Stones and Flowers
It's a fairly new phenomenon, yet with a somewhat Victorian flavour. I'm referring to those sad little roadside shrines which seem to be everywhere these days - a few wilting bunches of flowers to mark where someone has died, perhaps in a car crash.
In a couple of places that I pass regularly, the flowers are always fresh. By the lake in the park where I walk, the families have gone a step further and put up large stones with verses carved into them. Two teenage boys drowned there, one trying to help the other: there is a stone at each side of the lake, with a warning to others not to swim there.
It's easy to mock the bad verse, the spelling mistakes carved into the stone - - and I don't like myself for wanting to. Both families have gone through terrible tragedy: but the whole thing of these little shrines makes me feel uneasy.
All right, with the stones by the lake, perhaps the families are trying to make other teenagers think before they go into the water. But what of the roadside flowers? What are they for? Who are they for? Why commemorate the place where someone died, rather than a place where they liked to be when alive? Those park benches "In memory of Fred Smith, who loved this place" - yes, I understand that, and his family can go there and think of him.
But the flowers - no, I'm not sure, like I'm not sure about those announcements in the newspaper "In loving memory of Freda Jones who died six years ago today. Always in our thoughts. Peter, Doris and all the children." Who is it aimed at?
And then there was this one I read once - truly:
He knocked upon the golden door
The angel shouted "Come!"
The pearly gates flung open wide
And in walked Dad.
Some people say that the family are just wanting to show the world how loving and caring they are, but I don't think so. I think it goes deeper than that. I think that people hope that somehow their loved one will know that they are remembered: that they will see the flowers by the road, or somehow glance through the Yorkshire Post from their armchair in Heaven and think oh, how lovely, Peter and Doris have put a notice in the paper because it's six years ago today - -
No, it doesn't make logical sense. The Victorians, by and large, had religious beliefs to comfort them and many of us, by and large, don't. So I think the shrines are a way of helping people to feel closer to their dead relatives, and perhaps to begin to come to terms with their death.
As a society, the Victorians did death in a big way - all that mourning and half-mourning and making cards with photographs of dead babies and huge gravestones and solemn hymns. Queen Victoria led from the front in her perennial mourning for Prince Albert.
We don't want to think about death these days: it embarrasses and frightens us. We've done away with it, hushed it up, shut it away in hospitals. Perhaps if we could acknowledge it more as a part of life then there wouldn't be a need for all these sad little roadside memorials.
In a couple of places that I pass regularly, the flowers are always fresh. By the lake in the park where I walk, the families have gone a step further and put up large stones with verses carved into them. Two teenage boys drowned there, one trying to help the other: there is a stone at each side of the lake, with a warning to others not to swim there.
It's easy to mock the bad verse, the spelling mistakes carved into the stone - - and I don't like myself for wanting to. Both families have gone through terrible tragedy: but the whole thing of these little shrines makes me feel uneasy.
All right, with the stones by the lake, perhaps the families are trying to make other teenagers think before they go into the water. But what of the roadside flowers? What are they for? Who are they for? Why commemorate the place where someone died, rather than a place where they liked to be when alive? Those park benches "In memory of Fred Smith, who loved this place" - yes, I understand that, and his family can go there and think of him.
But the flowers - no, I'm not sure, like I'm not sure about those announcements in the newspaper "In loving memory of Freda Jones who died six years ago today. Always in our thoughts. Peter, Doris and all the children." Who is it aimed at?
And then there was this one I read once - truly:
He knocked upon the golden door
The angel shouted "Come!"
The pearly gates flung open wide
And in walked Dad.
Some people say that the family are just wanting to show the world how loving and caring they are, but I don't think so. I think it goes deeper than that. I think that people hope that somehow their loved one will know that they are remembered: that they will see the flowers by the road, or somehow glance through the Yorkshire Post from their armchair in Heaven and think oh, how lovely, Peter and Doris have put a notice in the paper because it's six years ago today - -
No, it doesn't make logical sense. The Victorians, by and large, had religious beliefs to comfort them and many of us, by and large, don't. So I think the shrines are a way of helping people to feel closer to their dead relatives, and perhaps to begin to come to terms with their death.
As a society, the Victorians did death in a big way - all that mourning and half-mourning and making cards with photographs of dead babies and huge gravestones and solemn hymns. Queen Victoria led from the front in her perennial mourning for Prince Albert.
We don't want to think about death these days: it embarrasses and frightens us. We've done away with it, hushed it up, shut it away in hospitals. Perhaps if we could acknowledge it more as a part of life then there wouldn't be a need for all these sad little roadside memorials.
posted by Daphne at 9:07 pm
3 Comments:
The sad little roadside memorials have been around for a long, long time, though. They certainly predate the automobile. It's just that now bunches of flowers are cheaper and bigger, so they stand out more and don't vanish as quickly. The island where I grew up has all sorts of little roadside memorials. They are on the roadside because then passers by will see, and think, and maybe pray. Some are for things that happened on the road, some are for things that happened in other countries.
and with a blink of an eye we're back ... 60,000 years ... in the back of the cave, all flickering torchlight and insecurity, with your man saying he can talk to our dead forefathers and generally spitting on his and and being all Darren Brown, and making us feel good about stuff and not worrying about the fact that when the lights go out they stay dark for really quite a long time.
Yes, when our cave guide in Burgundy said that we are the same people as in the time of the cave paintings he was right - we've still got the same doubts and hopes and fears and worries.
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