Quote:
Originally Posted by ThePhanastasio
I also find cemeteries peaceful in their way, but the tend to make me sad. There are no "new" cemeteries here, so they're all replete with infant graves with lambs on the headstones from the depression. You'd (actually probably not) be amazed how many there are, and never with parents or family...because it was the depression, and people couldn't afford more than one plot...or probably even that one plot, for that matter...
But there are rows of these infant graves that make me so absolutely melancholy. Those headstones likely meant those families couldn't even eat.
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There's a whole lot of truth. There's beauty in those headstones; the artistry is charming and pretty but the fact of the matter is, there was a lot of disease in those days. Many children and mothers died in childbirth; many children died within days of being born, for reasons unknown. We have the medical capability to figure it out now (usually, but there are still some mysteries) but many sudden deaths were completely unforeseen.
Ever wonder why families used to have dozens of children? They wanted to be sure their family name would carry on, and the death rates were ridiculous. My grandmother is the youngest of 7 children, all born in the 30s and 40s. She was almost an older sister to a last child, who died in infancy and was only given the name "baby". Many years before the depression and WWII, death was even more commonplace - so much, in fact, that many homes had parlors (death/dying rooms) where they kept the body of their loved one for many days before burial, in the vain hope that they might wake up.
Sometimes (though usually reserved for the wealthy) they even took pictures of/with their deceased loved ones. (That's a whole different topic completely, but it's pretty cool.)