My grandmother Stella died of the influenza in 1916 at the age of 30. Her youngest daughter Gertrude died of the influenza in 1918 at the age of 4. A grandmother and an aunt that I never knew. Stella’s husband Thomas died in 1927 from alcoholic depression at the age of 50. A grandfather I never knew. My father always told me that his father never got over the death of his wife and daughter, and basically drank himself to death, being killed by a train on the very tracks where his job was.

My father never got over their deaths either. In high school I used to come home from dances around midnight and he would be sitting on our enclosed porch and ask me to sit down and talk. After a few beers, all he wanted to talk about was his mother and his younger sister, who he watched pass away on her bed.

And I have never forgotten those conversations either. I missed out on a grandmother, a grandfather and an aunt. Many others did also.

Please take the coronavirus seriously, and especially protect the older members of your family. They are precious.

Tom Cieslinski
Farmingdale

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