On one trip I was ecstatic to see them. On another, I was angry.
A couple of decades or so ago, I read an article in my local paper about a truck driver who destroyed roadside memorials. He felt that it was other people putting their grief onto him, and they had no right to do that. I thought his reaction was rather over-the-top, considering he had to stop his big rig to destroy a memorial. The family would put up a new memorial, and the trucker would destroy that one on his next trip. I could sort of see his point, but considering that I'd never known anyone who was killed in a car accident, I couldn't speak to the determined actions of the family.
Then, in the spring of 2006, I took a three-day road trip to the backroads of New Mexico. I had been on the major interstates many times, driving from Colorado to Arizona, and now I wanted to see the other parts of the state, and backroads were always the best way to do that. I was rather amazed at the number of memorials I saw on the backroads, but otherwise didn't give them much thought, other than the presumption that most of the state was Catholic with Hispanic descent, and the culture probably had something to do with the plethora of memorials.
Then, on my last day, I spent a morning driving in the mountains in the northwest corner of the state. There was a roadside memorial every couple of miles and I started to feel angry. I was there to enjoy the beauty of the mountains -- and such mountainous curves required my full attention on the road -- and here there were all these distracting roadside memorials. I then understood why that trucker all those years ago felt compelled to destroy them. What could be a worse "memorial" to a loved one than to know that another person died in a car accident -- caused by being distracted by the roadside memorial? Plus, there were only going to be more people killed in car accidents as the years went by, so was the state content to eventually have the entire highway consist of back-to-back roadside memorials? It made no sense.
What's more, in my inclination to want to solve the problem, I was thinking about roadside memorials that morning more than appreciating the spectacular scenery of the region. I'm still annoyed about the whole thing, all these years later.
I do admit, though, there was one trip, a couple of years prior, when I was very happy to see roadside memorials. I was in Sentinel fandom then, and I was writing a sequel to a story where Blair found out about his father's background in Illinois. I was driving to Illinois to pick up a beagle puppy, and was staying with a fan friend in the suburb of Chicago. So, before reaching Chicago, I spent a few hours driving in a region where I wanted the father to have been killed on an Illinois road, to give me a "real life" image to fit the story I was writing. Lo and behold, with that wonderful way that the universe works, on the country roads I saw three or four roadside memorials. I was ecstatic at this evidence of how I could create my own reality. What's more, I came to a little town with a dangerous curve that was the perfect spot for a fatal car accident to have happened. I hung around there for a while, taking mental notes.
Turns out, I never did finish that story, because I think I was in a funk about writing. Or something. But I still well remember how amazed I was at the connection with All That Is, when I kept coming upon roadside memorials. That's a beautiful memory.
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