shrine

[asakiyume]

For two days early last week, it was hard to turn onto the long, uphill driveway to the jail because workers were repairing--replacing, it turned out--a utility pole right at the entrance. The day they finished and cleared off, this shrine appeared by the new pole:



I've seen roadside wreaths and flowers and crosses, but the mass of candles was new to me and moved me.

I asked the officer at the lobby desk if she knew the story of it.

"Yeah, last week we were doing our outer,"** she said, "and this car came really fast, so fast--and crashed into the telephone pole. It was a boy and a girl."

"Did they both die?" I asked.

"She did. He survived. She was young," she said.

It seems like the candles have been lit, too. I wonder if someone comes by to light them each night.

**outer = outer perimeter. I hadn't realized they do this but, duh, of course they would.

Comments

[wayfaringwordhack]

Little roadside memorials dot the landscapes of France, usually along busier roads, and I always say a prayer for the family when I pass them. As time goes on, the faux flowers fade and become ragged, and I pray that the grief too has mellowed, as it were, because I know it has not disappeared.

[asakiyume]

I love the link you make here between the flowers fading and maybe, hopefully, the intensity of the grief fading a little too.