Roadside shrines

I was walking my dog yesterday and saw a large group of people, all dressed in black, approaching the Belt Parkway from the service road.  (I live on the corner of the service road, and am thus intimately acquainted with the Belt Parkway.)  They were carrying flowers, and I knew immediately why they were there.  Late last week, there was a horrific accident on the Belt early in the morning, and this must have been the family of the man that died.  The police probably told them that the accident was right near the Knapp Street exit off the Belt, and so they went there to remember him, to create a little shrine for him. 

Roadside memorials started out as a Catholic thing, I believe, popular in Spain.  In some cultures, these are erected a year after the death, in others, almost immediately.  We’ve all seen them by the side of the road as we travel…they are little sober reminders of the responsibility of driving. 

People put a lot of faith into these shrines.  A woman I know lost her son to one of those monstrous highway shootings that you think only take place in B movies, and she maintained a shrine for her son for more than two years.  It wasn’t your ordinary bundle of flowers, either – It always had a floral arrangement spelling out his name, plus a NY Rangers jersey, and all manner of other flowers and things.  I remember thinking; at least she has a place: a place where Franco last connected with the Earth, to remember him by.  I never wondered why she tried to keep the place sacred, and I often wished I had such a place that I could associate with friends of mine who have died, or even my mom. 

Did the shrines become more popular with the advent of the automobile?  Logically, hundreds of years ago, if people were living on the road, or moving from one place to another, and a family member died, there was no choice but to conduct your own funeral service and create a shrine in the middle of nowhere.  As cars became more popular and began contributed to the deaths of the public more actively, the popularity of the roadside shrine must have grown as well. 

I was in Chile earlier this year (a very Catholic country) and the shrines there were extraordinary.  They were little condos, many of them, with painstakingly decorated roofs, walls and candles.  One of the locals told us that shrines became popular with people who went to them to leave an offering, for good luck.  If you visited a shrine and left a small offering, or prayed for something, and were rewarded, you naturally went back to that shrine and repeated the process.  After a while the ground around the shrine would become very busy indeed – believe me, some of those shrines were turning into real estate issues.  If you were walking by and had a problem on your mind, and you saw a shrine that was very well tended and very popular, you would naturally bring your problem to that shrine, since it must be “lucky” – and so the little shrines grow and grow.  I am planning on going back to Chile early next year, and this time, I’m going to take lots of photos of those shrines. 

Back to my own little issue; the family on the Belt creating the shrine.  The thing is this; I guess these people didn’t know it, but there are two Knapp Street exits off the Belt; 9A and 9B.  This gentleman actually ended his days on Earth just past exit 9B, not 9A – where his family was creating a shrine.  I stood there, dithering.  Should I tell them?  What did it matter?  They had selected a tree that they liked, and were putting flowers there for their Dad, or grandfather, or friend, or whoever he was to them.  Did it matter if the place they had picked was actually a couple of hundred yards from where he died?  This bothered me.  They must have thought that I was some kind of awful gawker, standing there with a dog.  I didn’t know what to do; in the end I just went home.  They will remember the man in their own way, and I will leave them to it. 

Comments

[erica]

The woman you speak of who kept a shrine for her son (Franco) is a very close friend of my family's ... I went to his funeral in May of '04 at St. Mark.

I've known her for about six or seven years, give or take, and knew her son not that well, but I remember seeing him at the house a few times (I live on the first floor of an attached two-family ... my cousins live upstairs and own the place) ...

But his mother, Maria, is one of the most awesome people I've ever known. She comes over whenever we have a barbecue in the backyard.

Wow, we have mutual friends! I wonder if you know my family too .....