Thanksgiving

I had the stomach flu this week, which in itself is not a blogworthy event and is usually something best kept to oneself (if you now what I mean). However, as I was lying weakly on the couch hoping the misery would end soon, I was reminded of how lucky I am that at least I knew with certainty that I would recover.

In his 1996 book Yuuyarag:The Way of the Human Being, Harold Napoleon speaks of the Great Death, "the 1900 influenza epidemic which originated in Nome" that "killed whole families and wiped out whole villages. It gave birth to a generation of orphans" (10). Alaskan Native tribes, who had no immunity to the disease, lost up to 60% of their people. Six out of ten people died. And for these villagers, every person was like a family member.

I know at least ten people who have had the flu in the past week, my daughter included. If I had been one of those villagers, my daughter probably would have died the day before I came down with the sickness, as well as many of her classmates and teachers. If I lived back then, I would have been lying there with the knowledge that I had lost the most precious person in the world to me, and that I was about to die, too. That realization enveloped me like a dark, cold cloud. For a moment I sensed the deep despair and sadness they must have felt.

The cultural implications of the flu epidemic on the Native tribes was profound. Their spirituality and belief system had the life sucked out of them. They no long trusted their shamans as healers, so they lost their faith. In addition, many of the dead were those least capable of withstanding the epidemic - the Elders. A professor I know referred to these Elders as the village libraries or the tribal Google; they possessed historical knowledge and the "how-to" for the villages. With their death much of the tribes' history evaporated, leaving the survivors feeling very lost and alone.

This illness changed me in unexpected ways. I started out by feeling selfishly irritated that the flu was disrupting my life, but now I feel deeply grateful that I live in the present day and in a country where we can rest assured that whole portions of our family and friends won't be wiped out by something like the flu. And I am deeply sorry for anyone who goes through what the Native Americans went through.