#30 - Pill Prescription

FOUND: in trunk in attic

Cardboard prescription box from a pharmacy in Lincoln, Nebraska, dated October 7, 1918.

I’ve no idea what the medication was but it had to have been for my grandfather Hugh Lynch, the grandfather I never knew. He was at that time fighting the Spanish Flu.

I think of him lying there at home, on his own, taking the pills, trying to convince himself he’s getting better, scrawling a fast telegram to his wife and daughter, away visiting relatives in Minnesota, just in case [see Leftover #2] : “Was taken sick yesterday with the Spanish Influenza. Mild case, unable to get help, come as soon as possible.”

My grandfather died on October 14th, one week after this prescription was issued. He was only 27.

Hugh had sold farm machinery for the Moline Plow Company and International Harvester, had been heading rapidly towards a senior position. I’ve no idea how or where he met my grandmother, I should have asked her, but he was by all accounts besotted by their young daughter Margaret, whom he called “My”.

Those who’d known him later told my mother that Hugh Franklin Lynch was “a decent man, admired and well-liked by all, and had a fine sense of humor”.

This next is taken from a letter she wrote to me, about 15 years ago:

“We’ve all read about how they died in their millions around the world from what was known as the Spanish Flu Pandemic but not a lot has been written, at least that I could ever find, about the victims of the victims. The ruined lives of husbands, wives, and children. My mother never got over my father’s death and was a bitter, unhappy woman all her life. She never forgave the world for taking her husband away. She rarely spoke of him, and my grandmother, Grandma Lynch, his mother, told me never to ask any questions or talk about him at all, Daddy had gone to Heaven and that was all I needed to know, that’s where I’d meet him again.”

Years later, my mother found herself in a hospitality room backstage prior to appearing on a TV talk show and started chatting with another guest, the Reverend Billy Graham, the Evangelist.

“Look. About this Heaven business,” she said. “Tell me. If everyone’s so sure we’re all going to meet up there one day, I want to know how my dad will recognize me, I was only two years old when he last saw me! We’ll walk right past one another!”

Graham thought for a moment, opened his mouth to speak, but just then was whisked away to the set. He looked back at Peg over his shoulder and smiled.

“Saved by the bell!” he said.

I’m hoping my mother and her dad did manage to connect up there (if indeed they were both headed in the same direction). I mean, you’d know your own child anywhere, wouldn’t you? Like those millions of birds nesting on cliffs do, that can zero in on their own chicks when they’re coming back with lunch. Besides which, all Hugh had to do was zero in on the elderly red headed woman making everyone laugh, rearranging the furniture, and taking pictures of everyone’s dog.

FINAL HOME: deserving relative in Lincoln, Nebraska

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