The term just popped into my head. I may have heard it somewhere, but I think this may be a Kalhoun Original. It annoys me to no end, mostly because of the implication that if you don’t join in on these things, you’re somehow a cold-hearted bastid. That somehow, you’re *just not feeling the pain enough * and are now deserving of scorn or something.
Now I understand situations like the Columbine school shooting or the Oklahoma City bombing, where so many people die that it truly does touch most of the people in the community. But when someone ends up in the wrong place at the wrong time, it’s just not worthy of pageantry.
We’re very quiet mourners in my family (my side, anyway). We did gather at the gravesite to inter my mom’s ashes. There were nine of us altogether. But generally, we don’t wear our grief on our sleeves.
I also like it - it’s a perfect description of these memorials. It’s especially appropriate when each memorial you see is bigger and more garish than the last.
This is what I call “spectator grieving.” When hundreds (or thousands) of people show up to grieve for someone they’ve never even met.
I hear ya. It reminds me of the old women in Not-So-Merry-Old-England who would sit around knitting and waiting for the heads to roll. It’s really irritating. I don’t want a bunch of strangers standing around watching me or my family in our darkest hour. I want people who knew and loved my loved one to be there. Not out of obligation, but so the truly needy can lean on each other for support. It’s about the survivors and helping them get through the next hours, days, months…strangers don’t help me do that. My family and very closest friends do.
I don’t really have a problem with the Roadside Memorials.
But I saw something a few months back that creeped me out greatly.
On the back window of a vehicle was the permanent lettering professionally done that said:
** DeadLady’s Name** 1955-2005. X knew how to love and live.** Or something similar and drecky and creepy. (It was not someone famous. Just a local schmoe.)
It creeped me out so much and sent my WTF RADAR off the charts, I wrote it down somewhere and will probably find it one of these days.
Anyone else seen something like this?
[rant]It is right up there with the Dale Earnhardt #3 window etching/decals/permanet thingies. He was a race car driver, you morons! He didn’t cure anything. Didn’t invent anything! Didn’t make humankind a better place. He was a race car driver. He did left turns at a high rate of speed until he hit a wall. Booo hooo hoooo! He’s dead, jim! Dale Earnhardt is not pining for the fjords! He ain’t the bloody messiah. He ain’t coming back! Just.get.the.fuck.over.it. [/rant]
I don’t mind roadside memorials or the "RIP"s on the back windows of cars. Mostly when I see them, I feel a fleeting sadness for the person who died and their family. If it helps someone deal with the death of a brother or daughter or friend, who am I to label it tacky? It’s not what I would do, but then it’s not my brother or daughter or friend either.
My husband’s family is HUGE on power grieving. They visit the graves every week, and they, for one family member, purchased jewelry for her to be buried in (because she always wanted a ruby ring…sigh…). They buy evergreen blankets for the graves each winter. They weed, plant, and straighten the gravesites regularly and pitch a hissy fit if the cemetery doesn’t keep up with certain things.
They have eternal flames, benches, family outings to the gravesites, and absolutely refuse to respect anyone’s final wishes (cremation or “in the wall” are not acceptable choices). They create shrines in rooms of their homes, they have last voicemail messages inserted into lockets and teddy bears, they have intricately carved headstones, including “pet sayings” and “terms of endearment” the deceased used in their lives…the list is neverending.
Mr. K and I never go to the cemetery (only when they’re put in the ground).
Far be it from me to tell anyone what to do with the little plot of land they purchased as their final resting place, but when you get out into the public space with the religious crap and the shrines, I’m twice as annoyed and extremely offended. After all, asking someone to move their shrine to their own goddamned property would make me a cold-hearted bastid, remember?
Etched printing on a window is so very illegal. The cop sould be citing her for a damaged window. The glass surface is compromised, and needs to be replaced.
Kalhoun that sounds like this nut job woman in the Ripon area. Her son died 20 years ago driving drunk. She dumps a ton of crap by the road all the time. People may only talk to her, if they pretend he’s alive. She knows he’s dead, yet she insists on pretending the guy in alive. She will leave stuff so he won’t be hungry, or cold, or it’s a birthday present.
Mentaly ill is mentaly ill, and allowing this stuff to continue makes it worse. They need to be set straight before the fantasy, becomes to well rooted.
Oh man…these people are sane enough…just too over the top. Every time we see them, like the day after a cemetery visit, we ask how “everyone” is. They say, “You know…still dead”, where we respond, “That’s good.” And we all laugh. But they continue with the Shrinage.
My BIL still signs birthday and Christmas cards with “Love X and Y.” She’s been dead three years.
Here’s a situation a friend encountered 6 months before her own death. My friend and husband planned, for her own funeral the next two weeks.
A married woman was burying her middle aged husband. His birthday was close. She bought Happy Birthday cards for the funeral for hundreds of dollars. She sat down and wrote out personal messages into the cards, like she was a friend or relative writing to the deceased. She handed all the friends and relatives the Happy Birthday card she had signed their names in after the personal messages to her husband. She wanted everbody to give her husband the card for his birthday. so he wouldn’t feel bad. She left the envelopes unsealed, so many guest read what she had written as the guest.
The memorial around here that actually gets set up each year is at the roadside where the first Vermont statie to get killed by another person in the line of duty died a few years ago. That was so rare that it makes sense to recognize it.
Also, recently a 16-year-old was killed and I knew of her mom. Her class- and teammates put memorials on their cars; it’s a small enough town that everyone would know, or know of, the girl or her mom. I think with the way the community is, there really is a sense of mourning by everyone because they all know each other in some way.
In Florida, you can request for a small DOT-approved sign that is short, round, reflective and kind of generic - it says “Drive Safely” and the name of who paid for it. Generally placed on or near traffic fatality sites.
Near my folks’ house, though, there were enough fatal accidents that the just took down a stop sign and turned the intersection into a round-aboot instead.
We have an intersection about 75 yards from our driveway. It’s a T intersection and people frequently fly through it and drive their vehicle through the gigantic red barn at the crossroad.
I want to erect a traffic sign that reads “HELLOOOO! THERE’S A FUCKING BARN IN FRONT OF YOU!!!”
I’d never heard of this before, but I’m adding it to my list of “things that will make me come back and haunt your ass.” I hate leaving voicemail messages, and would hate to think of one of mine preserved forever.
