Friedhof Frau

July 14


I drove back through Heydekrug/Silute and noticed an old cemetery. It looked like it might have been an old German one so I thought I’d check it out. Indeed I was right. The atmosphere there could be quite spooky I imagine. The trees are old and dark and the ground is covered with ferns and some hostas and other shrubbery. In between lie old, empty graves that were plundered many years ago and now are host to lush plant life. There’s a handful of iron crosses that still give notice of someone that once lay here. There are a very few Russian ones too, closer to the road that are still being tended.


As I was walking through a lady approached me. She had seen me as she was driving by on her bicycle. She figured I must be one with a connection to her homeland. She struck up a conversation. She was born near Tilsit, the town my mother was born in. And she was 8 years old when the war was over. She was split up from her family. Her sister died of starvation in Poland somewhere, her grandmother in East Prussia, her mother made it to West Germany, Traunstein. And she ended up stuck there in Lithuania. They couldn’t be reunited because she, as an 8 year old little girl, didn’t have any papers and they wouldn’t let anyone out without papers. She only saw her mother again 20 years later when they were able to meet in East Germany.

She talked about how freedom isn’t really better than what they had under Soviet rule. So many people don’t have jobs. Pensions and salaries are low and prices keep going up. Farmers are given poor prices for their products and then they’re marked up in the stores. They invent ways to get more money from the poor. She had just been to the bank to pay 22 Litas that she was now to pay for upkeep of her building though she’s never seen anyone keep anything up. She only gets a 700 Lita pension which is about $300. Any upkeep like a new roof and windows, the owners all got together, pooled their money and paid it themselves. Then at the bank they charged her another 2 Litas for the paperwork. During Soviet rule everyone had a job. Everyone was required by law to work. You didn’t make a lot of money but everything was also cheap. Now you don’t make a lot of money and everything is expensive. If you had a complaint, if people weren’t keeping up their end of the deal then there was a place to go and complain to. Now there’s nowhere. No one will listen. She seemed pretty sad. “It’s not going to change in my time,” she said. Actually she said “our time”. I wonder how old she thought I am. Things can still change in my time. Look at all the things that have already happened in my time.