Publically Posted Tributes

[Neil]

Just passed a lamp post where someone has sadly met their end, after a car crash I guess. It was plastered with flowers, and tributes. A fairly common sight - I walk past a low wall where flowers are regularly left, and it has a little plaque on it too. The Botanic Gardens has loads of benches with plaques, but that's different.

I started wondering, though, what would happen if I'd jumped off the bus, and stood reading those messages. Are you meant to? Has anyone ever done so?

Just wondered if there was something beyond the obvious, and the bereaved would welcome or expect people sharing in a public display of grieving.

[George Oscar Bluth II]

I'm not sure I'd want to be commemorated at the spot where I met my untimely end. Always seems a bit weird to me that people do that.

[Blumf]

It is a bit weird. I never really get a lot of peoples attitude to death, the ceremonies and stuff like the mentioned piles of flowers, seems too public for what is a deeply personal issue.

http://www.expressandstar.com/news/2012/02/25/plaque-in-memory-of-gornal-dog-stabbed-to-death/

[Buelligan]

I was cranking it round a blind bend on my motorbike once[nb]the road was dry and I wasn't exceeding the speed limit[/nb] and found a car parked on the carriageway just after the apex.  A few anxious seconds later and a quick deviation[nb]not easy on a cornering bike[/nb] onto the, thankfully empty, wrong side of the road and I was past.  Stopped to survey the scene and saw a group of imbeciles, passengers of the vehicle, laying flowers at one of these roadside shrines. 

[Janie Jones]

Yes there was a kerfuffle in my town about a big shrine incorporating a reflective numberplate spelling out M155 U BOB* which was erected at the junction of a slip road with a duel carriageway, a place where drivers need their wits about them and minimal distraction.

*BOB met his end undertaking on the sliproad in an Audi TT.

[Claude the Racecar Driving Rockstar Super Sleuth]

I don't begrudge the practice (unlike my dad, who tuts and grumbles any time he sees one of these roadside shrines) but it does seem weird to me. Isn't that what the gravestone is for?

[El Unicornio, mang]

They have them a lot here, but they're generally special 'DRIVE SAFELY' signs which them have the name of the deceased written underneath, so I guess they serve a purpose, along with letting friends and family members of the victim put flowers and stuff there if they want to.

For example:

[Janie Jones]

On one of my running routes, a shrine sprang up after an 18-year old who lived less than half a mile away drove drunk into a tree on a perfectly straight road.  To answer the OP, I felt no embarrassment stopping (safely, Buelligan) to read the tributes.  People left unopened cans of Stella as well as Arsenal scarves, cards, flowers etc and one of the tributes read, 'Shouldn't of had that last pint of Act-a-Twat, mate.'

[Delete Delete Delete]

I saw one of these tributes in carpark outside a dominoes pizza. About 4 bunches of flowers tied to a lamp post.....

Spoiler alert

....5 months later these same bunch's of flowers were still there shriveled and melting like the end of Raiders of The Lost Ark. Did they suddenly stop caring, who else is gonan remove these flowers, would it be disgusting there memory to remove these abandoned tributes.? What is the correct social etiquette in this situation? I MUST KNOW.

[close]

[Big Jack McBastard]

Just passed a lamp post

That must have been painful... oh there's more.

where someone has sadly met their end, after a car crash I guess. It was plastered with flowers, and tributes. <snip> I started wondering, though, what would happen if I'd jumped off the bus, and stood reading those messages. Are you meant to? Has anyone ever done so?

I wouldn't like to be responsible for another plaque being placed under the first one that said "McBastard was hit while reading the first plaque up there".

That would just increase the draw for someone else to go and have a look and subsequently end up with another plaque under mine, before you know it the whole lamppost is covered in plaques drawing more readers and thus more carnage to the area.

The end of the road where I used to live in Woolwich was a frequent site for accidents and I must have seen 6 different spots in the year I was there clad with flowers and the like, one I remember in particular was above an ugly streak of red bonnet paint carved into the wall of the local primary school which stayed there for months, it was a pressing reminder to hurry the fuck up and get the hell off that bit of pavement for me.

[Buelligan]

A long time ago, I lived in Putney and wandering about aimlessly, accidentally found the tree where Marc Bolan met his death.  It's still there, just off the Upper Richmond Road, as far as I know.


Seems to have become rather gaudier since I was there.

[Sexton Brackets Drugbust]

I've never understood why you'd want to commemorate the horrible way and place an individual met their untimely end. Isn't it preferable to remember the actual person for who they were.

I wouldn't want my family and friends' abiding memories of me to be most closely associated with a bent lamppost on a bleak stretch of road.

[biggytitbo]

Those little floral tributes tied to some railings always look desperately sad a few weeks down the line when the flowers have all died. But I guess the main thing is it's a way of helping someone cope.

[the midnight watch baboon]

My dog has incorrigible urges to urinate on the many mini-shrines down are way. I never notice until it's too late and worthless me pulling him off.

[Buelligan]

My dog has incorrigible urges to urinate on the many mini-shrines down are way. I never notice until it's too late and worthless me pulling him off.

I would think that would add insult to injury.

[dr beat]

People left unopened cans of Stella

Maybe that was Gazza? Although I guess he would have left a chicken too.

[BlodwynPig]

It's wut Facebook was made for.

[Solid Jim]

I won't wreck the margins by posting the image again, but this seems suddenly relevant: http://www.cookdandbombd.co.uk/forums/index.php?topic=26432.msg1498538#msg1498538

[alan nagsworth]

I too know of a place where someone was killed in an accident and there was a tribute there for years which is still there to this day with the same completely withered flowers and the same empty Carling cans tied to the railing. Every time I walk past I wonder why the cans are there, and specifically why they're tied up, and why none of the mourners ever returned to remove the flowers. I can see the lack of a point in replacing them but surely it adds an extra dimension to the morbidity of the scene to have a bunch of dead things strapped up where someone became dead. Baffling.

[I accept the terms of the]

There are lots of tributes where cans of brand name lager are considered a fitting tribute for the victim, aren't there? That trend just makes me think "drunk driving twats" whenever I see it. Or "lucky to escape such a tasteless family".

[I accept the terms of the]

And also "woo, free beer".

[HappyTree]

That's me taking the photo with Diana's father when we went to where she died a year ago. Fell down an open manhole hidden by snow. I share this not to criticise anyone else's opinion or bulldozer it with emotional blackmail. I can easily understand why some people find it unhelpful and certainly there are many different kinds of circumstances that would make remembering the place someone died impractical, distasteful and unpleasant. And perhaps even dangerous to other people.

However, I can only offer my own experience of my own situation and suggest that sometimes there is a point, it is helpful and does give a focus to grief and trying to understand why and how it happened.

In this situation and in some other accidents' cases it serves as a reminder to people untouched and unaware of the event that there is a potential danger to be aware of. In Diana's case, she fell into icy water specifically because the council never bothered its arse covering up a hole that they knew had been there since the previous summer. In those months any child could easily have fallen in. The message to anyone walking past is therefore to remember that their state to which they must pay taxes will only give a crap about protecting their lives if they are absolutely forced to by public pressure. And so far it seems there is still work to be done on that score. 5 people die every year from this problem in Estonia because thieves take the manhole covers (that are very easy to lift out) and sell them as scrap. Laws governing criminal negligence also need to be reviewed.

This area is right beside a public footpath and I would like to think that at least some of the people walking past every day might wonder how it is possible that any town council could leave such a place in such a dangerous state. From talking to various people it would seem that there is a lot of dismay and at some point I hope it will coalesce into making a difference.

So in this way it gives her parents and I some kind of hope that perhaps if we make enough people aware of this and galvanise support that something will actually change and Diana's senseless death might then actually mean something. We are not yet succumbed to nihilism and so believe in such things.

It also provides a focal point so that if by any chance Diana is looking down on us (to borrow a metaphor that is misleading but let's not get into that!) then she will see that there are at least 3 people in the world who still love and remember her. As her mother lamented to me at the time, "For everyone Diana is yesterday..." Whereas for us she is still very much of today. We need to do something public to exteriorise this feeling, to display how we feel in the same way that everyone likes to do every time they post on the internet instead of keeping their thoughts inside their head.

And personally I find this spot much more inspiring and connected to Diana than her graveside where nobody walks past unless they specifically go there. This was where she loved to walk and think, so it is typical that she should be there walking in the snow on a crisp, sunny day with the trees and the river stretching out before her. I can stand there and just try to project myself back in time to where she stood and in some way reach out to her in my thoughts.

Maybe it's silly. Maybe it's irrational. Maybe it serves no real purpose. But it is important, I think, to put into physical action the love that we feel for each other in this crazy life, rather than letting it sit impotently in our heads as mere potential; and if that means travelling 3 hours by bus to walk in her home town and stand on that spot every now and then, paint a heart in the snow and leave some flowers, then that is what I will need to do.

When someone close to us dies we in a very real cognitive sense carry their influence, their impact, their memories and their personality in our own physical lives. When I carried her casket I was participating in her very last physical movements on this earth. My legs became her legs; my arms held her up; my eyes watched the path she was taking. And when I make these significant journeys and mark these significant occasions and places I am helping to manifest some of her residual presence on this planet. We all carry parts of each other within us and I think these kinds of ceremonies, rituals and shrines show that we have always been inspired to be more and to acknowledge that there exists more to the human experience of life than immediate self-interest.

When we attach a physical motion to a sacred thought we bring it to life. That is the very essence of what we do! Thought transforms into physical motion. But it's such a commonplace phenomenon that we forget how magical it really is.

[Sony Walkman Prophecies]

Im actually quite shocked by some of the comments on here. But I suppose it just goes to show that there's no depths to which middle class snobbery wont descend.

[BlodwynPig]

Im actually quite shocked by some of the comments on here. But I suppose it just goes to show that there's no depths to which middle class snobbery wont descend.

I'm quite shocked how idiotic lower class people can be.

[Beagle 2]

The worst tribute I know of was when one of our mates died when we were about 17. I don't mind saying he was a largely unpleasant individual who I only ever tolerated out of fear, and in one of his typical stunts he nicked off with another mate's motorcycle and wrapped it round a lamp post in the next village. One of my other friends who had known him longer went to the funeral, and thought it would be a fitting gesture to chuck an ounce of hash into the grave at the end of proceedings. This was in front of his whole family and the vicar, and it made a loud THUNK on the top of the coffin. The kid who died didn't particularly smoke that much either. Appropriate.

[Janie Jones]

There was a spate of thefts from our local cemetery, stuff people leave on graves like teddies, plastic flowers, wind chimes.  There was much coverage in the local press.  One grieving mum said it was "like losing my son all over again" when the little windmills, plant pots and tea-light holders she put on his grave went missing.  There were letters in the paper saying things like, 'I swear if I get my hands on the perpetrators, I'll do time...'  The council eventually got round to looking at CCTV coverage that revealed the 'evil robbers' vilified in the local press were two little girls, aged 8 and 6 whose garden backed onto the cemetery.

In the same cemetery is a commemorative bench placed there by the loving family of Nigel 'n**ger' White, a recently deceased White British patriarch known to everyone by his nickname which is displayed on a brass plaque on the bench.  There was a bit of a fuss about that, too. 

[Doomy Dwyer]

Im actually quite shocked by some of the comments on here. But I suppose it just goes to show that there's no depths to which middle class snobbery wont descend.

In the interests of balance, I'm fucking working class and I think they're mostly shit. Mawkish, insincere, half arsed and ugly. The grammers generally awful too, for bonus points. Like a round on the Generation Game where ordinary members of the public are given thirty seconds to make a visual approximation of 'I'll Be Missing You' by Puff Daddy. You do see some nice ones now and again, but I get the impression they aren't primarily about the memory of the deceased so much as the mourners trying to paint themselves into the picture. Kind of a society of the spectacle type thing. Only the mourners tend to eventually crowd the croaked out of the frame. There's one just around here, some unlucky fucker who got shot a couple of christmases ago. A page eleven, single paragraph type incident. A nobody from nowhere. It's like a jungle sometimes. There's a little shrine to the deceased, scrupulously maintained. It doesn't look bad when compared to the - admittedly shit - standards set by the usual bunch of exhaust grey daffs sellotaped crooked to the bent railings type tributes that you usually see. With the felt tip rain stained green and bleeding off of the little card. There's candles in little coloured jars, crosses, cigarettes and small change. Then you read the messages and  you have to ask yourself, 'who is this for?' It reads like people trying to out mourn one another.

I was always a bit partial to the old sneakers tossed over the telephone wires thing they have in parts of America. It's anonymous, respectful and eerie. Plus, it lets you know that it's not a prime spot to stand around gawping

[shiftwork2]

In the same cemetery is a commemorative bench placed there by the loving family of Nigel 'n**ger' White, a recently deceased White British patriarch known to everyone by his nickname which is displayed on a brass plaque on the bench.  There was a bit of a fuss about that, too.

n**ger's last wish was at least an act of kindness.

I'm intrigued by the brass plaques on benches.  In places of great beauty or tranquility it makes sense.  "Joe Bloggs, who loved this place" celebrates life.  But it seems odd in a graveyard or outside a hospital.  "Mum, who attended 11 outpatient appointments before dying in agony here".  It's being defined by your demise.

[BlodwynPig]

Saw this on a bench near a kid's playground:

"To Terry, he used to love to watch the kids here"

[Uncle TechTip]

It reads like people trying to out mourn one another.

You must be bereft of emotion if this is the conclusion you reach. Let's ask these people to just forget about the deceased completely. Or at least come up with a form of mourning that does not impinge on your eyesight.