Four Days

I was scouting farmland near LA for orange groves when I found myself parked next to the old graveyard for the area. I took a quick walkthrough to see the oldest grave (1876, pretty damn old for LA).

As I was leaving, I noticed four graves in a row. Looking closer, I saw they were for four children from the same family. All were very young at the time of their death, the oldest 7, the youngest 1.

And strangely, all died within a four day span: May 10, May 12, and two on May 13.

I started wondering what could have caused such a tragedy. Injuries sustained from a fire? Some kind of tragic accident?

I did a little searching, and found that in fact a diphtheria outbreak had ravaged the the community in that year. All four children – Anniebell, Milford, Clifford, and Marinda – succumbed to it within four days.

Four days to lose all your children. I can’t fathom the immense grief that must have been felt on this exact spot, over and over again without relent. Perhaps most tragic of all was seeing that both parents lived at least a decade longer. A few decades later, the diphtheria vaccine would be invented, saving untold millions of lives.

What strange times to be living in, when some think of this family as having been lucky to have existed in a more enlightened age, free from the detriments of modern medicine.