When asked about the memorial as a pilgrimage, Tom said that's exactly what he calls his trips there. "Having the Memorial in D.C. and making trips there has assisted me very much in coming to terms with the situation. When I am home, I am home. When I go to The Wall, I think about Vietnam. It keeps them from overlapping as much." When I first heard this I thought about it about only being Catholic on Sundays but it does make a lot of sense. For people who are unhappy about the things they saw and did in Vietnam, the memorial serves as a place for them to vent their feelings without disrupting their day to day lives. Activity at the wall is like an imagined community. Veterans of Vietnam, family members of those lost, and people interested in it all come together at this point with their connection being Vietnam. Before the memorial, the only places that these people could easily find each other to talk was at smoky VFWs. Now they can meet in front of the stunning Vietnam Memorial. This is another step in the progressive narrative of Vietnam.…
