I was born in 1976, so it might seem a little odd for me to say that I feel like I grew up with the Vietnam War all around me. My dad and two of his friends ran down to enlist in the Army when they turned 18, but my dad was refused due to his flat feet and high blood pressure. One friend died in Vietnam, and the other, my dad’s best friend to this day, came back without his legs.

One of my uncles came back from Vietnam and hid in his room for weeks without speaking a word to anyone. He will not stay in the room if anyone brings up the military, Vietnam, or war in general, and to my knowledge, he has never talked about what he experienced during that time. Another uncle saw two of his friends die in Vietnam and eventually named his sons, two of my closest cousins, after them. Although we never met my uncle’s friends, their stories have become part of our family too, and my cousins’ mom is the Burmese bride my uncle brought back with him after his tour of duty.

Maybe that helps to explain why no matter how many times I visit the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Wall, I still get choked up. I now know exactly where to go to see each of these names that have been spoken around me throughout my life, and I still leave a flag or rose, and I still cry. I wasn’t sure what to expect when I went to the SL replica of the wall, but it hit me the same way. I walked on the pathways almost in a trance before reaching the wall and finding the names for the first time again. I even left some roses.