SITTING OUT THE PANDEMIC IN THE BUCKET

THE SPANISH FLU--the PANDEMIC OF 1918

These times of worry and anxiety are shared world-wide. All sorts of events and activities have been rendered  futile and  cancelled.

  The fact of a world wide pandemic has made me think of the Spanish flu and the  blow that  disease  dealt to the Mowry -Jenckes family.

When I was a small child my Aunt Grace would bring me to the old historical cemetery in Cumberland where her mother Ida Mowry and her grandmother Polly Brown were buried. They both died in 1918 --one on Christmas and the other a week later.


 Those two tragic deaths altered the trajectory of the lives of her three children--Grace, Irving and Norman, my father.

How I wish I  had asked my Aunt  questions about her mother and grand mother.  On our trips to the cemetery  Grace would bring a  bush and a pail and a bottle of soapy water and she would scrub the stones of any grime or algae that had  collected since our last visit.

Grace would also bring  bulbs to plant  in the Autumn and in the early Spring she scattered seeds of quick growing annuals. My Aunt Grace had a green thumb and everything she planted seemed to prosper. 

I think today, now much older and a little wiser, of how  worried Ida must have been for the fate of her three children. All under ten, and of her  husband Oscar Jenckes, who would become unstable in his grief after her death. 

I am not even certain of where they were all residing but I believe that it was in the house  on Dexter Street very close to the family burial ground. 

I do know that the little family was torn apart after the deaths of their mother and  grand mother. 


SO it will be when this PANDEMIC  is over--lives will be altered and families will be changed forever. WE cannot  ever know the aftermath of these tragic events  nor how long the deaths  change the fate and fortunes of the children and family members left behind.