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Love, Faith and Death in Hard Times
In matters of the heart, some things never change.
In our era of antibiotics, vaccinations and life-saving surgeries, illnesses such as AIDS and COVID-19 re-shape our world view, shattering illusions that we are somehow immune to diseases without treatments. A pandemic broadsides us, shaking us from complacency. We are forced to acknowledge that the world is not a safe and predictable place. Life spirals out of control.
We forget, in our modernity, our sophistication, our privilege, that this is the reality many third world countries have always known. We also forget that incurable diseases and pandemics were once a reality for everyone.
In 1999, I published a journal, discovered by accident and turned over to me. Written by one of my distant ancestors, it covered the years from 1856 to 1890. The book quickly sold out and is now out of print. It was a Civil War diary highlighting the horrors of war, slavery, and the aftermath of war. But a common thread throughout the journal was the widespread prevalence of illness and death before the advent of modern medicine.
The author, Anna Long, lost her mother, husband, son, daughter-in-law and granddaughter to illnesses that today would be curable or preventable. Both she and her son, Edwin, wrote poetry that I included in the…
