What do you think of the custom of placing bouquets, stuffed animals, candles outside homes, businesses, or schools where there has been a fatality?

I can understand that this is meant as a tribute and remembrance but I do agree with you that there would be a better way to do that. That would especially true when there are families left.

I agree that logically, the money could be better spent. & in the long run the families involved would probably be better off if a donation had been made. However, most people involved in tragedies of this sort seem to get comfort from the knowledge that people care. & those who leave these memorials are suffering from their own grief, of a sort, & find leaving offerings soothing. So, everyone’s a winner!

We as humans spend money all the time on stuff we don’t need that could have been better spent on something else.
Showing support through buying outrageously priced (sarcasm) flowers and candles does not fall into this category, in my opinion.
It is nothing but a thoughtful, comforting and supportive gesture. Ain’t a thing wrong with it.

I’ve wondered about this a lot. I don’t necessarily have a problem with it, but I don’t really understand it, either. Same goes for placing a cross on the side of the road to mark the spot where someone died in a traffic accident. When someone dies in his sleep, we don’t make a shrine out of his bed. So why do we do this in some circumstances, but not others?

I think it is the shock reaction and the whole unexpected tragedy of it all. It makes people feel better to do things like that, and helps them grieve as a community. Humans need to know there are others who feel the same way and when we feel that bond, even over such a tragic event, to make a shrine or gathering site is one way of doing it, I think. I bet some of the people who buy the flowers and candles would also be the first ones to go and help out the family after their loved ones are buried – and you can’t put a price on that.

I always wonder what happens to all the stuff people leave at the make-shift shrine afterwards. After the “appropriate” amount of time has gone by. Who removes it? Where does it go?

I’ve heard of places where the roadside shrines are outlawed, because they distract peoples’ attention from the road – at a place that may very well be dangerous, since someone died there already. Good thinkin’.

@MrItty – in this case, all the crap left at a Michael Jackson shrine was buried in a grave. That probably doesn’t happen in every case, though, ‘cause MJ was a big freak famous star. They probably just start decomposing and are thrown away.

I rather donate money to a cause in the name of the deceased. MADD, Parkinson’s, Altzheimer’s, American Cancer Society, various law enforcement support agencies, American Red Cross, etc.

I find it both tacky and upsetting in equal measure.

For a public servant to lose their life in the line of their duty is a terrible tragedy and loss to the sense of safety and well being of that community as a whole. I think placing flowers and tokens of sympathy is a fine tribute to the fallen and their families whose loved ones put their lives in danger everyday to help keep our communities safe and a better place to live.

I’ve never considered this before – I certainly don’t mind seeing those kind of displays. We see them here often by the highways – it reminds people to be more careful, even if just for a few days until the flowers wither away.

Certain people are terrified by contemplating frightening or destabilizing events involving death, so they use kitsch as a barrier between themselves and their true, highly disturbing, feelings.

Personally? I think it’s ridiculous. There are more concrete way of showing support to the those who have been victims of crime or who have died. It creates a waste that has to be carted away and destroyed.

Why not start scholarships? Give time or charity on that person’s behalf? Something like that which pays it forward? Buying stuff and then dumping it in the road, which is in essence what candles and stuffed animals are? Wasteful!

I think that a personal family shrine at the scene of a road fatality or similar is fine if it helps the family grieve. However, the masses of stuff brought when a public figure dies is just a ridiculous waste. How can someone let themselves get so attached to a person they don’t even know? The people crying at Michael Jackson’s death were just as mentally unstable as he was…..........

In the case of the Canadian officer mentioned, I can understand it being a show of support to the family, and a sign of respect to a man who gave his life in the line of duty. I have no problem with that, although I agree that the money could possibly be better spent.

We see the results (a pile of flowers, etc.), in the aggregate, but they are not an aggregate. Each item represents an individual, personal act by a single individual responding to an emotional prompting. I would not fault them for that any more than I would fault people for mailing a condolence card, visiting a funeral home, or making a memorial donation to a charity. If anything, I am comforted by how much heart people can show to strangers who have suffered a grievous loss. I think people don’t know how to express the feelings they have and so they simply follow a model that is already established.

Public tragedies—those that make the news—seem to elicit a public response. A highway fatality is going to get more news coverage than a death at home in bed. So is a senseless murder.

I think there is still a tribal impulse to acknowledge births, weddings, and deaths as events that affect the whole community. In a modern urban setting, really the only ones that are set apart for public view are sudden, violent deaths and some highly publicized deaths from illness, such as a child with a horrible disease.

@pdworkin, that is a fascinating take. You may be right, but it doesn’t quite sound a chord with me. However, I think the reality is that there are many reasons and not just one for all.

@Jeruba I like your take on this and one can consider that many religions are steeped in traditions of remembrance of those who have passed. From sticks and stones placed on the graves of the ancients to flowers and teddy bears of today. Who is to say what is right and what is wrong for someone to acknowledge the dead.

Thanks, @Cruiser. I agree.

There is also the point that tragic events make many people feel helpless, especially when they are accompanied by outrage, and there is an overpowering urge to do something. Making even a small gesture, a token, can feel subjectively like defying whatever force caused the loss. “Deny” and “defy” are only one letter apart, but I think the emotional gulf between them is immense.

@Jeruba I differentiate between the urge to leave a flower or something personal, and the urge to leave a blue teddy bear or a Smurf, bought for the occasion.

@pdworkin, I see your distinction, and objectively I would have to agree with the “kitsch” label for those latter items, regardless of the purpose for which they were bought. I just think that the mountain of sentimental leavings we see at one of those sites is not in itself a reflection or sum of the several individual impulses that put it there.

Also, I didn’t mean it in a critical way. We are all required to deal with existential angst. Some of us are more inclined to intellectualize it, some of us find it to be a part of an examined life, and some just need a defense so that they needn’t ever contemplate it at all.