You know what I’m talking about.
In Loving Memory
Omar Magnus Little, Jr.
4/1/42 - 4/12/16
…on the back windshield.
Why? Can they not afford a headstone? Is there an appropriate amount of time you leave these on your vehicle? Until you sell it? Or does it stay with the car in perpetuity? Is grandma in the trunk?
Anybody done this, or better yet, purchased a car with one already on it?
People mourn in their own ways. Leave them be.
So people that mourn in their own way, can’t talk about it?
And why did you post in this thread?
People put up those memorials because everybody mourns in their own way, and for some people those memorials on the back of the car are a comforting way to remember their dead. Such memorials are usually not intended as replacements for a headstone (which is a marker at one fixed location that few will ever see), but instead are a public acknowledgment of loss. Some people tattoo a loved one’s name or initials and dates on their body; some decorate their car; some print a fancy memorial announcement in the newspaper; some light a candle in the church; some endow a scholarship or award in memory of the deceased; some do all of these, some do none of them. There are no hard and fast rules about mourning.
There are no fixed rules about the passage of time, either. I’ve seen such memorials for somebody who passed away long before the car was manufactured (the same as I’ve seen memorial announcements in the newspaper on a significant date several decades after somebody’s death). What’s appropriate depends on the person creating the memorial, not the bystanders.
I’m not really sure why you think you have to “get it” or what you think there is to “get” in the first place; it’s a mourning custom among people whose customs are different than yours, nothing more or less.
I’ve got a couple of these on my motorcycle. Headstone don’t figure into it: these are just personal memorials to fellow riders whose company I miss. I plan to leave them on my bike for as long as I own it. One of these was on my previous bike, and I removed it before selling the bike a few years back.
Everyone memorializes in their own way. Some keep locks of hair from the departed, some keep the ashes of the departed in an urn on the mantle, some go with a casket and headstone in a cemetery somewhere. Some people tip a 40. Some people erect memorials at the site where the departed was last known to be alive. Many people regard their vehicles as a canvas for personal expression; for them, a sticker on a vehicle is just one more (perfectly cromulent) way to memorialize the departed.
Maybe Greg Charles will be back to 'splain hisself, but I have to admit that your OP carries a strong air of “what the fuck is wrong with these people” rather then innocent curiosity. In the interest of discussion I have ignored your condescension in my response above.
I have seen some of those “memorials” on the back windows of vehicles for quite some time now.
The few I’ve seen seem to show somebody who died too soon. The birth and death dates are often separated by 25 years or less…
Also, they seem to be more common in the sketchy areas of Chicago.
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Hmm, I didn’t think that would need explanation. I posted in this thread to say what I posted. Pure tautology. I think there was a previous thread here that took issue with people saying loved ones “passed” rather than died. Death sucks. People deal with it in different ways. Is there any other explanation necessary?
Most that I’ve seen appear to be war dead from the Bush II wars.
I think it’s a generational thing.
It is preferable to the piles of rotting trash and detritus that people leave at roadside memorials.
I’m personally a fan of turning a glass and letting the deceased be memorialized in tawdry bar stories, but to each his or her own as long as it doesn’t leave litter that you’re not even allowed to dispose of.
Stranger
For motorcyclists it’s often another way to advertise to car drivers the very severe consequences of their inattention to bikers. When I’m following a pickup truck with a memorial to a dead 25 year old with a picture of a riderless Harley it’s pretty easy to make the connection.
And FYI we have had threads and threads on this over the years. As well as about impromptu roadside memorials. In general these things were outrageous in most circles 30 years ago but are becoming mainstream. So outrage over them may have been popular at one time, but probably won’t be well-received in this thread in 2016.
They’re not my schtick, but I get that they are some folks’ schtick.
My husband has been gone for five months now, but right after he died, I went nuts looking for ways to memorialize him. Mostly in the form of favoriting necklaces or paver stones or metal cards with his handwriting that you carry in your wallet on eBay. Fortunately, that’s about as far as it went and I didn’t actually purchase much. But as has been said up thread, people do odd things to cope with grief and still feel connected to their loved one.
Right. The public aspect is significant for some people, also manifest in memorial t-shirts, especially for people who died “too soon,” and particularly by accident or violence. It’s a remembrance, but also a warning, or protest.
If someone wants to carry themselves in a tacky manner, who am I to judge?
I used to see them a lot in a neighborhood where I used to live.
In such a case, they can be self-perpetuating. In your community, you see many of these every day and thus is comes to seem like a natural way to memorialize someone. Then a loved one of your own dies and you go with a similar memorial.
I will say, however, that I grew to dislike them for some nuanced and touchy reasons.
In this neighborhood, these memorials almost always named young men- died late teens or early twenties. Of course I can’t make fair assumptions about any one particular person’s death but, in general, given the problems with drugs and crime and gang related activity in this neighborhood, I definitely believed that most of these young men were dying while involved in gang activity.
Now, I don’t believe in fate but I do believe that common human behavior can often be fatalistic- or maybe a better term is self-fulfilling prophesy. Living with a belief that something is going to happen, little choices we make along the way can serve to make that result come true. It’s more often than not our subconscious at play that leads us to our more self destructive choices.
I’m not saying any of these people set it as a goal to die by the age of 20. It’s not something they wanted, not something they considered a desirable outcome. But sometime around the age of twelve or thirteen or fourteen, looking at the tragic end that’s been met by the older neighbor boy, or the older cousin, or their own 19 year old father who died when they were a baby… I believe the seed gets planted deep within the mind that “I’ll probably be dead by age 20.” Once that seed is planted, it’s difficult to avoid taking steps to make it come true- especially if it gets reinforced on a daily basis.
The pervasiveness of these memorial decals can be just one more reinforcement of that prophesy. Not only a reinforcement, but actually a means of glorifying the tragic end- “My mom will probably have one of those on her car for me someday”. Again, not something that’s wanted but something that someone’s come to expect for himself. We’re not talking about a community with access to decent counseling for troubled youth.
So, yeah. I grew to dislike these things and they’ll always have a negative connotation for me. Not that car decals are the root cause for young men dying in criminal activity but I really have come to see it as being among the “nexus of contributing factors” as it were.
Front and rear window car decals are very common on some islands in the Caribbean. They tend to be either memorials for the dead or proclamations of religious fervor.
But two that I’ve seen are just awesome. One was Potato in big blocky letters on a white minivan, apparently owned by a tuber-lover. The other was a beater with beautiful italic script that said Fuck The Haters.
I agree people mourn in their own way and should not be judged. However, this seems fairly recent. Perhaps this is just more over-sharing that is so prevalent today: some people’s need for attention for everything going on in their lives. A facebook post only stays visible for so long, but a window memorial will last as long as you want.
I have always assumed that the deceased is in the trunk.
Great post.
A related factor is within that community these memorials work to preserve and reinforce the anger over what are mostly murders.
IOW if every day you see 5 reminders that 5 different members of your hood’s gang were killed by rival gang members, that keeps alive the cycle of retribution and counter retribution. Ensuring the cycle is unending and in many cases ever-accelerating.
You (bienville), or I, or somebody else passing through may not know the circumstances for any given death. But for sure the people who are immersed in the gang culture know the story behind each one. Or at least the version of the story where their guy died innocently and tragically at the hands of the Other Side. Whether that other side was another gang or the cops.
This is what I have attributed the many memorial decals, family decals, etc. on the back windows of vehicles. It seemed to gain popularity at the same time as social media.
That is noted by the little yellow sign.