To feel uncomfortable with the increase in roadside memorials?

[BLEEPyouYOUbleepingBLEEP]

Just come back from hols in Greece, and it's made me realise just how polite and good the roads and drivers are here...no...really!!

The drivers are maniacs there, the roads are crap and there are tons of mopeds weaving in and out with the drivers with no helmets on.

At the sides of almost every road are tons and tons of roadside memorials and I personally felt really uncomfortable with them.

I understand why the family of someone killed on the road would want to commemorate their loved one, and warn others of the dangers (which it obviously doesn't do in Greece cos they're still driving like idiots) but how many memorials are too many?

In the UK flowers placed at the scene just after the event seem respectful, but is this OK if it turns into a shrine? Or if people start putting up ghost bikes?

In reference to the original post yes the majority of those road side memorials are on the spot where someone has been fatally injured in a RTA.

I'm afraid to say that if they make you feel uncomfortable then you probably shouldn't come here on holiday. They are part of the rituals surrounding death of which there are many and to be honest whilst they may seem strange to a foreigner they are of great comfort to the bereaved person here in Greece.

On the other hand I completely agree with you about the standard of driving it is appalling.I love coming home and driving in Britain - it is positively relaxing compared to driving in Greece!

Motorcycle riders are slightly better these days about wearing helmets but the most shocking thing of all in this country is still the number of children that ride on motorbikes with their dad/mum and in cars with no car seats or seat belts. That is unbelievable.

I don't agree with this notion that if you haven't been there you can't possibly have an opinion. No you obviously can't know what it feels like to lose a loved one, but it's still possible to think that roadside mimorials are inappropriate.

No-one is saying that the bereaved are not allowed to grieve, but let's face it these mimorial sights aren't well tended like say, a grave would be. They lay their flowers and teddybears and football shirts and whatever else, and there they stay, wrotting, until someone essentially has to be paid to remove them.

And where do you draw the line at someone being allowed to do whatever it takes to remember their loved one? If someone wanted the body buried at the spot where they died and a headstone erected should we allow that too on the basis that we have no right to question how people grieve?

This thread has made me quite sad. As has been said by others, you won't know until you've been there. My Step-dad was recently killed in a freak RTA. His family are all in Scotland and we are in England. Naturally his ashes are where his children are, so we would have a long way to travel to pay our respects.

People leave roadside memorials for lots of different reasons, however, the vast majority are simple and fairly unobtrusive. I appreciate that they can get out of hand and I do feel these are distracting, but otherwise I really don't see the problem. It has been something that has brought our family great comfort.

i honestly dont see the problem with few flowers where a member of someone's family was killed. If'd id left personal belongings or other things that ment a lot to my db i could completely understand. As i stated i never quite understood it until it happened to me. If someone could properly explain why i should n't mark the place where some fucking twunt ended my db's life then fair enough but its all just opinions that it shouldnt be done.

SolidGoldBangers, 'put there by sentimental no-brainers to no purpose whatsoever'

I can only think that to say such an odd thing you're either saying it for effect to get peoples backs up, or something has happened to you to give you such a disrespectful and unsympathetic attitude to people who have lost someone.

I think what snorris said about planting a tree or bulbs is really lovely, nobody could object as they don't encroach on anybody else, and are a living beautiful rememberance of that person.

Pollylogos, I'd never been to Crete before, so the memorials couldn't have influenced my decision to go there. I was just taken aback at the sheer amount of them.

Planting a tree or bulbs is not so bad, what I object to is basically these mountains of rotting compost blocking the pavement, particularly after 'newsworthy' deaths. I repeat, what's wrong with putting your flowers in the graveyard or, if you live a long way from where your relative died, having their portrait on the wall in your home rather than in other people's way.
Basically, everyone dies sooner or later and the world keeps turning for everyone else. I think it's self-indulgent and stupid to demand the right to make a mess anywhere you like.

I have no personal experience of this so I suppose not really entitled to an opinion, but if I were to die in such circumstances the last thing I would want would be a mound of petrol station flowers at the exact spot I met my demise.

SolidGoldBangers, I basically agree with what you're saying, but the way you're saying it is unacceptable.

There are posters on this thread who have lost people they love very much, and I think how you've chosen to say what you mean could be construed as disrespectful to the grief they deeply feel.

Saying I feel uncomfortable about roadside memorials, and disregarding how the people who put flowers etc down feel, are two totally different things.

Raised money for the Detling crossing, it shamed the council into building it.

There is a simple memorial on the way into Maidstone, a photograph of a young boy and a holder to put a floral offering, which is next to the crossing that was presumably put there after his death. The flowers are always fresh and has dutifully been tended for at least 20 years.

Bleep, most people have had a friend or family member die by the time they reach adulthood. Not all of us feel the need to make an ostentatious display of £2.99 limp carnations all over the pavement. It's possible to be very sad over a bereavement but still remain aware that several million people don't give a toss and there is no reason why they should - it;s not their turn to be bereaved.

I think leaving flowers in cellophane at the side of the road is littering. If you have to leave flowers then at least take off the plastic.

And personally if I die in a mangled heap at the side of the road I don't want to be remembered there. Go somewhere nice to think of me. A shoe shop or the park. Don't go to where my life was shockingly ended.

Sometimes they actually make me think yes this is a dangerous spot and I slow down and drive more carefully. Most of the ones around where we live are where children have died and I just cannot imagine so whatever the relatives need to do....

got one of these on the main road just up the way from where we live in Australia - the flowers are plastic so don't need to be replaced regularly and it is a shocking accident blackspot.

I don't have a problem with them in general either, but do think the cans of lager one was pretty tasteless.

And it makes me think "oh this must be a dangerous spot" when I see one, if no one else.

ThePinkOne has a point I think.

When I die I want to be remembered as a happy, vital person in some beautiful place that represents the best parts of my life. Not lying broken in the gutter by a road.

When I visit my sister's grave I get a huge amount of comfort from her being somewhere so beautiful, by a church where I have happy memories, surrounded by people we knew. The father of one of my school friends lies near her and I feel he keeps an eye on her. I can't imagine getting the same comfort from leaving flowers by the hospital room where she actually died - nor would it be fair on the people using the hospital, regardless of my need to grieve.

I don't mind people leaving flowers if it helps them in a tragedy but I don't see why they have to leave the cellophane and fail to clean up the remains. A lad was killed on his motorbike opposite my dd's nursery last year. It was a very tragic and wasteful event - caused by him overtaking at speed another vehicle on a city road (with a 30mph limit) and colliding with a vehicle coming the other way. Flowers were tied on nearby railings and remained there rotting for at least 6 months. Today I went past - it's the anniversary I think - and people have added about 20 new bunches and blithering helium balloons! I don't object to that per se - but I do object to the fact that going on last year's record they will leave it there to rot for months!

Several years ago when we went to New Zealand

I noticed that they have little white crosses next to the road where a person had died

I am not sure if they still have them but I think they are a very good idea as it made me realise how dangerous some of the roads there were

They are also permanent ~ they weren't very big ~ about 30cm high

Touching I suppose. If I am honest, for me they are distracting.

"Bleep, most people have had a friend or family member die by the time they reach adulthood. Not all of us feel the need to make an ostentatious display of £2.99 limp carnations all over the pavement."

SGB but most of us are lucky enough in that our loved ones died at home in bed, or in a hospital where we had probably visited them in the days preceding. If your loved one died suddenly and violently, it is surely natural to want to see the place where they passed on, and consequently only natural to want to show a sign of that by leaving some flowers.

I agree that I dislike the turning of spots into ostentatious shrines, but again I would remind people that flowers are used to commemorate the dead because they wither and die; just like we do. So the dead flowers are as symbolic as the fresh ones. (Although, yeah, some people are just lazy.)

My BIL died of a heart attack while cycling. My sister wanted to see the spot where he had died. It was important to her. She went along on her own and thought she'd find the spot easily as she reasoned there would be little bits of paper and plastic discarded by the paramedics all around. But she couldn't find anything. Distraught, she went to a shop, which turned out to be owned by the guy who had called the ambulance, who immediately knew who she must be. He looked after her and showed her the place. She left flowers and I think she does every year. I don't think she is being self-indulgent, just wanting a connection with her DH and choosing the place where he left this life. It helps that it is a beautiful spot. Perfect for a bike ride

In my local area a priest startd putting white crosses on the roadside where people had been killed in accidents.
I find they are a reminder to me to drive carefully.

RTK, I think that's kind of bothered about. If it got to the point where all the memorials were permenant (if it's OK for one to be permenant, then you can't make less of someone elses grief and not let them have a permanant one) the roads would be chock a block with them.

As another poster said, they're put down now for people who've been stabbed or had a violent death, over a few years these would all add up...to what?

Some of it for me might be partly that I try and protect myself from thinking about anyone I love dying, I cant handle so many reminders that it's always so close. Perhaps that's why we keep it private in the UK, to shield other people from the pain, and the roadside memorials dont?

I think this extends beyond roadsides, and I say is at the risk of being really flamed.

Our son is buried in a baby cemetary which looks like something out of a horror film. In the early days, family members asked to visit his grave with me and I was actually too uncomfotable to take them. The baby cemetary is littered with blackened, rotting toys, dead flowers, limp balloons, tattered, grimy indistingusishable bits of plastic that are neither beautiful or meaningful anymore-if they were, they would be properly looked after.

I feel so strongly that it should be regularly tidied, and those 'in charge' are in agreement, but who (understandably) would risk the wrath...

I think there is a lot of 'peer grieve pressure' on parents to load the little graves with tat, with a feeling that they are not 'properly' mourning if they leave it simple and bare, or just plant something or leave (refreshed) flowers.

If these were fresh toys and flowers left every couple of weeks, with the graves kept beautifully, I would never dream of criticising. As it is, it looks, literally, like a gruesome nightmare, not the place of beauty and peace it should be.

A young man was killed and burnt not to far from me. When i drive past the spot where it happened there is a teddy tied to a post, flowers are always left there, messages painted on stones have also been left, also every christmas it gets decorated with tinsel etc. It is down a back road near an entrance to a farmers field, so its not right in your face. I think its ok, it doesn't really look tacky and if it helps comfort the friends and family of the victim, then why not? Its not in anyones way, and they dont go to over the top with it. Though if it was right out on a residental street outside somes house i would think it was a bit weird. Flowers soon after are ok, but to keep using the spot outside someones house as a shrine must get in the residents way a bit, if it is alot of flowers/ teddies. Maybe a little wooden cross and a plant or something instead of a proper shrine would be more appropriate in a busy area.

I personally don't like it, wouldn't do it and wouldn't want anyone to do it for me, but if it gives some people comfort why not.

I have had some relevant personal experience and prefer to remember the person in the way they lived, not the way and place they died.

I do think they should be cleared away after a reasonable amount of time though, dead flowers are not nice for people living nearby and not a nice memorial either IMHO.

Would anyone mind if I printed this thread and took it to work? Reason being that I have recently drafted a policy about the sensitive removal of shrines (I work for a local council). There are some illuminating points of view, from those of you with direct experience (so sorry for your losses ) and as 'passers-by'.

Glitterstar, so aren't you basically saying that people who are going to die young/tragically/messily should be careful to pick somewhere moderately isolated to do it so their families can leave a pile of compost and mouldering teddybears without being a nuisance?
Someone else made the rather good point further up that it wouldn't be acceptable to go and clutter up the hospital room where your friend/relative died with loads of candles, flowers and appalling poetry: there is something terribly self-obsessed and attention seeking about these spontaneous 'shrines' - one person's commemorative spot is someone else's route to work, parking space or indeed favourite square foot of pavement because it's where they got proposed to.
We all die, we all get bereaved, and while people often want to commemorate their dead, that is what graveyards are for. Otherwise the whole world becomes one giant rotting flower-smelling, soggy teddy-covered, melted candle-splattered mess!