We’ve Been Here Before
One of my hometown’s defining features is a full-scale replica of a fort that was used in the War of 1812. There’s a historical society dedicated to preserving documents and ephemera. There’s a historically-accurate reenactment of the battle each year, a battle whose name I only remember because there’s a shopping mall on the battlefield site a few miles away. There are parades and exhibitions where people in period dress will show you how to churn butter or whittle wood into carvings of small animals. It’s the premier spot in town to watch fireworks. As kids, we used to sneak in and go ghost-hunting or underage-drinking, which are basically the same thing.
A few miles away at the end of Main Street there’s a life-sized statue of the guy who led the fighting, getting ready to draw his sword. At least, I think it was the same guy and the same battle. I’m sure someone, somewhere taught me about the War of 1812, but it isn’t clear to me who fought whom over what. Anyway, the statue is a big deal. It’s the picture on the front of all the brochures, on the Wikipedia page, and on the cover of the town’s Facebook profile. Since the death of local journalism, the Facebook page currently serves as the de facto place for people to gossip and write op-eds about grass clippings in the street, kids staying out too late, and people not picking up after their dogs. The statue is a big deal. There’s a photo in a box somewhere of my grandparents standing underneath it in the 40s on their wedding day. I’m fairly certain that the statue guy shared the same suspicions about Native Americans that our citizenry now shares more covertly about other folks of non-European descent on either side of our fair enclave. The fort doesn’t really matter. The statue either. What I’m interested in is in the middle, almost exactly, between the two. I want to talk about the cemetery.
It’s on top of what might generously be described as a hill. It’s still in use today and has overgrown its edges, so it has the appearance of having spilled over onto the opposite side of the street. The older half was one of my favorite places to go walking in summer, because the overgrown trees along its older borders provide shade and a break from the humidity for permanent residents and visitors alike. At its entrance, most of the stones are new, etched with precision, a variety of colors and sculptures and engravings giving you a little window into who these people were. This one an artist. This one a golfer. I don’t know about this one, but judging by the size of that thing, he was loaded. Those aren’t the stones I’m interested in, though. Closer to the back, where the street noise fades away and there’s actual shade, the gravestones get more uniform. Neat rows of dark, weather-worn, spongy-looking rock, all about the same size. Most of them share something else, too: No matter the year on the left, the year on the right is quite often 1835.
There was a cholera epidemic, I’m told. People of all ages, some of whose descendants I went to high school with, succumbed because we didn’t know about handwashing, water purification, industrial plumbing. I don’t know how the number of dead compares to the number of dead from the big famous battle, but I know that the fort had a lot fewer babies. At least the fort was populated by people who, naively or not, signed on a dotted line somewhere. There are no parades for the cholera people. No statues. No one is dragging busloads of elementary schoolkids to learn about safe drinking water. There are no fireworks, no parades where local politicians pass out leaflets, no free samples of farmer’s market wares. I don’t think it ever came up in school — the cholera. Had I never cut through the cemetery on my bicycle as a kid I wouldn’t have known.
I wonder — did the citizens in 1835 react as we did to this more recent pandemic? Did they initially blame the illness on others, the ones at the edge of town? Did half the town refuse to boil their drinking water (or whatever one does to combat cholera), thereby prolonging the suffering and producing exponentially more 1835-era gravestones? Did people fail to recognize the gravity of the threat? Did the government at every level, such as existed in the Ohio Territory in the mid-19th century, simply fail to show up in any meaningful way? More to the point, what happened when it was “over”? Was there ever a clear point at which they could use the word “over”?
I can’t say I blame my city’s ancestors for tucking the lost away neatly in uniform boxes under uniform rocks under then-young oak trees. A “We Survived Cholera!” parade seems a little gauche. It doesn’t have the same air of victory as a military accomplishment — even if it’s one that most folks barely remember. I doubt they would’ve used words like “trauma” to describe the urge to tuck away and leave behind and move past.
Public memorials are important. Especially when the devastation is unimaginably large. What would a memorial to this pandemic would look like? A permanent field hospital somewhere, where underpaid history majors dress up in scrubs and paper gowns to teach elementary-school kids how to take nasal swabs? A children’s librarian talks in gentle tones, showing people how to sew a mask? “Make sure it covers your nose and mouth, and is tight against your face. Remember, people would’ve worn these everywhere.”
And then a flurry of tiny voices with questions: “Even to school? To the bathroom? Could they eat? Could they kiss?”
Who would we make a statue of, anyway? A healthcare worker seems likely. The plaque at the bottom would say they were venerated, leaving out that the veneration coalesced into rage when they asked for protective equipment or a living wage. Besides, the stereotypical image of a nurse is a woman, and we don’t erect statues to those. Many of the dead are heroes. Probably as many cheated on their spouses or taxes or both. Statistically, most of them skipped church or mosque or synagogue, preferring to spend a holy day tinkering on an engine, drinking, or binge-watching Netflix. If they’re like most of my community, when they weren’t bouncing between their first and second job, they were driving for Uber or cleaning houses or watching babies. What kind of statue do you put up when you run a whole people, an entire government, into the ground, and their bodies gave out fighting for what was left of their American Dream? What do you memorialize when the dead are not soldiers whose uniforms make a convenient cookie-cutter for the morals and values of a nation, but regular people, the kind the political ads skip over?
Maybe I’m getting ahead of myself. After all, we’re not done yet. We’re still in the messy middle of a pandemic that’s left 475,000 dead and isn’t finished. My hometown Facebook page, under the watchful eye of the statue, is currently debating whether or not we should host a prom this year. It’s a fun detour from the steady stream of complaints about why kids aren’t in school and do we really need masks now that we have the vaccine, and I hope that the school doesn’t come asking for a levy next year because my taxes are too high.
I wonder what the cholera survivors would say to the corona survivors about community. About memorial. About our home.
