Coping with Trauma through Spiritual Remembrance

A Case Study of Canadian Veterans of the Vietnam War

Abstract

In this article, I examine “spiritual remembrance” as it is enacted by three members of the Canadian Vietnam Veterans Memorial Association (CVVMA) in Windsor, Ontario as a means of coming to terms with traumatic experiences from the Vietnam War. Spiritual remembrance is a term I use to describe a fusion of one’s religious heritage and one’s private understanding and expression of spirituality as it occurs in the context of memorialisation. It can occur when a group with a shared memory of trauma or horror memorialises their experiences according to what they hold as the deepest meanings of life. In this article, I present the methodology I used to collect the data, provide definitions for the terminology being used, offer a context for the theory, give some examples of spiritual remembrance as it is enacted by the veterans and finally, offer some conclusions regarding the utility of the theory.