The woman on the lower left in the picture below is Eliza Mabel Key Siglinger. She is my first cousin three times removed. That means that while she and I are parts of different generations, we are descended from the same common ancestors. In this case, her maternal grandparents are my great-great-great-grandparents on my father's side of the family.
Miss Mabel, as we would have called her when we lived in the Deep South, has been much on my mind these last few weeks. She died about 101 years ago, in the town where I was born, in the midst of the great influenza pandemic of WWI. She had only been married a few months when her new husband was called to serve in the war, and she then returned to the nursing practice she had left at her marriage. She died at the age of 25, when they had been married 11 months.
Whether she would have contracted influenza if she had not returned to work is a mystery. But she did return to nursing patients, and in doing so, gave her life.
It's a lot to think about in the age of Coronavirus and COVID-19. My heart is full for those of our current generations who, under similar circumstances, are putting their lives at risk daily to serve the people around them. It's scary right now, but so many's peoples good hearts are our greatest strength, and I have a lot of faith in that. Thank you!
And thank you, Miss Mabel! You are not forgotten; you are not just another number in the death tally. Your sacrifice has not gone unnoticed. I think of you often, and hope to meet you someday.
Many thanks to my mother, my grandmother, and my great-aunt Bessie for preserving these newspaper clippings for so many years.
