I DON'T KNOW ABOUT YOU: Roadside Memorials — I Don’t need ‘em, You?

Seems I’m gittin’ enough years on me that there’s too many dead folks traipsin’ through my weary memory. Apparently extractin’ small pleasures, sneakin’ in at their leisure and firin’ up my! shaky ole synapse’s? Remindin’ me at will of our prior earthly (living) relationships?

 Sometimes seems I’ve reached the point where I’ve got more friends (an’ relatives) spending their time horizontal than vertical. Like many folks, I sometimes think (half-seriously) most of the good ones are gone? Often repeatin’

an old truism (I wish I’d made up) “There’s folks dyin’ everyday..., ain’t never died before!”
 I make light of this painful fact of life (as some of us do) to help make that pain more tolerable. There are times when the awareness is nearly overwhelming? That those lives lived are past, while the memory of them never will be.

 I become a pretty melancholy feller when I git to thinkin’ about the “Dead Ones”. That’s my term for referrin’ to those we euphemistically (I hate that) refer to as, “passed on” “expired”.  They Died!! (thankfully, many will live again).

 Strikes me as unfair how time or place doesn’t seem to matter to ‘em? These intruders simply interpose themselves on me (us?) ‘bout anytime they choose? A word spoken, slant of sun or moonlight, a forgotten aroma? In the midst of serene reverie having nothing whatever to do with “them”, they materialize.

 Now all this might be alright ‘cept seldom the day passes during which one (or more) of them “dead ones” doesn’t slip quietly into my thoughts. Might just be that there’s so many of 'em, and jus! t one me, it seems excessive?

 Or worse, there’s some ethereal queue that expands as more “dead ones” become just that? If that’s the case I’m not sure how many more friends and relatives I can bury (since they insist on “visiting”). How do really “old” folks handle all those dead folks droppin’ by?? Could it be Alzheimer's is not a disease, but a pressure relief valve for memories?

 Just as many ! of you do, I spend time visiting the places where their bodies reside. Trying to visit ‘em on their birthdays (or mine) and the days that mark their actual “passing”. Doesn’t help much, my spending time with the dead ones on those “official” days. It doesn’t ameliorate my loss of them. Nor does it seem to satisfy their need (?) to be recollected! 

 And Memorial Day finds me placing little flags on the resting places of many fallen comrades. Speaking gently to each one. Knowing they’re someplace other than there, it remains somehow comforting to me, if not them?

 So you understand the “dead ones” exert a very special influence on me. I suspect they may for many of you too? And yet we seldom discuss this with our “living” companions? Except perhaps as I’ve mentioned, on those “special days”? And quite naturally and freely on those days when we git dressed up to attend “services” for someone who’s just joined that vast company of “dead ones”?

 Having said all this..., Why must we have “Roadside Memorials”?

 Placed in profusion the (often plastic) flowers, teddy bears, (fading) photos, crosses, menorahs, etc. draw your eye inexorably to them. As if for some reason, I (or you) while innocently driving along the roadway, must to be made aware that someone suddenly became one of those “dead ones”. Right There! At That Very Spot!

 Passing by one of these temporary (?) mark! ers along the roadways, you’re made painfully aware of Someone Elses “Dead Ones”!

 Not only that, you’re jolted into realizing that some unfortunate soul (not always, dui drivers get markers too) has left this earth violently! I can’t say “untimely” since death himself has a well circumscribed set of rules to follow? Laid out by powers well beyond our considerations, his schedule is pretty well set as to how and where.

 Hoping I’m not hurting the feelings of some poor, grieving folks.

 I’m compelled to ask. Why do bereaved people construct these pitiable public shrines along our roadways? Why am I (and the world at large) obliged to suffer sorrows from afar, for Their Loved Ones? Most of us I’m sure, have enough of deaths suffering all Our Own!

 Should we all festoon the hallways of hospitals? nursing homes? our bedrooms? shorelines of our nation? (wherever war dead come ashore). Just how far should people carry “public” mourning for their private loss? Isn’t along public roadways too far?

 I Don’t Know About You... passing (or stopping) by the utility pole where my uncle died forty-plus years ago, I mourn still, Sans Decorations! 

Cal Teeple, founder of the Observational Cogitation Consortium may be ignored, accosted, or contacted, three stools down. Or at: wayneindependent.com/cal