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Generation to Generation

Live Your Legacy but Lose the Luggage

March 2020 

Adrian

Visitation was not allowed. My eighty-six-year-old mother,
JoAnn, darted out of her apartment building, her mask covering her fully made-up face. Blue dishwashing gloves on her hands, she pushed her cart to retrieve the groceries and other essential items I had in my car and was bringing to her on a sweltering Monday afternoon. Since she was locked down, or “in prison” as she often said with a chuckle, I met Mom on grocery days and had twelve to fifteen minutes to see each other in person and chat as we sat on benches that were eight feet apart. 

On this day, my mom walked toward me with a faster stride than usual, indicating that she had something important to tell me. She had just finished watching a program on the “resident channel” in her apartment about the history of the Spanish flu in 1918. She had taken diligent notes and gave me a detailed recap of the program. It was meaningful, not only because we were currently living through a global pandemic but also because her mother—my grandmother Rebecca—lost her mother to the Spanish flu in 1918. 

Grandma Rebecca always cried when she spoke about her mother, which was not very often. She and her four sisters grew up in Atchison, Kansas, at the turn of the twentieth century. They lived a privileged life, their father making a good living in the scrap metal business. Both my grandmother and her mother fell ill to the Spanish flu early on during that pandemic. My grandmother survived, but her mother, who was in the next bedroom, died.

This strain of the Spanish flu first appeared in the United States in Fort Riley, Kansas. It was transported there by military men returning home from Europe and then made its way through Topeka and into Atchison. It wasn’t until I lived through the COVID-19 pandemic that I had a small idea of what my grandmother had endured so many years ago when her mother died. Why didn’t I ask her more questions? Why didn’t she and her sisters share more about that unprecedented time in their lives? Five sisters lost their mother in 1918 to a tragic virus, and they rarely spoke about it.

I am saddened by the magnitude of my grandma’s grief while she became a pseudo-mother to her younger sisters. Her responsibilities and emotional pain must have been huge, yet she always held her head high, charged forward with optimism, and had a strong faith. In my grandmother’s ninety-seven years, she endured a pandemic that claimed her mother, two depressions, two World Wars, and the usual ups and downs of life. Living through each challenge gave her the uncanny ability to adapt to a new normal. 

My Grandmother Rebecca was a member of the Lost Generation—those who came of age during World War I and often found themselves directionless survivors in