Human Flower Project

Saturday, August 20, 2005

In a Drive-By World

Roadside memorials, in the U.S., Ireland, Greece, Italy: Cement and flowers say, “Semper fidelis.”

Memorial to Robert Winkler outside Herrin, Illinois
Photo: Stephen Chalmer

What’s the rush?

A wreath of silk flowers, a teddy bear, wooden cross, or hockey stick will slow you down. They mark not graves but mortality, something that may not otherwise flit across your mind on your way to….

Earlier this month CNN Newsnight aired a segment on roadside memorials. It featured Diana Natale, a Massachusetts mother who was wrangling with local government to maintain a memorial to her son. The town manager said the clump of flowers and ribbons around a tree induced “rubber necking” and might cause another accident, though the reporter failed to ask whether there’d been one on-looker injury. Even so, the city of Norton has instituted a rule limiting roadside memorials to 30 days.

For Sarah Walsh, outside Carrigaline, Ireland
Photo: Irish Roadside Memorials

Memorials are INTENDED to make stiff necks rubbery, closed minds open, and emotions fresh. They’re erected in many lands, and have been for many centuries. Consider this amazing website of memorials.  It includes photographs and stories of hundreds such sites all over Ireland and includes a whole reference library of links, to photographs, to regulations in various countries, to commentary.

Why would someone go to all this effort? The anonymous author writes, in the fragmentary style of a highway marker: Helping make our loved ones universally known, mourned and prayed for.

Across south Texas these markers are known as descansos. Though each pays tribute in its own way, they often include artificial flowers and crosses.

The roadside memorials of Greece tend to look like strong boxes, often made of concrete and decorated with ceramics and ornamental iron. They tend to be beautifully situated, with candles inside and views of the hills and sea.

A recent article by Michele Smargiassi describes and discusses the custom of altarini, (in Italian). Commentator Barbara McMahon notes that Smargiassi “was intrigued by the use of plastic flowers over fresh flowers but came to see that plastic flowers were a way of people saying that their grief will never end while fresh flowers indicated that nothing, especially life, lasts for ever.”

Outside Delphi, Greece, 1957
Photo: Galen Frysinger

McMahon herself, writing for the Guardian, ties the Italians’ affection for fast cars with their custom of marking roadside tragedies. “On a stretch of road between Ravenna and Ferrara, one of the worst accident blackspots in northern Italy, there are dozens of these sad little cemeteries: a miniature statue of David left in memory of Fabio, 18 years old; a piece of marble inscribed to Giuseppe, aged 24 and a cross for Stefano, who was killed in 1975 just before he graduated in science.”

She finds that “the further south in Italy you go, the more likely you are to find ‘altarini’ draped with crucifixes, holy pictures, black ribbons and statues,” whereas memorials in the north tend to more restrained, oftimes with no mention of the deceased by name.

Unfortunately the town manager of Norton, Mass. isn’t alone. Other states and municipalities have placed restrictions on the size and duration of memorials. To this, Diana Natale answers, “I do not work a 9:00 to 5:00 job. And if it took me every day to get up every day and put a wooden cross, nothing else, a wooden cross, up there, I would do that, and Keith would always be remembered at that tree.” The law stops here.

We particularly laud the State of West Virginia for its compassion and wisdom. West Virginia explicitly permits and honors roadside memorials, “both temporary and permanent,” and gives citizens a guide for protecting these tributes and making them as safe as possible.

Memorial to 16 year old Adam Arnold, of Key West, Florida
Photo: Bill Sampson, Roadside Memorials

Martin Nilsson, a scholar of Greek folk religion, wrote that since ancient times the highway was considered a hostile place. “Theseus conquers highwaymen and robbers who resist civilization and are dangerous to it.”  A body that perishes outside the bounds of civilized life may, in the spiritual realm, come afoul of cruel and unruly forces. With flowers and candles, we protect the beloved from such a fate and fill the most desolate places with humanity.