AIBU to not "get" mass public mourning?

[BabyMummy29]

Thinking of the sad case of the little boy in Edinburgh at the moment, but on so many occasions nowadays people leave flowers, toys etc when they didn't even know the person concerned,

Wouldn't they be better spending the money on a donation to a charity.

I just don't get it at all. Fair enough if you knew the person involved. but not otherwise.

IAmInvisible spot on post. well said.

very angry at the Wooten Bassett slur.

I also don't like the mass laying of flowers and toys by those who don't know the deceased. Remember the huge mass of flowers left for Diana? It was September, still warm, and it all rotted and had to be removed, nasty job.

the case in Scotland is very tragic, whether or not a crime has been committed. The locals did their bit by helping in the search. Surely there is no more need to show that people do care?

what does disgust me is filming/photographing of funerals and of grieving family. When did that suddenly become acceptable?

They were perfect Dr Nick.

APparently as one hearse stopped, in the silence there was the most heart rending HOWL from one widow.

Still chokes me typing it tbh

the other memorial i thought was lovely was the typically Scandinavian thing after the utoya (?sp) shootings when they all went with tiny tea lights to the capital

We went to the Cenotaph on Remembrance Sunday once. It was a truly amazing and humbling experience. Seeing the old regiments marching past - numbers are obviously so much lower these days. The last post and the silence were very moving - apart from the hoards trying to takes pics on their phones.

I wouldn't have been able to have gone if DH had been killed in Afghan, tbh.

DS1 is trying to join up now, it scares me so much. Much much more than I have ever been being a RAF wife for 20 years.

PLus in Oslo they unwrap the flowers. petty

All of you saying it's naff and twee, etc I would like to hear your opinions on "mourning sickness" after a national event has rocked your community to the core, until then please, please stop commenting on something you don't understand.

For context I live in the town where the two female police officers were shot dead in 2012. I drive that road every single day of my life, my sons school was locked down. We had heard the copper chopper up searching for that vile man for days. We left flowers, my son and I, because we wanted to respect for the women that had died doing there job and also to show that this community did not condone evil like that.

chokes me reading it DrNick

but if you dont lay flowers then you DO condone it?
plus how do you know we know nothing of it judgy pants

ManchesterhistoryGirl brilliant post. exactly.

Manchesterhistorygirl I lost a family member at Hillsborough - I still don't understand why people with no connection to an event save geography need to publicly demonstrate their grief

I don't think I'd lay flowers, tbh, because I don't want flowers, other than from DH and the DC, when I die. I just see them as a waste of money. I'd rather give the money to a charity.

Special - I know with the Belgian school children, I worried that the parents were in total shock and easily mustered into a huge televised grief fest where the king came, and there were matching coffins and flowers and the grief belonged to the viewers rather than the families. And parents talking of the loss of their 12 yo were widely broadcast on radio and TV. It seemed totally inappropriate.

I'm another one who find leaving flowers, teddies, etc. mawkish and somehow distasteful. I always wonder what happens to all of the teddies and trinkets after the publicity dies down and those with no connection to the tragedy have moved on. The thought of stacks of dirty wet teddies, candles, dead flowers etc. just lying there abandoned just seems so sad. Surely money would be better off donated to charity as other posters have said.

ok so not understanding other people's need to grieve or act differently to you is fine.

to criticise this, sneer and condemn is not fine. it's nasty and judgy and a tad smug.

Booty that what I think too if they don't like it that's fine but don't sneer and act as though it's the worst thing ever!!

carnivalCake in our case the teddies went to the children's hospital, the candles to the school and the flowers taken to the church.

no one - thats the thing. its all personal, But there is (see the poppy wearing) increasingly a kind of dogma about doing it publically

I think people should do as they see fit, everlong. I don't think anyone should sneer or criticise.

gordy - a lot of that is politics sadly

IamInvisible, Apologies, of course it was RAF Lyneham, not Brise Norton as I posted, it was Brise Norton on my mind. There were many people affected by the loss of soldiers even if they aren't vocal.

Regarding the boy in Edinburgh, again, you're talking about the local community who were out searching. Even those of us who weren't there hoping that he'd be found alive and well and would have been saddened to hear that it was in vain.

I wouldn't have thought anything of you crying in the street, I bet you weren't on your own. I sobbed in the car on 9/11, for most of the day. Even if people aren't bereaved, they are allowed to feel sadness and empathy.

Bootycall, I'm not placing any slur on Wooton Bassett but I'm free to say that I didn't like the applauding and shouting; others also didn't and they were just as affected by events.

"YANBU to not "get it." Not everyone has the same level of compassion as someone else.

A lot of people who have been moved by the child's disappearance, and now death, because they either have a child in their lives or just have empathy for someone who has lost their child, brother, grandson, nephew, friend.

Leaving flowers, cards and teddies is an easy way to show care without everyone knocking on the door and saying so.

Some people are able to care about someone they don't know."

Toffee - are you saying that people who don't leave flowers or a cuddly toy are incapable of caring about a stranger or that they don't have as much compassion as those who do? I sincerely hope you are not peddling such rubbish - laying flowers/toys/whatever doesn't make someone more compassionate or emotionally evolved, or a better person - unless you have the power to read minds, you have no way of knowing how those who don't lay flowers etc are feeling, so such a statement would be daft, at best.