Large Fierce Mammal

“During the second half of the nineteenth century, death was the ultimate act of nature—beyond human control and ever present. The death rate of infants were so high that babies were often not given names until they were one year old, and the death of infants were often unrecorded. The ubiquity of death, due in large part to the high rate of infant mortality, forced people in society to continually immerse themselves in death and the grieving process. Children who were lucky enough to survive infancy faced other challenges: disease, accident, or war. Generally, a woman would have to have six children to ensure the survival to adulthood of two or three children.” ~ Barbara Norfleet, Looking at Death

In the early morning hours on the third day of September of this year, Mrs. LFM and I became the ecstatic parents of a robust, healthy, and perfectly formed baby boy named Viktor; AKA Son LFM. This came as no surprise to us considering that there are no medical issues of concern in either of our family histories, and neither of us indulges in any unhealthy lifestyle choices that might complicate the life of our offspring, but all that is quite beside the point. While we were abundantly aware of how many potential pitfalls lay between the day of conception and that of birth, our pregnancy played out in an era in which medical knowledge and supporting health care enhancements have made the expected level of death in childbirth and infant mortality that were once common in this fair land something that is now considered to be a thing of the past. At least in these here so called “first world” climes. Today, unless you are a complete idiot, willfully negligent, cursed by the Gods – or for the most part even if you are any or all of those – the expectation is that all children will grow healthy and whole into adulthood, and it is considered a terribly surprising and anomalous tragedy when a few don’t.

“In the wake of epidemics, parents were advised to be restrained in affection and aloof to their children in order not to become too attached to them.” ~ Stanley B. Burns, M. D., Sleeping Beauty: Memorial Photography in America

Mother with dead infant. Eyes were commonly painted on closed lids to convey the illusion of life. (SOURCE: http://yeoldekvitsh.wordpress.com/2007/10/07/death-part-deux/

Remember here that I’m talking about children born to families that have the advantages my family enjoyed, and continues to enjoy. A society that advocates hygienic living conditions with high standards of public sanitation and water quality, inoculation against once common lethal diseases, a near pathological fear of germs (we actually don’t share admiration for this one), no nearby wars, all the paraphernalia designed to turn the cruel world into a child proof daycare centre, and a busy population of lawyers standing by to pin the blame on someone when all else fails.

It takes no more than one generation of removal in time to distance human understanding from any heretofore common experience, no matter how horrific, and history has shown that people can function through pretty much anything, using it as a motivation for improvement (As Winston Churchill said, “If you are going through hell, keep going.”) Two generations of removal will also remove most of those with direct experience to relate from the late unpleasantness, and so the new reality becomes the expected one. The real one. The only one. The one that’s supposed to be owed to you and yours.

The Memento mori – reminder of mortality – in the form of painted or photographic portraits of the dead, has immortalized the sensibilities of our ancestors who knew most acutely that life walked hand in hand with death, and brought it forward for us to see. In coming days we’ll be revisiting the dark side of family life in the good old days, with the help of some very darkly intriguing research indeed. Stay with us.