Every day I pass the site of a fatal car crash a couple of years ago (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/low/england/oxfordshire/4590713.stm). It was a dreadful incident which affected a lot of local people quite deeply, and there's rarely a day even now that I don't think of it as I cycle past the area in question.
Recently it's been impossible not to, because a host of floral tributes have been placed alongside the road. They all appeared at the same time so I'd presumed it was the second anniversary of the crash, but there must have been another reason. There are a few bunches of flowers, and some names spelled out in floral lettering. Now, I've never understood flowers when people die in the first place. In the words of Holden Caulfield, who wants flowers when you're dead? Nobody. And I'm not saying that just to be fatuous, I really don't understand what the motivation is. I suppose it's a desire to make some physical manifestation of your grief, to show people, possibly even the departed if you believe in an afterlife, that you care. But if that is the case, what does it mean when the flowers are just left for weeks, slowly rotting, as these have been? In some ways it's rather poignant, but there's a part of me that finds it rather depressing. It's as if there was a particular day set aside to remember these kids (and the 21 year old, all too often disregarded), and once that day had passed it could all be forgotten about until the next appointed day came around.
Which, of course, is nonsense. Anyone who's lost someone significant in their life knows that that person will leap unbidden from your subconscious into the forefront of your mind at the most arbitrary moments. Why do the people who lost friends and relatives in that car crash allow society's expectation to compel them to make ultimately meaningless gestures? I doubt that a day passes when they don't think of them, so why do they feel obliged to make a token display of an ongoing emotional burden?
The reason this has become particularly resonant to me is that it's twelve years today since my father died. And while the calendrical significance can't be avoided, the day itself is no more important than any other. I don't feel any need to go and stand by his graveside - in fact I haven't visited his grave for many years, and I don't imagine I ever will again. Why would I do anything out of the ordinary to remember him today? I think of him frequently without any red letter prompt. We had a difficult relationship, and his shadow hangs over me on an almost daily basis as my own inadequacies as a parent lead me to worry that I will end up losing my children's affection as he lost mine. If anything I'm closer to him now for understanding some of the pressures that made him make the wrong choices than I was when he was alive. So, no flowers today, or any other day. You don't need them when a person lives on inside of you.
