Deep sigh... Roadside 'Tributes'

[LyingWitchInTheWardrobe2726]

Am I very unreasonable to hate them?

We have a road that I travel on quite often, it's locally known as 'Death Valley'. It's been the site of several fatal accidents, namely because people overtake and misjudge the traffic in the opposite direction.

Anyway... some of the lampposts are absolutely festooned with dirty and torn teddies and dead flowers and banners and goodness knows what... until mothers' day, birthday, Christmas or some other memorable day results in even more stuff being added. Some of these accidents happened five years ago or more.

This isn't common all over the UK, just in spots. I've often seen a cross on a verge, with perhaps a small wreath but nothing on the scale of 'Death Valley'.

I drove past one of the 'festooners' today, putting some garish finishing touches to a memorial picture (the size of a dartboard), with fairy lights. She was darting across the road and I think it's a matter of time before she becomes part of the tribute scene.

It goes without saying that I feel dreadfully sad for the bereaved families but WHY exactly, does the accident site have to become an impromptu display of ostentatious grief? I really hate it...

You are all heart goldbrass. And anyway do we really live in a world "littered" by these tributes? They are hardly taking over.

When I see them I just think thank fuck it's not someone I love. That's all.

Yabu.

YABU

who are any of us to dictate how people deal or attempt to deal with grief?

I was thinking about this the other day - in my city a little girl disappeared about six months ago, no body found but sadly she is presumed dead.

There was footage of the block of flats where she lived, and the footpath outside is blocked for 20 metres by a mountain of soggy teddies/cards/My Little Ponies. The other residents are lobbying the council to plant a memorial garden for her and clear away the offerings.

That doesn't seem an unreasonable request, to me.

I don't look upon roadside ones harshly, but when there are masses and masses of contributions from strangers, I'm afraid it all starts to look a bit like emotional masturbation to me. I lived in London in 1997 and thought the same about the Diana "grief". People taking the day off work and bawling in the streets - FFS, it was disgusting.

A heap of mouldy made-in-China crap is no fit memorial for a little girl.

Different stroke for different folks. Can't please all of the people all of the time.

Sorry not read all posts, but round here you can put up a permanent sign which is a small black sigh with a red flower on it. I think the council brought them in because large tributes can be a distraction when driving. I do hate to see a mound of dead flowers, it makes the death seem worse somehow. As if they were remembered when it happened but not a few weeks later when it would be appropriate for the people would put them there to tidy up the area.

'But life goes on and there is more to life than being expected to mourn everyone else's dead all the time and all over the place.'

It's not mouring other people dead all the time - it's called being empathic, being able to understand that some people feel the need to remember their loved ones this way. I doubt very much that anyone would expect you to mourn their dead - and frankly, given your attitude, i sure as hell wouldn't want you to.

You may not agree with it, and that's fine, but really, have you never heard of compassion?

Interesting to see that the majority of posters on here who have lost family members IN AN RTA dont like them.

Losing people in other ways - fine do what you like.

But when I go down that road and see the glass still on the road, the tyre marks still fresh, picture her sat there DYING ALONE I do not want to sit there with my DD and think of her, I want to be at home with my family.

The trouble with 'compassion' being used to mean 'indulge the bereaved in every way' is that you have to draw the line somewhere - and not all bereaved people are nice, reasonable people at all. Suppose someone got stabbed on your doorstep (nothing to do with you at all) would you really want your front door festooned with crap for an indefinite period of time, and to be vilified if you complained or chucked any of it away?

Indulge the bereaved?

It doesnt happen. Not in real life. In real life 'the bereaved' are expected to get on with it and stop wallowing.

Does SpringChickenGoldBrass work for Bolton Council?

Actually MrsDevere that may be part of the problem: that stupid people get all squawky over mountains of crap parked on the pavements and any other form of ostentatious public display of grief but don't actually put themselves out to listen to or support those they know who have suffered a loss.

but the people putting the flowers at the sites are the family, they are not stupid people and thousands of them are protesting at Bolton Council's proposed plans to limit the tributes to 30 days.

Some people are quite ghoulish and seem 'hooked on grief' and without thought for the bereaved family or anybody else, seek to publicly display grieving for a person they didn't know. They tend to bring all manner of highly visible 'tributes' that are large and of necessity, 'showy'. The tributes are then left to moulder for someone else to clear away. That's akin to flytipping and it isn't reasonable or acceptable to many people.

If posters here are determined to interpret this as being in someway disrespectful to a bereaved family, I can't change that, other than to say that what I'm posting about actually bears no relation to what bereaved families I know of, feel. Flamboyant and attention-seeking 'grievers' can cause untold distress to families and residents already suffering the loss of a person and, in my view, are undignified and are merely satisfying their own mawkish needs to be seen to be 'grieving'.

It is unfair to suggest that people who grieve privately are any less 'worthy' somehow than people who grieve demonstrably and publicly... and perhaps this is the crux of the issue.

I agree with the OP. It seems to be a fairly recent phenomenon and it irks me. Put flowers there in the immediate aftermath by all means, but this habit of adding giant blown up photos, candles, banners, football scarves, teddies and gawd knows what else for years on end is a tad ridiculous and is in itself a hazard/distraction to other road users.

But tributes and memorials seem to suffer from ostentatious over-egging just like everything else in Britain today - it's part of an overall cultural shift in the way we behave. I don't like it.

No one is suggesting that people who grieve privately are any less 'worthy'. Everybody grieves differently. The only person who has mentioned 'competitive' grieving is you. The people who hung up a football shirt and laid flowers for the dead boy aren't "flamboyant and attention-seeking grievers', they are his family.

I think you are over dramatising SGB. A very few of these shrines are huge. Most are small and dont last very long. After a few months its the family who return on birthdays and anniversaries.

There is one on Holloway Road, just past the prison. As long as I can remember a bunch of flowers has been taped to the post on the crossing there. Twenty years +. I think this is far more typical than the fairy lights and piles of teddies type.

If something is high profile or a lot of people die it may be different. But one person, knocked over, stabbed or shot - after a few months the novelty wears off.

But not for the family and I think they should be allowed to leave something for as long as they need to.

I agree, dont like it at all. Also wtf is with these facebook tribute sites- a lot who are set up by some who says 'I never knew the victim, but feel deeply saddened about this' its bloody mawkish and vile.

Firstly research has shown that they help those affected by the death work through their grief. I think that has to be positive.

Secondly, I think they make part of the road more personal and individual.

Thirdly - they always make me stop and think.

I also find the idea of ghost bikes chilling but essential to highlight that a cyclist has lost their life.

Why is a cyclists life worth more than anyone elses though? Its a fair enough scheme to remind people about safety of cyclists etc but anyone dying is important not just cyclists (some of whom can be a menace to road users)

kiwisplendour... What about the people who are not bereaved, but merely wish to join in with the laying of tributes. What about tributes that are laid on or in other peoples' property because that's where the accident happened. Is that positive?

A road shouldn't be personal and individual, it is a road, a public highway, not something to be 'decorated'. Large tributes are dangerous and distracting for drivers.

Does it take a tribute to make you stop and think about your driving? Personally, a small cross or speed reminder sign is a more effective method without being distracting.

I think ghost bikes could be effective BUT strategically placed (by the ocuncil) and not in great number (ie, for every cyclist lost), nor adorned by anything else. The message is effective if it's kept simple.

Lyingwitch sorry if repeating other posters as haven't read through the ten pages - but wanted to say it may be a new phenomenon here, but in many other countries it's been the traditional way to remember loved ones going back many years, and definitely nothing to do with the "me, me culture" you mentioned. Maybe part of the difference is that they construct a proper memorial which tends to be looked after on a regular basis - I do think it's horrible when you see piles of dead flowers lying there for weeks on end.

But if it helps the bereaved cope with their loss a little bit better, I can't see the harm. I also think when I'm driving along and I see a roadside tribute, I always slow down a little bit and concentrate extra hard on safe driving, at least for a while, which can only be a good thing IMO.

If a ghost bike can be put up for every cyclist that dies why object to personal tributes for peoples loved ones? This discussion is actually making me question my views tbh.

Gemsy... totally agree about the facebook sites, makes me shudder that some people are so desperate to be linked to having known someone who has just died, however tenuously. I don't understand why.

Sadly, I've also noticed it encroaching the news. It's par for the course now for newsreaders, for whomever has died, to interview somebody who 'knew' the person who has decided they want to pay 'tribute' to them. The poor grieving family is nowhere to be seen.

It does seem part of the culture now that people have to know the 'ins and outs' of everybody elses' life. It's so intrusive. I had experience of that when one of my close friends died and I was contacted by the media... absolute ghouls - and so are the people who devour the crap they write.

I agree with Mrs DeVere. Few of the shrines are huge, and travelling on UK Roads you won't see that many of them.

As for 'having tributes on your doorstep' A friend of mine lives on the estate where Damilola Taylor was murdered.Her and a few of the Mums take it upon themselves to keep an eye on anything that is left there, and to try and keep it tidy, out of respect to the young lad.

No one has ever 'objected' to the tributes. Talking to people who have left things, she says the mindset is generally not wanting to hijack the families grief, more to acknowledge something dreadful that has happened, and to go and place something on the lads grave may be seen as intrusive to a families grief. A lot of the tributes are reflective, people wanting to say 'I'm so sorry, that could so easily have been my child.

You don't have to have known someone to be extremely saddened by their death, and the needless death of a youngster would certainly cause more chords to be struck, than say a 90 year old chap (Not that the loss of a Grandparent is any less upsetting than that of a child to a family). Personally, I haven't put a tribute to the lad, but every time I walk past the spot, I do conciously count my blessings.