On the grounds of one of the facilities my office regulates in West Nashville lies a little family cemetery. The plot is not at all well maintained; many of the stones are down and many more have become nicked and broken by the large mowers used to keep the grounds cleared. The site has the potential to become completely obliterated within the next 10-20 years without some serious conservation efforts. I can't visit the facility each year without walking out to the little cemetery; if nothing else just to mark its ongoing deterioration.
Two years ago I was studying a few of the remaining intact gravestones and I noticed that several members of one family, from infants to older adults, had died within just a short period of time in the year 1878. Oddly, the groundskeeper, having similarly noted this occurrence, knew exactly why this was- in the year 1878 there was a yellow fever epidemic in the Southern United States that killed nearly 20,000 people, including, it would seem, most of the members of this one little family in West Nashville.
Since that time, I have become more keenly aware of noting common dates of death in cemeteries and comparing them with major epidemics in the United States. The most common, of course, is the Spanish Influenza pandemic of 1918, which killed nearly 500,000 people in the U.S. and 20 million worldwide. I've seen evidence of the heartache wrought by that particular outbreak in several cemeteries I've visited over the past couple of years.
I believe as a nation, we tend to forget that things like this happen; unfortunately often in relatively common cycles. Right now, faced by another potential pandemic, we are reminded that the world is an uncertain place- yellow fever, cholera, typhoid; even polio has recently made a reappearance. Hopefully, the swine flu epidemic will pass quickly and serve as nothing more than a sobering experience for our health care communities. Here's hoping, at least...
