I heard Chris Isaak interviewed on radio. He was talking about touring the backwaters of Mexico. His driver was tearing down all the little, narrow, winding roads at breakneck speed. Chris remarked hoe religious the locals were, every few hundred yards they put up a shrine to wish motorists well. His driver explained that they were memorials for the dead and Chris lost his enthusiasm for the backroads.
For a real scare visit New Zealand. They have superb roads yet you will see memorials whereever you go. Sometimes I would look in wonder and try to work out how anyone had an accident on 2 miles of straight, wide road.
There’s a permanent memorial on the road into my little village. It’s a white cross with a name and a date on it. Many of the roads around here have drainage ditches next to them. There is a little wooden bridge over the ditch to the cross. Flowers are changed regularly. There may be other things there, but I’ve never stopped. I did notice a 1970s date, but since I haven’t stopped I don’t know if that’s a birth date or a death date.
I don’t begrudge people solace. But maintaining a memorial like this one seems unhealthy to me. The survivor is virtually chained to the spot. She (and I’m only assuming it’s a mother) can never move away since she would no longer be able to maintain the memorial. If she becomes ill, she may suffer guilt at not being able to maintain it.
There is a time to grieve. But there is also a time to let go.
There’s no right way to grieve, but I find it hard to believe that all these people are moved in the same manner. They’re all dealing with their grief by putting up teddy bears and giant ribbons???
It just goes to show that if someone’s tastes run towards the tacky, brain-dead, and unoriginal, that doesn’t change when someone they know dies.
I agree. Lay your flowers and your wreaths at the cemetery. Why anyone would want to be continually reminded of the site where a loved one met a violent death is incomprehensible to me. The person’s violent death is the last thing I would want to be reminded of.
There’s a very simple way to keep alive the memory of a person: think of that person. And if that fails, put a picture of that person on your wall or desk.
I don’t understand why they’re almost always crosses - never Stars of David, never statues of Mohammed…
Sometimes I think they’re products of people being a bit too caught up in their own drama - people who want to show the world how much they grieve. But mostly I don’t care.
While driving down a stretch of backroad that I was not too familiar with, I was slowing down to a stop sign. I spotted this bundle of flowers, and made a fairly quick connection. As I lifted my eyes kind of around the corner and down the road I was about to turn on to, I saw a car heading at me at a high rate of speed. I braked hard, freaking everyone in the car out, as the other car vroomed by. He had been in the act of passing a farm vehicle. Had I not been alerted by the flowers…I hate to think about it. I tend to go on high alert when I see those things now.
I don’t care for them. I believe cemeteries, or perhaps small spaces at one’s home, are appropriate places for memorials. For notable figures who have significance to the community at large, public memorials are okay, but appropriate places for them are town squares and such, not beside a highway.
The message I get from these roadside memorials is “We think our grief for this person you never heard of is so important, we’re going to thrust it in your face.” I think in essence they are monuments to the egos of the people who put them up more than to the memory of the departed.
OK, I’m for them then. Of course, they’d be better if they were more permanent than a bundle of flowers - maybe a sign that said, “please slow down - severl motorists have been killed on this curve.”
But it’s great that one of those did some tangible good.
I will remove this garbage from my front yard if someone dies in an accident and stuff starts getting left. Sorry it happened, but I’m not going to stare at the junk you drop off on my lawn.
I see why a reminder that a particular stretch of highway that continues to be deadly is put up. That is how this practice came into being. I do not want to look at markers all over the county because someone died there. Put out a memorial bench in a park or something.
Is the next practice we are expected to live with going to be memorial markers in front of your house, because someone died in the kitchen?
“Power grieving” is a great term for describing this phenomenon. Roadside memorials, cheesy Web sites, displays in the back windows of pickup trucks, t-shirts - all of this was uncommon until recent years. I think it’s a part of a trend where the private realm is crossing over into the public. Diaries used to be private; now they’re blogs open for all to see. Sex used to be an intimate event shared between two people; now people are filming their own exploits and posting it online.
When I lived in New Mexico in the early 1990s, I saw elaborate roadside memorials – they’re called descansos – that are maintained year after year after year. They often incorporate creches, fresh flowers, wreaths, liquor bottles, and collections of religious candles. I believe state policy is to never touch them, unless they’re in the way of a road reconstruction project. One of my plans is that the next time I visit my friends in NM, we’d erect a huge memorial in the dead of night, in front of the house of my racist-leaning former boss.
I, too, find that they’re usually pretty tacky. The ones around here, besides having the dirty plastic flowers (Yuck!), tend to have crosses with reflectors on them! Sheesh.
A plain white cross would be one thing. But everything else heads directly to Tackyville.
I’m picturing a roadside memorial dedicated to “Rachel Weinbaum”, the site scattered with New York Islanders paraphernalia, empty Manichewitz bottles and Tab cans, and photos of Barry Manilow. ;j
Seriously - I’m just getting started in Judaism, but from what I gather, roadside memorials would be seen as inappropriate. You remember someone by vising their gravesite (and leaving pebbles, not flowers behind), saying Kaddish, and trying to carry on their efforts of “tikkun olam” – repairing the world – so their life can have meaning even after death. Memorial donations for synagogue and community center improvements and scholarship funds are also popular.
North American Jewish life is urban-oriented, and I would think that the rural roads where you see most roadside memorials aren’t going to be heavily traveled by Jewish drivers.
Can’t the state put up a “Dangerous Curve” or squiggly lines on a sign or something? If it’s a dangerous spot, I’d like someone in an official capacity to let me know.
Ditto. I will say that it has made me aware of just how dangerous some of the roads I frequently travel are. I pass one stretch where these memorials literally line both sides of the highway for a couple of miles. Being a four lane, undivided highway, often foggy with heavy, pre-dawn traffic, these memorials are probably the most effective method of preventing their own self-perpetuation.
They scare me. I always only seem to see them when I’m driving on a long trip that I’m nervous about (my husband doesn’t drive, so on long trips it’s all me), and they feel like a bad omen or something.
I don’t know about Wyoming (because I just never go up there, even though it’s only an hour away). Colorado has those now. It’s actually a blue and white sign that looks just like the other DOT signs. They say “In memory of _________. Please drive carefully”.
I like them a lot better than the crosses/piles of teddy bears/wreaths, etc. Less of a distraction, but still a useful reminder that that section of road may be dangerous, etc. (no need to re-hash what others have already said, eh?)