Mid-Atlantic Gardening: Greettings from Latvia!!!, 1 by Gitagal

Gitagal wrote:
One of the main reasons to come here was to visit the graves of our elders--as I mentioned.

The first Cemetery we went to was where our Father is buried. He died at a very early age of 36 (in 1939) of a Lymphoma cancer making our Mother a widow at 33. I have NO memory of my dad! None! I was 2 1/2 yrs. old. My youngest sister was 9 months old.
Then came the bad years of fleeing our country to escape the imminent Soviet occupation in 1944. It was VERY hard on our Mom and Grandmother--with 3 young children......etc.....Not going to get into THOSE years! You can Google all this information.

Anyway! I LOVE--totally LOVE old Cemeteries! Maybe because in this country there are really No monuments allowed in today's cemeteries and people walk all over the graves--as you cannot tell where they are.
Maybe because there is something very serene about all the tall trees and and loving monuments in the old cemeteries. The overgrown look of everything.
Maybe also because so many gravesites are just gone to moss and have succumbed to "Time".....They seem so "timeless"......
Most of all-NO ONE, EVER, walks over a grave site in Latvia! It would be most disrespectful! The graves are defined by a raised "bed" and, often, Ivy or Sedums are planted over it. There are family Plots--intended for everyone in the family--as the plot our Father is buried in is. Often, they are surrounded by a small fence of wrought iron or some such barrier.
Of course--many, many lives were interrupted by the oncoming occupation, and so, many grave sites were just left to Nature. No one to tend them. Maybe people died. Maybe they were deported to Siberia and never returned (June 14, 1941 and again in 1945). Maybe the older people that stayed behind died--and there was no one left to tend the grave sites. SO sad!

Our cousins mother's husband--himself now in the 80's, sometimes drives from Riga to Ventspils and tends to our father's and Grandfather's grave site. That is almost a 3 hr. trip!
That is also respect and love.....
And so--I could not help but photograph some of these abandoned sites. SO poignant! To me--SO emotional!
Here is one of the old grave sites. The inscriptions on the stones are long gone. No one even knows WHO is buried here.