Wildflowers

The summer breeze gave relief to nearly every living creature. It came like a brief surprise that was exciting and fulfilling to everyone and everything that felt it. As the breeze flowed through the trees it silenced the birds and cicadas all for just one moment as everyone and everything felt the relief that it brought from the heat. I sat leaning back on my rocking chair in the shade of my front porch. The babies were playing in the large metal tub that their father had filled with cool well water. He was off with his brother hunting so that we could have meat other than chicken and pork to eat. All the chores had been done, the house was clean, and dinner for the night had already been prepared; it was days like these that I was left alone with my thoughts.

The babies splashed and giggled as they squirted water at each other, every once in a while they would turn and look at me to make sure I was still there for them. Each time they turned to look at me, I would still be there. My older kids were down at the beach with their cousins. To them they would never have that feeling of uncertainty of their future as I had and as their aunts and uncles had. Unlike my children, I am of the generation now known as the “Last Generation”. After us there would be no one who had any memories of the events that had occurred when I was a teenager.

It had become an unwritten rule that the new generation would never know of the true horrors of what had befallen their parents. They would know that their parents were the few survivors of a great and terrible plague, and they would know what caused that plague. They will only know the superficial facts and basic lessons that my generation had learned, but they will never, ever, hear the horrors of what we had witnessed and of what we had to go through. To them, the great and terrible plague will only be taught as a history lesson of what happened to a whole generation of people who lived too close together in a world that was poisonous.

I’ve often thought about telling my children when they get older what really happened. I’ve gone over the future scenario in my head thousands of times, yet I know that as of right now, they won’t question what their school is teaching them.  One day, though, my eldest will come home and ask how her father and I met and got married, and I will have to tell her, and then she will ask other questions as to what a CDC officer was, and I will have to answer her. Then she will ask what Baltimore was, and I will have to tell her. One question will lead to another and in the end; she will know what happened to us. It will terrify her and she will feel sick in her heart, but she will know.

The days of the plague are long behind us now. Yet, it still lingers, and it still creeps up on some poor unfortunate soul every once in a while. When it does, it only brings back those memories of what we had witnessed, what we had gone through. We cry and we sob when it takes a member of our generation, yet we wipe our tears away and explain to our children that it won’t affect them, it won’t ever get them sick like it does us. Even though there were terrible things that I had seen and witnessed, there were still something’s I reminisce on, and as I close my eyes, I begin to play the story through my head all over again.