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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?

Parents

  • 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.

  • 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.

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  • 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.

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