I’m about that age. My grandmother’s earliest memory was surviving a fever that killed her sister. She used to talk about her terror and powerlessness when my father was a baby during the Spanish Flu, people dying all around. Her husband was carried off when my dad was 4.https://twitter.com/BGrueskin/status/1422760495631716353 …
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The other part of her earliest memory was hearing her father say to her mother, “Why couldn’t it have been Irene?” Life before modern medicine: You had a bunch of kids, hoped your favorite ones didn’t die.
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I don’t tell it to condemn my great-grandfather, it was a common reality. I’m amazed how quickly people forget, & idealize the premodern. Dad used to talk about returning to school in the fall, and almost always hearing about a couple of kids who wouldn’t be back. Polio.
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