Conclusion: A Telling Epidemic, A Storied Nation

Abstract

Pepita Viladanes was only two years old when the Spanish influenza epidemic broke out in 1918. Although she has no direct memory of what happened, she has noted how “it’s like I saw those scenes [first-hand] because my mother, who thanks to God is alive and remembers them perfectly, has told me about them so many times.”¹ Her father and five neighbors, all of whom lived in the same house, died from Spanish flu. Since her father was among the first to go, he was able to receive a proper Christian burial. Those who died afterward, however, met with a different fate: “They lowered them down from the balconies with ropes and piled them up in carts to burn them. Volunteers did this because there were no gravediggers or at least none who wanted to do this service.”² For Pepita’s mother, widowed at the young age of 23, the situation was nearly too much to bear: “She felt powerless to [face] the situation in the midst of so much tragedy and almost made an attempt on her own life and mine by refusing to eat.”³ Thankfully she was able to overcome the crisis, and both she and her daughter would ultimately recover “little by little.”⁴