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Flowers and roadside shrines

TheCatWoman

Over the years I've noticed more and more bunches of flowers left at roadsides usually the scene of an accident, when did that start? I don't remember it being a thing when I was younger. Obviously we use flowers at funerals and memorial services like Armistice Day. 

I remember it really being a thing when Diana, Princess of Wales died, the tons of flowers left at palaces around London and them being thrown in front of the hearse as they they drove to her internment.

But now they seem to be everywhere, not that I think it's a bad thing, I think it's good for there to be a place where people can show common humanity and compassion both for those who were lost and those who survive. 

I do find myself wondering at the symbolism of it though. Just after someone has died I can see that their spirit might be attached to the place of death, but after a year or two, shouldn't the symbols move on to the place of burial or scattering? Surely the spirit dosen't hang about it's departure point to the afterlife? 

As we're so much more of a secular country now and churches play a less important role in the lives of many, I think we might need a new narrative around death to fit a secular age, I don't think we're any less spiritual for being secular, the flowers show that impulse is there, but we dont' seem to know what to do with it.

 What do you think?

  • in reply to Roy

    On a busy road near me there's a giant bulldog teddy bear attached to a fence, has been since around 2024 at least. God knows how bad that thing must reek now.

  • I don't get it, and I also don't remember it happening when I was young. Flowers were always taken to graves.

    Being post-theist, I don't believe in an afterlife. I accept that there might be something after death, but I haven't got a clue what it is - I don't believe the spirits of people who've died that I knew are looking down on me, or even looking down on the earth, so I don't really see much point in "grave goods"

    Of course, this is just my view and if it comforts people I have no issue with them doing it.

  • in reply to SpiffyVoxel

    A tree is nice, I think its better for the environment than a lot of flowers still in their plastic wrapping, flown across continents and toys.

    I wonder if the leaving of toys and momentos is a modern equivalent of grave goods? Looking at prehistoric graves, it often appears as if the whole comuntiy and other related comunities all left some thing in the grave, something that was thought to be needed in the afterlife.

  • This is something I’ve struggled with for ages, I do understand that a life may have ended there, it also might have ended  two miles down that road in a moving ambulance. 

    To be honest some of the plastic flowers and toys are quite tacky, the shrines have actually distracted me at accident black spots.
    There is a shrine on a bad bend near to my workshop, the family sometimes stop, park there and get a lawn mower out of the boot, it’s a matter of time until they join the deceased.

    If I was to pass away suddenly in the supermarket toilets, I wouldn’t expect a shrine, ( maybe a blue plaque)  I can think of a few witty words for the plaque but better not share them.

  • While there's definitely some symbolism in leaving flowers at the place where someone was killed in an accident, there can also be a public-consciousness aspect to it depending on the nature of the tragedy, or the response to it by the authorities.

    Several years ago, a young man was killed just up the road from where I live when he was the victim of a gang-related attack. Slight frown His friends subsequently planted a tree in his memory in the park across the road, and it had photos and mementos at its base for several years. There was a congregation at the site on the anniversary for the next few years, often with music in the evening. Nowadays, the tree is unadorned and left mostly to fend for itself, but I hope it was somewhat cathartic for those who planted it.