Day #24: The Spanish Flu and Family Stories
My Other Aunt Marge has been close to my mind and heart these past few weeks. I really wish she were here.
Both of my grandmothers died before I turned 2, so that grandmotherly presence in my life was largely my great aunt. She was my father's aunt Marge and when we were very small my sister and I nicknamed her Other Aunt Marge to distinguish her from my father's sister, also named Marge. Growing up, she lived a few hours south of us in Portland and my family visited her there a couple of times a year. She had her own children and grandchildren living near her, but my family also had a special place.
I think lots of families have a designated storyteller, someone who likes to gather people around to tell family stories. Other Aunt Marge, or OAM, which is how she signed cards and gift tags, was that person in my family. She was a chatterbox, she was opinionated, and she liked to spin a yarn. I remember once calling her on the phone for a class assignment when we had to interview someone who had lived through the Great Depression. She was so excited to talk about her love for Roosevelt and family recipes to save pennies. She just loved to tell a good story.
My sister called me today and said, did she have the flu? Did OAM get the Spanish flu? Is that why she didn't have any hair? My response, well, she definitely had it but I don't know about the hair thing, ask dad. My sister said, well, dad doesn't know anything, he said for sure she never had the flu. I just started laughing. This story has been told SO MANY TIMES in this family, how do we not know these details? Man, if she were here she would set us straight.
I never heard her talk about her alopecia...I always assumed it was a sensitive topic and I never asked, but the story about the Spanish flu was one I have heard...maybe fifty times? Maybe more? This story loomed large in the family history and since I like hearing stories over and over again I think sometimes I was the only one who would listen to another retelling.
This is the story she told:
It was November 1918. OAM was four years old, her baby brother was a toddler, about the age Max is now, maybe a couple of months younger. My grandmother was seven and their oldest sister was nine. When the flu came, everybody got sick. All four kids, their parents, and grandma. Grandpa Bird, my father's great-grandfather did not get sick and so he nursed everyone to health. OAM would talk about this flu...as a kid it was so perplexing to me. How do people die of the flu? That's crazy. And she would repeat those often told statistics about how so many more people died of the flu than in the war. She said one in seven people worldwide who had the flu died of it, and seven people in her family had it. I think her worldwide numbers are off...I've never found a stat that 1 in 7 people died but her family numbers are right on.
Marge's story was that they thought she had died and so they took her out to the main room and covered her in a white sheet and that is how she woke up, under that sheet. Other versions that I've heard float around the family tell that of the children baby George was actually the sickest, but according to Marge, they thought she had died. But all of the children did survive, as did their grandmother and their father. They had one loss.
Edda Elizabeth, my father's grandmother, only child of Grandma and Grandpa Bird died of the Spanish flu in November 1918 leaving behind four children. She was, I believe, 29.
After her death, the kids were raised primarily by their grandparents. Their father wandered a bit and ended up in Portland (they were from Great Falls, Montana.) A couple of them did join him there later, after he remarried, and for a time they also stayed with his parents, who they couldn't stand, but they primarily spent their childhoods in Great Falls with Grandma and Grandpa Bird. According to my dad, Grandma Bird was a pretty opinionated lady, kind of of the flavor of my Aunt Beth, Marge's older sister who everyone was scared of and who I unfortunately don't remember very well because she had terrible dementia basically the whole time I knew her. And after Edda's death Grandma didn't have much use for her son-in-law and more or less accused him of abandoning his children.
These things have echoes, even in future generations. A loss like that does not live in isolation. My father's own childhood was very much influenced by the Birds. My grandmother gave up a lot to take care of them as they aged, in gratitude, I believe, for what they had done for her and her siblings. Grandma Bird also didn't care much for my grandfather, who according to my dad also did a lot for them. My dad has very deep memories of Grandpa Bird, who is the only man he ever called Grandpa. His father's father is a whole other story and he always called his mother's father Doc, which is what everyone called him. (Apparently as a teenager on the farm he had a talent with sick animals which earned him that nickname that stuck even when he moved to the city.) Grandpa Bird died at age 100 in 1961 when my dad was 21 years old and even now his influence on my dad is obvious. Would they have had a relationship like that if Edda had lived and if my grandmother had not spent most of her childhood with her grandparents? Impossible to know.
As for Other Aunt Marge, the last time I saw her she was frustrated that her body was failing her but her mind remained strong. Widowed young, just after her husband's retirement, no one expected her to live and travel alone well into her 90s, but she did. She audited classes at the University of Portland in her 80s because she liked to learn. And her family gave her the gift of allowing her to spend her final years in her own house, with her daughters and granddaughters taking turns having dinner and spending one evening a week with her after her home health aide left so she wouldn't have to be alone. I can only imagine the stories they heard. I envy them.
And now there's another pandemic and suddenly everyone is talking about the Spanish flu and I just wish she were here. Somehow I have inherited the job of family storyteller but I can't do it like her. I pull out the one picture of Edda that I've ever seen, taken just a couple of weeks before she died, with baby George on her lap and I wish I could get my OAM to tell me the story just one more time. The story all of us were sick of.
I tell the same stories over and over again now. My husband has heard them all. We will celebrate 10 years of marriage this summer, lord willing and the creek don't rise, and he's already heard all my stories, lord help us. We have a lot of years ahead of us. I hope he's prepared.
One of the things I've been trying to do in all my spare time (insert your laugh here) is read all the books I have around my house...which is a lot. There's an Instagram challenge I participate in called The Unread Shelf Project and for March the challenge was to pick the book you've own the longest without reading. Well, I found a Lousia May Alcott book in James's room and written in the front of it was "To Kris from OAM Christmas 1988." So I read it. Oh, man was it handpicked for this moment. It's literally the story of Jack and Jill from the old nursery rhyme who, once injuring themselves in the fall, have to spend months indoors recovering from that accident. It's like Reading for a Pandemic 101, this book. And it was a slog, I'm not gonna lie, not exactly light reading. But I liked opening it and seeing her handwriting inside and feeling like she was close. I miss her. And I realize the her I knew became who she was only as a result of the pandemic that ravaged the world when she was four years old.
Today I'm grateful for fresh flowers, the fruit stand, driving with Max, naps, good books, new books, candied oranges, family, my Other Aunt Marge, laughing, and a good audiobook.
Both of my grandmothers died before I turned 2, so that grandmotherly presence in my life was largely my great aunt. She was my father's aunt Marge and when we were very small my sister and I nicknamed her Other Aunt Marge to distinguish her from my father's sister, also named Marge. Growing up, she lived a few hours south of us in Portland and my family visited her there a couple of times a year. She had her own children and grandchildren living near her, but my family also had a special place.
I think lots of families have a designated storyteller, someone who likes to gather people around to tell family stories. Other Aunt Marge, or OAM, which is how she signed cards and gift tags, was that person in my family. She was a chatterbox, she was opinionated, and she liked to spin a yarn. I remember once calling her on the phone for a class assignment when we had to interview someone who had lived through the Great Depression. She was so excited to talk about her love for Roosevelt and family recipes to save pennies. She just loved to tell a good story.
My sister called me today and said, did she have the flu? Did OAM get the Spanish flu? Is that why she didn't have any hair? My response, well, she definitely had it but I don't know about the hair thing, ask dad. My sister said, well, dad doesn't know anything, he said for sure she never had the flu. I just started laughing. This story has been told SO MANY TIMES in this family, how do we not know these details? Man, if she were here she would set us straight.
I never heard her talk about her alopecia...I always assumed it was a sensitive topic and I never asked, but the story about the Spanish flu was one I have heard...maybe fifty times? Maybe more? This story loomed large in the family history and since I like hearing stories over and over again I think sometimes I was the only one who would listen to another retelling.
This is the story she told:
It was November 1918. OAM was four years old, her baby brother was a toddler, about the age Max is now, maybe a couple of months younger. My grandmother was seven and their oldest sister was nine. When the flu came, everybody got sick. All four kids, their parents, and grandma. Grandpa Bird, my father's great-grandfather did not get sick and so he nursed everyone to health. OAM would talk about this flu...as a kid it was so perplexing to me. How do people die of the flu? That's crazy. And she would repeat those often told statistics about how so many more people died of the flu than in the war. She said one in seven people worldwide who had the flu died of it, and seven people in her family had it. I think her worldwide numbers are off...I've never found a stat that 1 in 7 people died but her family numbers are right on.
Marge's story was that they thought she had died and so they took her out to the main room and covered her in a white sheet and that is how she woke up, under that sheet. Other versions that I've heard float around the family tell that of the children baby George was actually the sickest, but according to Marge, they thought she had died. But all of the children did survive, as did their grandmother and their father. They had one loss.
Edda Elizabeth, my father's grandmother, only child of Grandma and Grandpa Bird died of the Spanish flu in November 1918 leaving behind four children. She was, I believe, 29.
After her death, the kids were raised primarily by their grandparents. Their father wandered a bit and ended up in Portland (they were from Great Falls, Montana.) A couple of them did join him there later, after he remarried, and for a time they also stayed with his parents, who they couldn't stand, but they primarily spent their childhoods in Great Falls with Grandma and Grandpa Bird. According to my dad, Grandma Bird was a pretty opinionated lady, kind of of the flavor of my Aunt Beth, Marge's older sister who everyone was scared of and who I unfortunately don't remember very well because she had terrible dementia basically the whole time I knew her. And after Edda's death Grandma didn't have much use for her son-in-law and more or less accused him of abandoning his children.
These things have echoes, even in future generations. A loss like that does not live in isolation. My father's own childhood was very much influenced by the Birds. My grandmother gave up a lot to take care of them as they aged, in gratitude, I believe, for what they had done for her and her siblings. Grandma Bird also didn't care much for my grandfather, who according to my dad also did a lot for them. My dad has very deep memories of Grandpa Bird, who is the only man he ever called Grandpa. His father's father is a whole other story and he always called his mother's father Doc, which is what everyone called him. (Apparently as a teenager on the farm he had a talent with sick animals which earned him that nickname that stuck even when he moved to the city.) Grandpa Bird died at age 100 in 1961 when my dad was 21 years old and even now his influence on my dad is obvious. Would they have had a relationship like that if Edda had lived and if my grandmother had not spent most of her childhood with her grandparents? Impossible to know.
As for Other Aunt Marge, the last time I saw her she was frustrated that her body was failing her but her mind remained strong. Widowed young, just after her husband's retirement, no one expected her to live and travel alone well into her 90s, but she did. She audited classes at the University of Portland in her 80s because she liked to learn. And her family gave her the gift of allowing her to spend her final years in her own house, with her daughters and granddaughters taking turns having dinner and spending one evening a week with her after her home health aide left so she wouldn't have to be alone. I can only imagine the stories they heard. I envy them.
And now there's another pandemic and suddenly everyone is talking about the Spanish flu and I just wish she were here. Somehow I have inherited the job of family storyteller but I can't do it like her. I pull out the one picture of Edda that I've ever seen, taken just a couple of weeks before she died, with baby George on her lap and I wish I could get my OAM to tell me the story just one more time. The story all of us were sick of.
I tell the same stories over and over again now. My husband has heard them all. We will celebrate 10 years of marriage this summer, lord willing and the creek don't rise, and he's already heard all my stories, lord help us. We have a lot of years ahead of us. I hope he's prepared.
One of the things I've been trying to do in all my spare time (insert your laugh here) is read all the books I have around my house...which is a lot. There's an Instagram challenge I participate in called The Unread Shelf Project and for March the challenge was to pick the book you've own the longest without reading. Well, I found a Lousia May Alcott book in James's room and written in the front of it was "To Kris from OAM Christmas 1988." So I read it. Oh, man was it handpicked for this moment. It's literally the story of Jack and Jill from the old nursery rhyme who, once injuring themselves in the fall, have to spend months indoors recovering from that accident. It's like Reading for a Pandemic 101, this book. And it was a slog, I'm not gonna lie, not exactly light reading. But I liked opening it and seeing her handwriting inside and feeling like she was close. I miss her. And I realize the her I knew became who she was only as a result of the pandemic that ravaged the world when she was four years old.
Today I'm grateful for fresh flowers, the fruit stand, driving with Max, naps, good books, new books, candied oranges, family, my Other Aunt Marge, laughing, and a good audiobook.
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