How we cite our quotes: (Part.Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #1
Since then, I've tended so many bodies, people I loved and people I barely knew. But Sam's was the first. (1.1.17)
Sam's tragic mining accident is Anna's first brush with death. Sadly, as she notes here, it will be far from her last. This passage also implies that Anna grows some sort of emotional resilience against the horror of death over time.
Quote #2
I lay down beside him and drew him close. I pretended to myself that he would wake in the wee hours with his usual lusty cry for milk. (2.4.49)
The death of Anna's infant son is perhaps the hardest for her to deal with. It tears her up to see someone so pure and innocent suffer such an ignoble end. As we'll see, the deaths of both of her children have a profound effect on her and shape the woman she becomes.
Quote #3
The Plague [...] blows fall and fall again upon raw sorrow, so that before you have mourned one person that you love, another is ill in your arms. (2.5.2)
The death rate in Eyam is astronomical; there isn't a family around that doesn't suffer from it. To make things worse, the villagers can only expect the number of tragedies to rise as the plague spreads. This has a brutal effect on their collective mental health.