Washington Memorial, the Vietnam mirror

I don't remember the first time I saw the Vietnam Memorial in Washington DC but I do recall vividly the time I took Cecilia's mother to see it. She was born and raised in distant Chile, she had no connection to the Vietnam War other than what she watched on the evening news, or maybe having seen Coppola's "Apocalypse Now" twenty odd years before. She had no knowledge of the memorial, no expectations, no opinion. We reached the site and slowly started walking down the ramp by the shiny black wall full of names.
"They're the names of all the Americans who died in the wall", I commented. "It is the only black monument in an Empire City where all the symbols are white, it is an astonishingly simple gesture, a wound carved on the ground."
She didn't say anything as we walked down the ramp and the wall grew in size, taller than us, full of names. I felt what I always feel when I'm in front of the wall - that I am plunging slowly into death.
The shiny black wall was reflecting our own faces behind all the unknown names. "Look at us," I said. "We can see ourselves on the wall, it is also a mirror."
I looked at Cecilia's mother and realized how deeply moved she was. She had been touched by the wall, she was living proof of how powerful the monument is.
Her eyes were suddenly full of tears, she had stopped trying to resist the wave, the flood, the overwhelming eloquence of the silent black stone.
"So many dead", she sobbed. "So many dead".