Between the mascara-applying, the text-messaging, the talking on the phone, the fiddling with the radio station or the scrolling on the iPod, can the Arizona Department of Transportation truly be concerned with a six-foot memorial erected on the side of the 202?
Apparently so, because ADOT has started to quietly remove roadside memorials from highways in the wake of complaints from people worried about them as driving hazards and citizens who just think they are trashy.
There is no law in Arizona regarding roadside memorials. In fact, there is no congruity within the 50 states about roadside shrines. Some states, like Oregon, don't allow them at all. Florida and Washington only allow state-approved placards. In Utah, the state government bans memorials but will instead offer to plant wildflowers at the designated site. Only in Alaska and West Virginia do they encourage mourning family members and friends to erect memorials on the side of the road.
At the end of September, a Mesa man was ordered by city officials to remove the memorial that has stayed at the site of his son's fatal car accident since August 2006. He has publicly complained that government officials have been callous in dealing with the sensitive issue. A Phoenix woman thought vandals had removed her son's shrine off of an intersection, only to find weeks later that it was ADOT, and the contents of the memorial had been locked away in a storage locker.
Which raises the question: How long is long enough to leave these shrines up?
Is it just naïve of me to think it's not just unfair but obtrusive for the government to decide how long families and friends are allowed to publicly mourn the death of a loved one on an Arizona road?
Perhaps, but for cities in the Valley, officials have decided that roughly two weeks is a fair amount of time to leave these memorials standing. That or until someone complains.
In the frenzied lives that many of us lead, I would like to know who has the time to call ADOT or city officials and complain about these memorials. Some roadside vigilante that claims his place in life is to free our roads of these makeshift memorials?
Unfortunately not. It is regular citizens, apparently unaffected by others' losses.
These memorials stand at places where regular folks have had their final breaths taken so abruptly from them. Loved ones gather within hours of hearing the news to congregate and erect these shrines. Quite simply, their intentions are two-fold. Not only to memorialize a loved one who has passed, but to warn others of the dangers that took their loved ones away.
I cannot imagine driving down the roads filled with annoyance for whoever created these memorials. Perhaps I am the minority when I do pass, to say a quick prayer for the life lost and the loved ones they left behind.
Maybe that is because I realize the pain of losing someone on the road. There have been people throughout my life who have been touched by these roadside memorials. A friend of mine lost a group of friends in high school and hopes roadside shrines will continue to be allowed as a way of mourning.
Years later, every time he passes by the crash site and sees the memorial, he remembers them and the lives they touched. It is a continual reminder that while they are no longer here, they will always remain in his heart.
The most important thing to realize is that people are not erecting these memorials on the side of the road as a pseudo-cemetery. Many who have lost loved ones on the road feel closest to the victim at the site, where, for the most part, their lost one took their last breath. And they would like to go to the site and create a memorial there to honor the place where the person's spirit left this world.
There is nothing wrong with this, and to call these memorials litter is pitiful. Perhaps the state should regulate the dimensions of these shrines, a reasonable size that is allowed to remain up until the immediate family decides to take it down. But to tack a note onto a roadside memorial saying it has two weeks to remain up or else it will be trashed is downright cruel. Sure, some of these memorials aren't the prettiest things around, but it allows for a community to grieve for a life that was tragically lost and to remind drivers to be safe.
Reach the reporter at: jacqueline.rovner@gmail.com
