"In Memory of..." - how widespread is this practice?

Lately I’ve been seeing cars with custom cutouts on the back windows saying:**In Memory of
Ralph Whatnot
June 3, 1943 - August 15, 1999 ** or something similar. These aren’t the NASCAR tributes to ol’ #3. They look to me like personal memorials to family members or friends.

I find roadside memorials weird enough - why would anyone want to recall the spot a loved one died?? But this seems stranger still to me. My dad died a bit over a year ago, and I know if I did something like this, he’d come back from the grave to make fun of me.

So, how widespread is this? Will the Jacksonville area be starting a trend or are we the last to get in on it? Or do I just happen to drive behind some real strange people?? Or have I offended someone here who has just such a display?? If so, I apologize, but please explain it to me.

I live in northeast Iowa and work in Minnesota, and I’ve seen this a few times on my drive to work. I don’t get it either.

I’m all for rememberances or memorials or whatever, but I find the ones tacked to your car to be in extremely poor taste.

Not to mention having one probably doesn’t do wonders for your sense of closure in the matter.

Of course, I’m also against “raodside memorials” for people that died while driving, so maybe I’m not the most sensitive soul to ever walk to planet.

Roadside. ROAD. SIDE. sigh

FCM, get used to it. It’s all over the damned place up here.

In New Mexico it was popular for Mexicans to have “In Memory Of” t-shirts made. I worked for a while at a store that did screen printing for t-shirts and we made quite a few of these. They typically had that weird weepy looking virgin mary logo with the words “In Memory of <Name>” across the top with the date across the bottom.

These shirts were actually banned at one point from my high school because some gang member* would get shot and killed, then all his gang member friends would wear his “In Memory Of” shirt. This in turn showed members of other gangs that they were rivals or whatever, and fights kept starting.
*To clarify- by gang member, I actually mean skinny little pussies with a broken guns.

FCM, they are all over the place around here. Of course, I live in a smallish town in Southern California, and our high school has had a run of bad luck the last few years…several kids killed in auto accidents and the like. Most of the memorial stickers are to them.

Not only is it in poor taste, but what about when others close to you die? Do they then take the spot on the rear window? Or do they have to share?

A more acceptable practice is to make monetary contributions to a disease research foundation, or some favorite charity of the deceased. The organization then publishes the notice periodically. They accept contributions “In Honor Of” as well as “In Memory Of.”

The roadside shrines are of benefit only to the greiving friends and relatives of the deceased. A wilted bedraggled display does not honor the departed IMHO. They should be removed after a few days.

I hate most memorials. My in-laws are positively fanatical. They’re graveyard groupies! They erect eternal flames, fancy headstones and granite benches, jog to the gravesite and visit on a weekly basis, purchase fern blankets to keep the dead people warm in the winter, spend tons of money on seasonal flower arrangements, bitch out the proprietors if they don’t keep the sites tidy…it never stops. I find it more a waste of money than anything, but they find comfort in it, so I don’t say anything.

That’s just what I was going to say. You can’t drive a half-mile in Baltimore without encountering a roadside memorial, complete with a big sparkly cross and lots of flowers and teddy bears.

I’ve just starting seeing the "In Memory Of … " things on cars and think it’s extremely tacky. The ones I’ve seen run the gamut from professionally made and incredibly elaborate to what basically looks like something a 5-year-old cut out of white contact paper. I even saw one that said, "In Memery of … " :rolleyes:

I’ve seen some incredibly tacky displays in cemetaries, but I can’t fault someone for having memorials there, even if they’re not to my taste. I’ve visited the graves of my grandparents and my dad and while I just pause to reflect and remember, I won’t mock someone who feels the need to make some sort of display there.

What unnerved me about this particular approach is, I don’t know, the fact that usually car window stickers are of pseudo-Calvins peeing on logos or other rude displays. The contrast is just a bit jarring. And I don’ t think I’d be particularly honored from beyond the grave to be stuck on someone’s car like that… symbolically, of course.

Still, I don’t know whether to be relieved or more disturbed that the practice extends beyond this area. Just too weird…

That’s interesting - I haven’t seen any of the “In Memory Of” stickers, but the latest thing (I’m in Kansas City, FWIW) I’ve been seeing a lot of here is “I Attended The Wedding Of…” bumper stickers. I find it quite bizarre.

I saw it everywhere in Orlando’s western suburbs, where the population tends to have a more Southern orientation than the rest of the metro area. Outside of the south … not once.

Should have included this in my previous post - in Orlando, I also saw a lot of cars and trucks with short phrases or the vehicle’s name (not the make or model, but a name) on the FRONT window. The most memorable was a Ford F-350 Crew Cab duallie with the following across the front window:

I AIN’T COMPENSATIN’!

Again, this seemed limited to the South; I never saw such displays north of the Mason-Dixon line. I’ll see cars with Spanish names in the back window from time to time, usually in an Old English typeface, but not the vehicle’s name or a short phrase across the front.

I live in Northern CA. I have never seen a car sticker memorializing a death. I think I would have noticed; I’m always reading bumpers.

I do sometimes see stickers with an apparently completely different car model, which I don’t get at all. Like, oh, a Honda with a sticker that says “Mazda really-cool-car.”
We do, of course, get the roadside memorials, and I wonder sometimes how the family feels about them. I don’t think I’d like one, myself, and it seems that often it’s others who produce the temporary ones (in particular I’m thinking of one we had here last year, when items appeared that were slightly odd).

I live in Honolulu, and the back window tributes to lost loved ones are absolutely everywhere. It baffles me, and everyone I know.

I live in CA, and I’ve seen the window memorials on cars, but never on a car that you’d want to be seen in.

I’ve also seen the memorial t-shirts, and I have yet to see one that didn’t tell the tale of a person who died in street violence. Yes, I’ve asked folks who wear them.

The way I figure it is: people could put far worse shit on their cars. I personally wouldn’t want to see that every time I had to drive, but different strokes for different folks. I assume that there’s some method of taking the stuff off; I certainly wouldn’t want to buy a car marked like that. The t-shirts have always seemed tacky to me, but as I said before, bygones.

I haven’t seen those here in MI yet, and while I hope I don’t, I wouldn’t bet on it. When a co-worker was killed last year, friends were selling tee shirts with her picture and a memorial message on them. It was to benefit her grandchild, so I made a donation, but I didn’t want a tee shirt. To me, it just seemed too weird to wear her image to the gym or around the house. And eventually, the tee would wear out. What then? Wouldn’t it seem odd to toss it out, or worse yet, use it for dusting?

[QUOTE=FairyChatMom]

usually car window stickers are of pseudo-Calvins peeing on logos or other rude displays.

I suppose soon we shall see Calvin peeing on:

In Memory of
Ralph Whatnot
June 3, 1943 - August 15, 1999