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It's one note. One in a year and a half. And that one note among the other heartfelt trinkets is what becomes worthy of the news media's attention. Oh, brother. Who called the reporters anyway, the grieving mother?
What's wrong with just throwing the note (and the junk pile) away and get on with life after a couple of months? That junk pile has been sitting there since Oct. 2015. And apparently during all that time only one negative note was left. I suppose the memorial trash pile gets to sit there for an infinite number of years, and anyone who doesn't like it has no heart. Yawn.
I agree. Personal memorials should have a shelf life. After a reasonable period, they should go away.
I suppose the memorial trash pile gets to sit there for an infinite number of years, and anyone who doesn't like it has no heart. Yawn.
And that is the reason increasing numbers of communities are making these makeshift shrines illegal. Why should someone's grief, however heartfelt it may be, give them the right to essentially squat indefinitely on others' property?
(I do like the approach that some states are adopting of either having official memorial gardens near highway exits or rest stops where people who died in traffic accidents can be commemorated, or having a standardized memorial plaque that the family can have erected at the scene of such a tragedy. Seems a nice, and safe, compromise.)
What a douche. Wonder if he/she would feel the same if his/her kid got killed by a drunk driver on some road.
I would be mortified if someone started leaving items at the side of the road if my loved one died there. It always ends up looking tacky and trashy and my loved ones deserve better than that.
It occurs to me that one of the reasons these things are proliferating is that our society has lost most of its formal mourning rituals. Contrary to what MarciaMarshaMarcia and .sparrow. have said in their posts, traditional societies DID tell their members when to stop grieving (publicly, at least - obviously no one controls what happens in another's heart). You were expected to put mourning clothes on at a certain point, and go through certain mourning rituals at various specified times - but there was also a time when it was expected you would take the mourning clothes off, and the time of PUBLIC acknowledgement of your loss was officially over. (In traditional Jewish society, for instance, the grave gets its headstone on the first anniversary of the person's death - and that marks the end of the public mourning period.) Any further rituals of grief were purely private, and expected to take place either in the home or at the grave of the deceased. (I can't be the only person posting here who remembers when it was considered routine to visit relatives' graves regularly. Cemeteries certainly weren't created merely as places to dispose of the rotting meat, they were meant to be tended and visited by the surviving family members!)
I'm nos sure why or when that changed, but we do seem to have lost a lot of the old customs that helped grieving families work their way through their loss. And so what we're left with is this desire on the part of many to memorialize their dead in "do it yourself" ways that are not universally accepted or regarded as appropriate.
(Did any one besides me read the links to the roadside memorials another poster put up several pages back? Back when this custom was invented, the shrines were marking actual graves, not merely the site where someone had a fatal accident. The practice got started because on long journeys people who died along the way had to be buried where they died - transporting a non-embalmed body for more than a day or so was simply not a viable option for obvious reasons.)
Looks like garbage, and I have yet to meet anyone who wants to be immortalized in a pile of fake flowers and soggy stuffed toys. Even most cemeteries wouldn't allow that much, so I'm not sure why it's ok on a public road. I can see it very temporarily, but not years.
Plant something beautiful like a tree if you want a memorial (my grandmother spent many years tending to her rose bushes so they buried her ashes and planted one on top), or better yet volunteer/ contribute to a cause they loved.
Well said. I especially like the idea of planting something meaningful on the spot. This way when the family passes it they will see it and remember. Everyone else just sees a beautiful plant or whatever.
Well said. I especially like the idea of planting something meaningful on the spot. This way when the family passes it they will see it and remember. Everyone else just sees a beautiful plant or whatever.
There should be nothing planted in the ditches of roads, however.
Highway mowing crews have a tough enough time already.
There should be nothing planted in the ditches of roads, however.
Highway mowing crews have a tough enough time already.
True, but the plant could be placed on the far side of the ditch, well away from the road and in a position where it would not be a hazard to either passing traffic or the mowing crews. And a lovely small flowering tree or bush would be a grand memorial: meaningful to those who know why it was planted there, merely beautiful to everyone else passing by.
For a perfect example of the futility of roadside memorials, go to Rome and walk along the Appian Way. Ancient Romans of means used to bury their dead along the roadside, in elaborate sarcophagi which extolled the virtue of the deceased, so that the dead person would never be forgotten - except, of course that nearly all of them are completely forgotten now. Most of the passers-by can't even read the inscriptions. They're only historical curiosities now, as well as an example of the futility of hoping for any sort of meaningful immortality for the overwhelming majority of us.
All life is grass. When did we forget this?
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