Trakai and the Hill of Crosses

 

I am blogging from Lithuania this morning.  I love this country. So slow-moving and clean-- am talking about the fresh air mostly.

 

This is a picture of a pilgrimage site in Lithuania. I feel like Lithuanians are big on paying respect to the dead. They leave crosses and flowers and candles at the graves. Sacred-looking stuff, you know.  I remember all the dead through prayer, but I never visit graves. It's a thing. I just cannot. It must relate to the time a woman we called "John's Paulette" (no relation or close friend of my grandmother) who was at my grandmother's funeral and who was so overcome by grief that she fell into my grandmother's grave. It was hilarious for many onlookers because Paulette is a right b!tch.  But of course, it was traumatising for my family and I. My mother died when I was sixteen and I have never once visited her grave. Who's clutching their pearls at me?  I remember her and my grandmother and my uncle and my grandfather through prayer.  (Gah!!! So many loved ones gone!) But when my husband goes home to Lithuania he visits his parents' graves and those of other dead family members. Meanwhile, I look on in respect, make the sign of the cross, say a prayer of eternal life (am a cafeteria Catholic), take pictures (to my husband's horror) and hope no dead people follow me home.

 

 

I took these pictures, above, on one winter visit to Lithuania. This is the Hill of Crosses near Siauliai. In the winter, it looks like a scene  from the Game of Thrones.

 

 

Castle at Trakai, Near Vilnius

 

We travel about Lithuania for three weeks. I am not here for the food. It's all meat and potatoes and my backside will grow, if I eat too much of it.  I am most looking forward to Trakai Island Castle. And to horse-riding in the forest on most days.  I'll keep you posted on all the shenanigans of a Jamaican traveling in Eastern Europe.

And, what do you do for the dead people in your life, visit any graves lately?