T-63 Adieu Pere Lachaise Til We Come Again

[traveler63]

After spending some time with Heloise and Abelard, sitting on the bench looking at the monument, we decided to take another walk. We started back toward the middle and were walking along quietly talking and something caught in the corner of my eye. Wait! I said to Mr T63 who had already wandered in another direction. We turned around and started back as I told him I had caught something and it looked like a pile of trash, but I couldn't be sure. As we approached "the pile" we discovered it wasn't trash but this:
If you look closely, you will see Metro carnet tickets and older tickets of all kinds. The inscription is Gilbert Morard Fonectionnaire Superieur. It was so amusing to see the metro tickets, so we added ours to the pile.

We walked for a while and turned the corner onto another street and saw some of the most heart rendering ones of all. This brought us skidding back to reality and made us remember and realize that even in the 21st century there are still unspeakable things happening today all over the world.


Bergen Belsen and the others

There are many of these monuments to the people who were marched to the showers. There a monuments to villages and towns in France; each one telling a small story, 25,000 here 100,000 there. I stood and cried for all of the people that lost their lives in the Death Camps. I saluted the monuments of the French people who went to war and fought to keep something like this from ever happening again, alas, there is still so much of man's inhumanity to man. We Americans got a very small taste of what it is like to be attacked, first at Pearl Harbor and then 9-11, but we have no concept of what the Europeans went through.

After gathering ourselves up, we started walking and found Edith Piaf.


We were walking along and we saw a man about two graves over from the street so Mr. T63 took this:
I think he found his family's graves and this is one of the most heartfelt pictures we have taken in a long time.

We strolled along and was wondering what we would find and ran into this one;

I looked at my watch and we were absolutely surprised to see that we had wiled away three hours and it was past lunch time, so we looked at where we were and we reluctantly took our last two pictures





walked out the gate

found the metro;

and reluctantly bid Pere Lachaise adieu.

[fumobici]

Beautiful and moving photo essay. Thank you.

[Deleted]

I'm glad you devoted enough time (and pixels) to Père Lachaise, T63 -- the place really deserves it.

[bixaorellana]

Awwww ~~ I felt sad for you and Kirk, and for us, too, when you had to finally leave!

Such a lovely visit. Thank you!

I guess I should know this, but don't: who is Gilbert Morard & what does his title mean?

[Deleted]

The title just means "superior functionary" -- I was looking up the name on Google, and the homages appear to be a private joke that caught on. Since most people have a couple of old metro tickets in their pocket, all you need it to see a couple of other tickets on a tomb like that to add them to the pile. (And yet this guy worked for the national train system, not the subway!)

Anyway, for anybody who needs of fix of more Père Lachaise photos, here is a blog with 13 pages of pictures. No need to read the French; the photos are lovely all by themselves.

cbx41.over-blog.com/categorie-10469417.html

[lagatta]

I'd say "senior civil servant" in English.

All the monuments to victims of Nazism are located across from Le Mur des fédérés, the "last stand" of the Paris Commune. You can exit near there and walk down slippery stairs to little round place de la Réunion; there is a market there some days.

I love Père-Lachaise. Someone I knew in life is buried there, so I always go say hello when in Paris, but it is also such an evocative place in general. Oh dear, if I start reading kerouac's link I'll be all day, and I do have work to get done, and billing to do....

[imec]

Thanks so much T63 - at time I felt like I was there with you. Perfect!

[Deleted]

Nov 23, 2009 13:51:53 GMT lagatta said:

I'd say "senior civil servant" in English.

Yes, that's the obvious official translation, but something makes me think that there is something tongue-in-cheek about putting that on this actually quite recent grave. If it had been someone who had died 30 or 40 years ago, I would take the inscription at face value.

[Deleted]

Very,very lovely T63. I loved every bit of it. Thank you so much for sharing these. Great photos!

[Jazz]

Your hommage to Pere LaChaise is beautiful and moving. Like you, I visited on a September day and spent the afternoon there. Your special photos have brought back the intensity of my feelings. Throughout the day I continuously got lost, in both senses...confused, since I am pathetic with maps, and lost in beauty. It didn't matter. Most beautiful was to be there as the light began to shift into dusk. Here is a video which you may enjoy. It is long, but exquisite. Thank you.
www.candelabratours.com/pere-lachaise-history-paris.html