many who have been through the experience say that describing it -somehow- to another person does help.
The Process of Healing
Our body tells us when we’re ready to unpack and codify feelings, to put words or other artistic expression around painful experiences. For some, even the recollection of the experience can stay tucked away for years and emerge later, perhaps when another life-changing event bumps up against old memories. A Vietnam War veteran once shared with me that he didn’t speak about the war he experienced until years later when his son was about to be deployed to Desert Storm in the early 1990s:
“It hit me like a ton of bricks – my son might be about to experience the same horrors that I had witnessed. I had to start talking, sharing my own experience, after twenty years of silence.”
Owning the Story
Sometimes the burden of owning […]
Veteran’s Day 2018: Grief and Gratitude
On Veteran’s Day, November 11, 1968, my husband departed for the Vietnam War. I was twenty-two and could not fathom that he might not return. That rainy Tuesday morning, fifty years ago, would be the last time I heard his voice.
September 2018. I’m at an airport hotel in Atlanta, Georgia, where three giant, air conditioned buses are loading veterans and family members for a trip to the Infantry Museum at Fort Benning, Georgia, a US Army post where many trained for the infantry. I have a front seat, right behind the driver. Most people have boarded already but the seat next to me is still empty and it seems I’ll be traveling the one-hour plus journey without a seatmate. I know several veterans of the Vietnam Triple Deuce at this reunion of the 22thInfantry Regiment Society – especially the guys of A Company who served in Vietnam during ‘68 and ‘69.
They knew my husband, Captain David R. Crocker, Jr., as their beloved Company Commander. When he was killed in a booby-trapped Viet Cong bunker on May 17, 1969, the entire unit grieved and had to be taken from the field for several days. I didn’t know any of them until we met, by chance, in 2006 and they opened a window to our shared past.
Since that first reunion in Omaha, I’ve met them at reunions around the country every eighteen months. More and more veterans of the Triple […]
Why We Need War Stories
The first time I met the survivors of Alpha Company of the 2/22 Infantry in 2006, I was scared. It had been almost four decades since my husband, Capt. David R. Crocker, Jr., died in Vietnam in a booby-trapped bunker. I had never heard a first person account of precisely what happened, and I still wasn’t sure I was ready to hear the stories. What was I afraid of? Perhaps simply the peeling back of the protective layer of years since I was informed of the tragedy on that warm spring day in May, 1969. Back then, I had avoided the nightly newscasts by Walter Cronkite. I couldn’t bear to see bloodied young men carried out of battle. Before the worst happened, superstition about what might protect my beloved governed every move I made. Charmed thinking was my armor.
War stories are hard for both the teller and the listener. For some people “the beginning “ – that first telling – might not happen for years after the event. Veterans and other survivors of war may hold back their untold stories for decades. Despite their courage on the battlefield, describing that experience requires a reach back down into gut-wrenching details that they had tried hard to forget, back to a place where they may have felt guilty to be a survivor.
But, remembering has its power, too. Meeting the men from Dave’s company and hearing their stories of life with him in Vietnam was my first big step towards a kind of healing, and an understanding of what had actually happened in […]
Blue Holidays: A Season for Emotion
The holidays are coming. Supermarkets are stocking up on turkeys and hams. Towers of candy wrapped in silver and gold are springing up in stores. Evergreens will soon scent the air with pine, and bell-ringing Salvation Army Santa Clauses will pierce our ears with reminders to be generous and give to the poor. Sights, sounds and smells can trigger happy memories – along with sadness and anxiety.
I asked friends if they could describe some of these emotions.
A sense of loss was number one – loss of family members, good friends, traditions, and “place” for those who live far from home. Some described certain people who were beacons for celebrating and enjoying a holiday; people who were the life of the party. (I remember my younger brother’s enthusiasm for decorating the house and the Christmas tree – even though we used to argue about it!) One friend described her husband (now deceased) as loving Christmas so much that the tree kept getting bigger every year and they finally had to buy a bigger house. Since he died, it’s been difficult for her to get into the Christmas spirit. A young mother said that, since her husband’s death in the Iraq war, her sadness intensifies at Christmas because it reminds her that her children were too young when he died to remember him during his favorite holiday.
Some people expressed an overwhelming feeling of expectation, that holidays require being social and happy, buying the right gifts, accepting invitations, being as good as the media tells us we have to be, and accomplishing all of this in a short period of […]
Gold Star Wives of America: Resilient Survivors
(This article originally appeared here in April, 2015, commemorating Gold Star Wives Day and the 70th anniversary of the founding of Gold Star Wives of America, an organization devoted to educating and protecting those whose spouse died in combat or from combat-related causes.)
It was a muggy July evening in 1946 when five women, whose husbands had died in World War II, traveled to Hyde Park, New York, to meet with a soon to be war widow, Eleanor Roosevelt. Mrs. Roosevelt later wrote in her news column, My Day, “…they came for supper, and then went to Poughkeepsie the Lafayette Post of the American Legion had given them permission to use a room… It was a small meeting, though the casualties among servicemen from Dutchess County were pretty high.”
In fact, more than 175 men from Dutchess County alone were killed or MIA by 1945.
These five young widows had first met together in Marie Jordan’s apartment in New York City in 1945 to talk about how they might band together to support the needs of all war widows and their children. Losing a spouse in combat meant also losing medical care, commissary privileges and even their home if they lived in military housing. Most had married young and had no job training. They had little or no resources from the U.S. government and often relied on the charity of family and friends. Out of desperation they formed a support group called the American Widows of WWII.
Their appeal to Mrs. Roosevelt was auspicious. When FDR died in 1946, she counted herself among them […]
How to Earn a Gold Star: GSW of America
It was a muggy July evening in 1946 when five women, whose husbands had died in World War II, traveled to Hyde Park, New York, to meet with a soon to be war widow, Eleanor Roosevelt. Mrs. Roosevelt later wrote in her news column, My Day, “…they came for supper, and then went to Poughkeepsie the Lafayette Post of the American Legion had given them permission to use a room… It was a small meeting, though the casualties among servicemen from Dutchess County were pretty high.”
In fact, more than 175 men from Dutchess County alone were killed or MIA by 1945.
These five young widows had first met together in Marie Jordan’s apartment in New York City in 1945 to talk about how they might band together to support the needs of all war widows and their children. Losing a spouse in combat meant also losing medical care, commissary privileges and even their home if they lived in military housing. Most had married young and had no job training. They had little or no resources from the U.S. government and often relied on the charity of family and friends. Out of desperation they formed a support group called the American Widows of WWII.
Their appeal to Mrs. Roosevelt was auspicious. When FDR died in 1946, she counted herself among them and became one of the original signers of the group’s charter. The name was changed to Gold Star Wives of America in 1948 and the mission expanded to seek benefits for both the spouses and children of persons who died in war and as […]
The Healing Journey of Grief
At a recent meeting with a book club discussing my memoir, Those Who Remain: Remembrance and Reunion After War, one reader asked me if it is difficult today for me to look at pictures of my husband who was killed in Vietnam in 1969. It’s a great question because it brought back my memory of the many years during which it was difficult to look at anything that reminded me of him and our happiness. I remember putting out of sight anything that triggered my grief and the pain in my heart, even the book plates that he had placed in all our books, with an image of the little mermaid statue in Copenhagen, on which he wrote, “Dave and Ruth” was too much for me. I covered them up with the same bookplate, leaving the line where our names had been written blank.
And yet, today, I have written and published an entire book about him, our relationship, his death and the serendipitous meeting of his comrades who have regaled me with stories about him. In the process of writing I’ve looked at many photographs of him, many supplied by the guys who were with him in Vietnam. I see this young, handsome guy who I was deeply in love with, who I still feel the same love for, but I can look at him and not feel shaken. Is this the effects of time, age, natural healing? Does the heart grow scar tissue? I’m not sure.
In my memoir I wrote about learning from my mother’s example of putting things away after a death. When my youngest brother died at home after years of […]
