We need to talk about memorials

I want to discuss the issue of public memorials and their proliferation in our area.

By memorials, I’m referring to flowers and shrines by the side of the road marking where someone died, as well as plaques on benches and all such things intended to mourn or commemorate someone in the public domain.

But first, I must tell you why this is an issue close to my heart. What follows is a little sad, so you may wish to skip a few paragraphs.

Back in my university days, I became best friends with a fellow student from halls whom I shall refer to as “S”. We were both obsessed with football, played in the same team for three years, and didn’t attend as many lectures as we should have done.

By our second and third years, we shared a student house. We were both on the ground floor. To speak to my girlfriend on the phone, I’d have to go into his room to use the landline. He didn’t mind. Neither of us could cook, but surrounded by cheap takeaways, S and I ate several hundred meals together.

Three days before graduation, while he was back home visiting family, he was killed. “Death by Dangerous Driving” was what the gang responsible were eventually convicted of. I was there for the trial and sentencing. I do not have the words to express quite how devastated I was. The event shaped my life.

In the weeks after his death, distraught and unable to sleep, I’d often drive in the middle of the night to the spot where his life was taken.

There stood a shrine of flowers and football shirts. My shirt was there — along with the shirts of the rest of our team. This was in a pleasant suburban area. It could easily have been Harrogate. Police forensic officers had marked in white paint where various parts of him had ended up.

Sobbing, I never once gave any thought to the poor residents who had this happen outside their homes.

After his funeral — nearly two months after his death because of the legal proceedings — the family returned our shirts and the shrine was removed.

In the years that followed, the family established an award at the university for the most promising student, named after S.

So, I get it.

We want to mark where our loved ones perished. But I don’t think S would have wanted the place where he died to become the place where he was remembered.

And so, I must discuss, with kindness, the proliferation of memorials in our public spaces. Graveyards, the cenotaph, even the monument outside Harrogate Hospital on Wetherby Road, are places chosen by communities over many years to commemorate those who have passed.

But the co-opting of public space, without the consent of local people, for months or years at a time is, I must say it, insensitive to those who live nearby. Locals, I think, should not be subjected indefinitely to daily reminders of the most awful events. They know what happened in their backyard. What may have been a favourite spot is now forever tarnished.

Let me also consider the plaques on benches.

These, too, should perhaps have a shorter shelf life.

In Valley Gardens, for example, there are a number of benches, close together, all bearing plaques to people who have passed away. Which bench do I choose? Agnes’s, who apparently loved this spot? Or Fred’s, who died twenty years ago? (I have made up these names).

Actually, I’d rather sit on neither. And although some people say that they like to sit on so-and-so’s bench, these benches are conspicuously empty.

Into Pinewoods, on the walk up to Harlow Carr, there’s a strange spot — like an extended bowling green — surrounded by benches dedicated to one deceased person after another. My favourite bench in this spot is the only bench without a dedication. Because, when I am minding my own business, lost in thought, I don’t want to be thinking about Agnes or Fred.

And this is the crux of it. Does everyone else need to be drawn into that act of remembrance? I’m not sure we do.

Some may rightly argue – like the road safety charity Brake – that roadside memorials can save lives by alerting drivers to dangerous stretches of road – such as the ghost bikes in London to mark where a cyclist perished. There is truth in this. But it must be balanced against the wishes of those who live closest to these locations.

My suspicion is that public memorials have proliferated because we have lost many of our older rituals of mourning. Previous generations had conventions: mourning clothes, drawn curtains, visible periods of bereavement. Today, many people simply do not know what to do when confronted by grief.

As the writer Diana Lampen observed in Facing Death, “Few things make us feel more inadequate than being faced with another’s grief.” Perhaps these public memorials are our attempt to fill the vacuum. And perhaps the production line-like way that society handles cremation, followed by a short wake in a local pub, just isn’t sufficiently human.

And perhaps the old Stoic practice of keeping a skull on your desk to remind yourself that life is short and unpredictable has simply evolved into something else.

I don’t know.

My inkling is that we do not need regulations to govern these memorials. But perhaps, as a society, we should recognise that such memorials ought to have a natural lifespan: say, two months for roadside shrines, two years for plaques on benches, perhaps one year for most other displays.

I write this with the deepest respect for those who have lost loved ones, particularly children. But I also write with respect for the wider public, who may find this difficult subject worthy of discussion.

S is still remembered today.

Not because of the road where he died, but because of the life he lived.