Please forgive me if this seems insensitive. I have been seeing these "In Loving Memory" stickers on the back windows of cars all over the place for the past couple of years. I understand wanting to commemorate, remember, and celebrate a loved one who has died. I do. But is this truly the best way to pass on the legacy of someone special...with a sticker? On the back of a car window? For people to read at stoplights or on busy freeways who are left to wonder exactly who Maria Delgado Gonzales de Jesus was? Is this how you hope to be remembered by your family when you leave this existence?
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This leaves me wondering. . .why stop at car windows? Maybe it would be nice to put an "In Loving Memory" sticker in the corner of your 58 inch plasma TV screen so you can muse over the full and productive life Cousin Edna had working a Woolworth's for 42 years and crocheting untold amounts of toaster cozies? I think I like the idea of putting one in the corner of the shower door, so while you towel off you can ponder dear Aunt Ramona who passed from a serious case of emphysema, who wore the patch but kept on smoking anyway, in the bathroom with the exhaust fan on thinking nobody noticed. Perhaps a sticker on your paper shredder would be good, so as you're shredding your old financial documents you could have a moment of remembrance for Grandpa Turner who in his last days was known to keep chocolate chip cookies in his shirt pocket and asked the same question several times in the same minute?
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What do you think? Where do you think would be a good place for an "In Loving Memory" sticker?
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49 comments:
I seriously heart you!!!!
I find it really strange too. Although I have seen them made for a younger person who died from either an accident or lengthy illness and the stickers were sold to raise money for the family. But still..really weird. I worked with a large population of Pacific Islander kids and I swear each one of them owned four to ten shirts with various family members that had died. In memory of --- mm/dd/yyyy-mm/dd/yyyy and these were not always young people one of my kids had a shirt for their 94 year old grandmother. I'm not sure I understand it.. if you did it for every person you knew that died your car would end up looking like an obituary page.
the radio show i listen to was recently talking about this exact same thing, with your point of view!
I don't have anyone I would want to be reminded of yet, but when I do maybe I should get a tattoo like this one and I could just keep adding names down the list down one leg from my butt.
Last week in Vegas I saw a woman with a tattoo that had a little baby with wings and a halo. There was a “2000~2001” under the baby angel.
It made me feel really really sad!
if you wanted me to actually remember someone, you'd have to put it on the cupboard where I keep the cookies. I'd remember them daily!
I have been thinking about getting a mermaid tat for my left arm. I wonder if you'll blog that too....
Geez, Jason, how insensitive can you be? I have one of those stickers on my car for my cousin. It means a lot to our family.
HA HA HA!
Gotcha?!?!?
I'm thinking we shouldn't stop at stickers. How about creating customized screensavers and desktop wallpaper? We could open a Cafe Press shop and take t-shirt and thong orders. Better yet, we MONETIZE OUR BLOGS by selling ad space to grieving families.
I'm going to go now and pack my suitcase for my trip to hell.
I love you.
It really is weird. Isn't that what obits and tombstones are for?
i hear ya! i see tose around town and wonder... how is that supposed to mean anything to me??
Maybe contact lens manufacturers can start embedding those images on contact lenses so you can remember people everywhere you look?
The possibilities for crass commentary about just where such a notice could go are, well, if not infinite, at least in a number exceeding all remnants of good taste.
But here's a question for you: I think, generally, this is a more hostile post than you usually put out there. It lacks the gentle humor of The Show I've come to love. I'm hoping you are doing okay and that summertime in Sunny So CAL isn't frying your happiness.
If so, I think a trip up the coast is in order!
I know, I know.... I don't get it either.
People are interesting, aren't they?
I've thought those stickers odd myself. It just goes to show people grieve in different ways. My grief is personal, so I don't feel any need to advertise it.
Every time I see one of those I wonder if it means that the car was bought with the money that the deceased left... or if their ashes are stowed in the trunk and it's some sort of mobile tomb stone... and then my internal mp3 player cycles to the old punk song "Those are people who died.. died" I am one of the meanest people on the planet.
Yes, I think this is odd. What I think is even odder is that I have never seen one of these stickers before. Maybe, here in Hicksville, Minnesota, we are even more behind the times then I thought...lol.
Now I have seen tatoo's with something like this but never a sticker on a car. Maybe I am just not very observant? You better believe that I am going to be actually making a point of looking for these stickers now. I do think this is a strange idea though.
I don't get it. I don't want anyone to memorialize me on their Honda civic. How about a tattoo?
tacky? YES.
I really like Ginaagain.
When I die will you emblazon my name on your front lawn with a blow torch?
That's ok, no one else will either.
I've had those exact thoughts! We have lots of those stickers here in Colorado too.
Between you and Ginaagain, I have nothing original to add!
These are tres tacky, yes. But I wonder about the soccer moms who have the stickers plastered all over the back of their SUV's, announcing the name of their child, the sport they excel at and the what school they attend.
"Yes! Hello creepy pedophile types! I have four children between the ages of 12 and 17 - these are their names and here's where you can find them!!"
How about in the toilet bowl, you know, to honour granny's problem with incontinence.
We don't have those around here. We do have roadside memorials carved into trees etc. to careless drunk driving teenagers ejected from the car while not wearing a seatbelt. (I'm seriously thinking of deleting this part before Bad Karma reads it).
I always question those people who get tattoos commemorating a loved one. Really? This is not how I would wish to be remembered.
Are you serious about this? Stickers? Man...I have missed so much by not living in the States....or have I?
Honestly...I'm thinking this is petty tacky...and only for the people who put those stickers there so they can grab just a few more minutes of attention as they tell of their eternal grief for their deceased loved one (who may or may not still be in the trunk of the car/in the backyard/floating in the ocean).
Of course, here in Japan, most houses have family altars where you pray to the family members who have passed on (and are looking down at you...really...they hang very stern pictures above the altar!!) that are worth more than my car.
Without making too much of a social or religious commentary, people express themselves for certain reason and in certain ways. It’s telling. When my father died a few years ago I put a memorial up on the net. Some relatives thought it inappropriate, but I had a hole in my soul and wanted to do something. In our busy and burned-out lives, we tend toward the quick, pop-a-pill-fix in lieu of long-term spiritual feeling. A lot of Westerners "let it all hang out", while other cultures deal with it in their heart. I must be Western! I like blogging!
While I think it a bit odd, I see them and thank God I don't have a need for one...
I say advertise anything and everything going on in your life and head.
Cars are a classic venue for the self-promotion of your successes or demises, but I'm a bigger fan of coffee mugs, so you can drink to the fact that you are "#1 Dad," "Kally and Melissa's Grandma," you "hate Mondays," or, as in your example, recently lost a loved one.
I like the mousepad idea too.
I have to admit, I never really pondered this, nor have I been bothered by the window stickers. Do I need to rethink this?
Justine :o )
I've mostly seen it for young people. I think that many people today consider their car to be an expression of themselves and that loss is part of that.
I would never do it--I do think it's tacky, but this might be a generational thing.
Hmmmmm. I find this so strange, I can't even come up with a snarky comment.
I always figured that the dead person got a rear window instead of a headstone. Maybe they were cremated and put in a soup can somewhere, so this is all they get. And the family gathers around the car at family bbq's and put flowers on top of the trunk before saying a few prayers and singing Kum Ba Yah. I dunno.
I knew this post was going to draw some funny comments, so I came back again.
Go Blognut!
I like that thong idea, cause you know everyone would see it.
in all seriousness, there is no good place for an "in loving memory" sticker... maybe a loving mammary sticker but even that is adolescent. this is a result of consumerism run amok... in the absence of the ability to relate to other humans, dead or alive, you can purchase something. kinda like those support our troops stickers that everyone had on their cars after the war started... although they are now support "your interest here" stickers. "support pedicured feet" in a related note that your suggestion, however funny to you and i, is not so far fetched in real life... there's a house in my neighborhood whose owners were not satisfied to put the various stickers, magnets, etc. expressing their certainty about religion and my eventual demise and banishment to hell for eternity on their cars, signs in their yard and other possessions, they actually crossed the line into the last bastion of non-commercialized space in america... their home. they have biblical quotes painted on the fascia that goes around the perimeter of their house. i'm wondering what budweiser would pay me to have their logo faithfully reproduced covering the outside of my house?
On somebody's forehead.
Grandma J: I will certainly emblazon your name upon my lawn when you are dead. I have always wanted to use a blowtorch, and I also think that funeral pyres are groovy, so you are my kindred spirit in this way, I think. Lawn blazing GRANDMA J! Just notify me.
Jason, of the Show: Not my choice of remembrance. But I say live and let live. My tacky can sparkle a little into other people's eyes, and theirs can besmirch a little into mine. For my remembrance day, I shall insist upon having Flogging Molly played and spiked punch drunk at funeral. No dirges allowed. And especially no decals.
I want mine tattooed on someone's hiney. A big old headstone on someone's butt. I don't really care who's butt, just someone's. I think I'm going to hell too..
So true!
I think the best way of all to remember someone is to make a donation in their name. Maybe every year on what would have been their Birthday! We don't have a lot of those stickers in Pa. We aren't as cool as you Californians!
Not really feeling the sticker.... But, to each their own, I suppose. I have a hand cask of Isaac's hanging from my car mirror. Maybe that's odd, too....
I took a class called Death in America a few years ago and we discussed this trend. It seems that some feel that it's a backlash to the desire of people living in previous decades (50s,60s,70s &80s) to sort of sidestep death and memorials. Me? I think it's a little tacky, but whatever. I suppose there are worse things than being remembered on a piece of metal that was purchased for tens of thousands of dollars at an obnoxiously high interest rate. ;)
You are AWESOME!
I mean really, do we NEED to be reading while we're supposed to be driving?
I'm an insensitive moron. I know this. Because I only post about a lost loved one once a year and don't have a sticker on my rear window to let everyone in the world who never knew him and never will about his death three years ago.
Guess how many of these moving tributes here in San Diego are for young men who died because of gang violence. Back when I worked in one of the poorest hospitals in town, almost every single car that appeared in the parking lot had these and all were a result of gang activity.
I guess I stopped "feeling" it when many went to blinding-in-sunlight holographic decal letters.
my gawd, I thought those only existed in the South. I am soooo with you on these...
I just always thought that it was out of guilt from spending the inheritance money on the car.....
I agree with you on these. It's almost like the person is making this big gesture, but when I see them they always seem like not a big enough gesture. Like "That's it? That's all I get?"
They are as creepy as roadside memorials. I hate roadside memorials. They're pretty much litter and should me illegal in ALL states. If their relatives die in the house/bed or something do they mark those too? Who cares where they died.
Garret
Oh please, people. Listen to this man. He knows what he's talking about. No memorial stickers. Or keep them in your house. On the refrig door would be a good place if the loved one died of diabetes or cardio-vascular illness.
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