what burned here

... digging in the dirt at the world's largest obituary database

w h a t

b u r n e d

h e r e

Future stranger, how will you know me? What evidence will be left for you to try and discern the details of my life, the world I lived in? Perhaps, in grief, my kith & kin will give you one last blip on the radar of time...

Legacy.com is the self-described 'world's largest' archive of obituaries you can access as an ordinary citizen. It has been around since 1998 and currently it lists an average of roughly two million death notices per year. Though it mainly archives voluntarily posted death notices in the United States, it also has a smaller number from other English speaking nations like Canada, Australia and England. As a non-official, non-governmental database, we mine in its logs what is essentially an oral history – what families say about themselves and those they lost. It is messy and inexact in its searchable clues, but if we step back a bit, we might catch a glimpse of something that happened.

But first, a refresher.

According to the above creative chart expertly put out by none other than Yale, we are reminded of the milestones from the first pandemic year. Notably, it all got started in earnest around March 2020, by July highs for cases and deaths were achieved, and in December the miracle of the vaccine had been warp sped into our lives.

What were the normal folk sharing on the world's largest obituary database at this same time? I will leave it for the social theorists to argue over the why of it, but the big snapshot is this:

The total number of obituaries posted for the first pandemic year of 2020 was 2,071,903.

(The year that broke the record in July for deaths.)

The total number of obituaries posted for the year of 2021 was 2,656,094.

(The year that had been blessed with the miracle vaccine.)

Back to July 2020, the month the US hit the record in sickness and death, what do we find at Legacy.com?

And July one year later at Legacy.com, seven months with the miracle vaccine saving people from hospitalization and death?

Correct.

From one year to the next, in the same month on the calendar, there is a difference of 100,000 obituaries.

Please don't take my word for it. Try it yourself. Compare the last months of 2020 to the last months of 2021 at Legacy.com for the total number of submissions. The advanced search is basic and it can be found by clicking the “more filters” button. Once there, use a custom date range for the publish date and simply go month to month and see the comparisons in each year.

But I will save you some time (if you want) and tell you what you will find:

07/2020 141,470

07/2021 240,656

08/2020 143,403

08/2021 235,089

09/2020 129,253

09/2021 249,372

10/2020 128,453

10/2021 236,452

11/2020 152,635

11/2021 222,311

12/2020 187,016

12/2021 241,258

Merry Christmas! One year into the miracle, and boy what a gift.

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You will notice in the advanced search that you can look within the results for words and phrases to your heart's content. But that is a can of worms that invites much debate for the camps ready to sling mud.

I will confess, that is where I started:

But as I say, that will invite a fight ... or start a fire.

Maybe that is good.

I do not know.

The stakes are high though, for each side, as we know. One side needs the vindication that the hardships they endured were worth it – the vilification heaped upon them from the other side was unfounded and here is the proof. And, that other side … that browbeat, coerced and ridiculed can't afford to be wrong. For if they were in error, then they are complicit in whatever has happened, and is happening … and the ultimate horror that it may yet happen to them.

No, that is too painful a proposition.

So we just don't talk about it.

Legacy.com

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* I do not have paid subscriptions. But if you want to help me out, please consider contributing to a crowd fund I have to pay for a FOIA (public records request). Thank you.

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