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Asked about the last photo
On a Saturday in late September, in the very center of Klaipeda, people captured police officers and ambulance medics rushing to Herkaus Manto Street with phone cameras.
They tried to save the life of a 48-year-old woman. His face was familiar to many Klaipeda residents, only a few knew his name.
For many years this woman sat shrugging on a stone step next to the tent.
Apparently it paid off, because at the end of the day, behind the same house, in the trash cans with the homeless people, he shared a bottle of cheap alcohol.
In the summer, when the residents of the surrounding houses struggled to dismantle the roof over those containers, this woman was willing to communicate with the Klaipėda correspondents, she was in a good mood and for some reason invited her friend from fate to have a nice last photo.
The homeless person interviewed does not speak Lithuanian, so this woman willingly interpreted and explained her position on the situation that angered the population.
There is a candle on the step
According to Klaipėda neighbors who witnessed the uproar on the street that Saturday, this homeless woman looked very poor for a few days, she was hunched over, cold and covered with a thick blanket.
Doctors couldn’t save her. He died in a resurrected high-speed car.
A couple of days after the beggar’s death, a candle burned on a stone staircase, so people honored the stranger.
It turns out that the state did not have to take over her funeral, she was buried by her mother.
The same week that the mother accompanied her daughter to the grave, who had forgotten the rules of her public life, another woman was buried in the Lebartai cemetery with state funds.
In memory: a woman who was begging this summer asked journalists to take her last photo with a friend. / Photo by Daiva Janauskaitė
Apparently, he had not declared his place of residence in Lithuania, did not pay taxes here and did not visit doctors. Quite formally, it did not exist in our country.
The state buried the mother
Employees of the Aterna funeral home revealed that the woman’s daughter was flooded with tears and assured that she could not bury her mother herself without savings and that the husband would not give her money. There was no other way out to advise him to contact the police.
Faced with such a situation, the police review the documents, find out if the deceased has other relatives, if there are none, deliver all the collected material to municipal officials, who decide whether to allow the person to be buried with state funds.
The daughter seems to have convinced her that the mother is not really buried.
Such a difficult situation was resolved. The woman was buried by Aterna, a ritual services company that had won a contest to bury unknown, homeless and familyless people at the state’s expense.
The men who worked in the company were surprised to see a group of people with flowers and candles at the door of the cemetery.
Graves: The state mandates that a modest monument be erected for each person buried in its cemetery under their care. / Photo by Vytautas Liaudanskis
Despite this deplorable situation, not only the daughter of the deceased but also his family and acquaintances attended the cemetery.
Funerals are modest, but little different from the usual.
The daughter cried, the others who arrived were restrained, took pity on her, lit candles, threw a handful of earth into the well, and put flowers on the heap she had just poured. Only there were no speeches, there was no priest.
The deceased lay in a coffin of unpainted boards, he was neatly dressed, the assembled threw a handful of earth into the pit, the neatly dressed men poured a new heap over the grave pit in a few minutes and on it the footprint of an orthodox cross.
In that action, the ceremony ended.
“When no one comes to a funeral like this, I recite ‘Eternal Rest.’ It’s not my job, but it’s much calmer for me. No matter how that person lived, he was a man,” said Justin, Aterna’s managing director. Savickas.
One or two a month
One or two people are buried in Klaipeda per month with state funds.
For several years in a row, the number of such burials has not changed, the state buries about 24 people each year.
Investigations into causes of death often end in the search for loved ones of the deceased. This investigation may not take long, since keeping the body in the refrigerator is regulated by a ritual services company contract with the municipality.
Agents searching for loved ones face a wide variety of situations.
Sometimes they fail to find not only the homeless relatives who died on the street, but also the relatives of the tidy people who had their houses.
Some completely lonely people don’t write a will either.
If a person buried with state funds had any property, then it becomes state property.
“Our job is to find at least some relatives of the deceased. There have been cases in which we find relatives of the third generation. Some claim that they have not taken care of the living, they do not want to have them with the deceased. Others attend funerals. Such things are not an exception, they happen several times a year, what to do then?
The officer recalled a case in which a man who died on the street but who had a home had no relatives.
Police visited the deceased’s home and found a stranger who looked after him, took over the estate and buried the deceased.
The official opened without ruling out the possibility that some people who are not burying their loved ones are looking for an opportunity to take advantage of the state.
Ecological coffins – the cheapest
There are many sayings and superstitions about death in folklore. From them it can be deduced that since ancient times people did not want to die alone and be buried by strangers.
A decade ago, there was a living belief that a lonely person is buried like an animal, without clothes, wrapped in a shroud.
J. Savickas, who also has to take care of the funeral, paid for by the state, assured that this is simply not possible now.
The company that won the contest is currently burying a person for 180 euros and 29 cents.
The dead are buried in coffins made of light, peeled and branched boards, which funerals call ecological, more suitable for cremation, because they are unpainted or varnished. The construction of the coffin is light, with no additional ornaments, but with handles.
Price: J. Savickis assured that the coffin, which costs only half a hundred euros, does not look luxurious, but neat. / Photo by Vytautas Liaudanskis
The body is placed on a silk sheet and a pillow of the same material. The inside of the coffin lid is not decorated.
A coffin of this type costs 50 euros.
Clothes, even for the broken
Funerals receive a full set of clothing from vendors. The bag contains underwear. In the women’s set: underwear, under the dress, stockings, panties, scarf.
Men also dress in underwear, light shirts, suits, socks, and boots.
Women do not dress in shoes, but in footwear reminiscent of ballerina slippers, which dancers call Chechen.
The deceased is usually prepared in dresses of a model, only their color differs. They differ from the most expensive in the quality of the material.
Finishes: Atna’s administrator Jolanta Pragulbickien mostró showed dresses for the homeless who accompanied her last trip. / Photo by Vytautas Liaudanskis
The pink is placed in the same bags with the clothes. It is placed in a coffin.
Clothes for both men and women cost about 25 euros.
“No one sews clothes separately for the homeless dead. It’s the same clothes for the dead, but they are usually rebellious. There may be an undesirable color for the suit, a yellow shorter than a dazzling white shirt, the shoes may have Some of those defects Suppliers have a dilemma: such items “Before closing the coffin, even if the relatives are not present, we open the arms and legs of the dead,” the general manager of Aterna opened.
Sometimes the state has to bury dead or burned bodies. According to Savickas, one of these occurs in three months or even half a year.
Shoes: men are placed in the coffin to wear shoes, women wear cloth slippers. / Photo by Vytautas Liaudanskis
The funerals then write a letter in which they declare that it is impossible to dress the deceased.
The funerals ensured that the deceased would be placed in a coffin along with their clothing. The clothes are placed on the body. This is required by the tender conditions.
“We are calmer when everything is done as it should be. What if we need to dig and take a sample for DNA testing?” – This is J. Savickas.
Buy and monument
There are three areas in the Lébartai cemetery where unidentified people are buried under the care of the state. It is not difficult to distinguish these areas from equal monuments built in equal rows. They are also bought from the winning company.
The person’s name is written on a small stone slab, and in many cases only the date of death is marked.
It is true that there are also common tombstones in these areas. Zina Stankienė, advisor to the City’s Municipal Management Department in charge of the city’s cemetery, said this was the last gift from relatives who had already found their relatives in graves long after the funeral.
It may seem like they are doing a good job for them, but in reality, it is an even greater pittance.
Some of the dead are buried as unrecognized. Other relatives went abroad and officials did not know where they might be.
They are the emigrants who return to their hometown once a year or even less frequently to find their loved ones in the graves.
Some leave the graves they found, others place the grave there and write not only the surname but also sensitive words on the tombstone.
Still others request permission to exhume the remains and bury them in another town or village, in a family grave.
Forget forever
The image is similar in the two areas. The caretakers of the cemetery go out of their way to make sure there aren’t any piles next to each monument, making it easy to care for the green grass.
However, the land can only be moved one year after the funeral, so it takes time to clear these areas.
Cemetery managers often see plastic flowers on uniformly marked and unvisited graves.
Z. Stankienė / Editorial file photo.
“We have this problem: some women who often come to the cemetery take the artificial flowers that they throw out of the containers and put them on those graves. It may look like they are doing a good job, but it’s actually an even bigger problem.” Z. Stankienė shared the current affairs of the cemetery maintenance.
The third area, closer to the main entrance of the cemetery, where many homeless residents of Klaipėda are buried, is more reminiscent of an old village cemetery. Several large monuments are surrounded by remains of wooden planks.
Z. Stankienė said that now it is not even possible to find out who was buried here a few decades ago.
Oblivion: The area that began to overlap in the 1990s is now intact because it is no longer clear who is buried here and where. / Photo by Vytautas Liaudanskis
This area is mostly buried in the last decade of the last century. The temporary wooden tables were destroyed even when the caretakers of the cemetery did not record who was buried and where.
The dead are now not buried in this area, as it is not known whether the shovel will be inserted into the coffin board when digging a well. It took over a year to comply with the rules of care for the cemetery.
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