Public outpourings of grief

I was also a young girl growing up in Manchester during the fifties and sixties. It was usual when someone died for word to spread about the time of the funeral and local people would close their curtains and go and stand outside with bowed heads and doffed caps as the cortège went by. When my nan died in 1972 the cortège halted for a few minutes outside her 'local' and there were about a hundred people lining the street there to pay their respects. I do remember that funerals were a regular occurrence on the street where I lived as a child. It was a very working class area and it seems with hindsight that most people died quite soon after retiring, or sadly, even before in some cases. I think most people nowadays are somewhat more removed from death; funerals don't tend to set off from the deceased's home anymore and people are living longer, families are smaller, so death is less 'visible' than it used to be.

And soft toys are more readily available and a LOT cheaper in real terms. So are cut flowers.

Well, I'm only speaking from what I know, max. I don't think my parents could have afforded to do such things and we were not 'poor'. The average standard of living is higher now than it was in the 60s.

My children were born in the 60s. I could not have afforded to buy teddy bears to put them out in the rain to rot.

I was a child in the 60s thatbags - not the early 1900s!

That's true bags, about financial constraints in the past. Mum grew up in Manchester, in an area with a large Irish community, in which showing respect for the dead, and their loved ones, was very important. She was somewhat overprotective of us in relation to funerals etc. because she said she'd spent too much of her childhood being taken to "view the body". I was the case that most people lay in state in their front room, to be viewed whilst a wake took place. People have always needed to find ways to express grief and I do believe we're a slightly less buttoned up society than we used to be for lots of reasons.

Probably when you were a child, max, people couldn't afford to buy flowers or soft toys (there were fewer soft toys anyway) to leave out in the rain.

My last was in reply to roses and janthea.

Agreed. My opinion on the subject includes wondering why people object, which is what I said, and thinking that observations including shoulds and shouldn'ts on this subject are odd.

I often think its about wanting other people to 'see that you care'
A form of attention seeking?
Some people seem to get a sort of pleasure 'being involved' or be able to say they were there etc.

I remember when I was a child - that when anyone died, anyone who was out and about when the funeral cortege passed by, would stop and bow their heads or the men would take their hat off ( if they had one!)
It was just a quiet sort of sign of respect. I don't remember anyone rushing to people's houses laying flowers down at the gate etc,

I just expressed MY person opinion. Everyone is entitled to express their own opinion.

We are not objecting in the street with placards! This is simply a thread for us all to express our personal opinions, I have expressed my opinion on it, and now so have you.So have we all.That's good.

I think there are too many shoulds and should nots (expressed thus and otherwise) on this thread. I have yet to work out why people get steamed up about something so harmless as people leaving 'tributes' after a death or a tragedy. Why does it matter if it is media-led (not that I'm agreeing that it is, necessarily)? So is fashion. So are many other social trends. As i see it, objecting to something like this is like objecting because people wear hats (or not) or shoes that you don't like.

It's harmless. Why not just shrug and move on if it has no personal appeal?

Speaking as someone who used to find it difficult to show her emotions I was grateful for the flowers at Diana's funeral; in an odd way it helped me. When my youngest was at school a good friend of hers was killed at traffic lights. To help my daughter grieve we both bought some tulips and she laid them by said lights.

It seems to me that GB is gently taking on a more human face and that can only be good surely? As to flowers wrapped in cellophane definitely a no go. Recyclables only please.

Good point ffinochio. I have fortunately never lived in a community where a child's death has occurred in a way that leads people to gather, and leave flowers or toys as a means of both empathising with the bereaved, and being a public marker of tragedy. I am not sure I would join in, though if the child had been in the same nursery class as a child from my family, maybe I'd feel differently.
The stiff upper lip approach to death seems to have diminished over a number of years, and is that a bad thing. When travelling in Southern Europe, or Ireland 40 years ago the road side shrines were noticeably something we didn't have in England. Now we do. A tradition has developed locally over the past 15 years or so, where fir trees in a particular local spot are decorated in memory of loved ones. It happens and Christmas and Easter, and is both beautiful and moving.

I take your point about empathy/sympathy absent.

Many, many people have experienced grief and loss in their lives, in many different ways. Perhaps the public display of mourning provides a conduit for them to express it. It's not something I would do, but I have no objection to how others choose to express themselves, if no harm is meant.

I've seen much empathy and sympathy on GN with hugs and flowers to people unknown to themselves - a virtual outpouring of such emotions. Is that any different, I wonder?

Once upon a time we offered sympathy to the bereaved – condolences and an awareness of their sorrow. Now, we all have to empathise as if that is some sort of better class of emotion than mere sympathy. I cannot possibly empathise with someone whose child has been abducted and murdered or whose mother has been killed in a particularly senseless and avoidable car crash, for example, but I can sympathise.

I'm glad janthea started this thread, because I have always felt distaste for this kind of thing. I call it the death cult, and cannot understand why people would go to a funeral or put things on a makeshift shrine for people they never knew.

I remember the Dianna death and that sea of flowers. I thought there should be a way of displaying the flowers without all the wrappings; some way that would allow the flowers to become good compost when they died, instead of a nightmare of rubbish.

I regard bereavement as a private matter: when someone well-known dies, a memorial service is appropriate, so that people who had been interested in them could pay their respects. But when it comes to private family grief, it should remain just that - private. I would never dream of intruding on the grief of someone I don't know - never!

Madeleine was only four. Children of that age forget very easily, why attempt to make them aware of the dangers of life before they've even started out?

Empathy? H'mmm.....not sure....but each to her/his own. I do find it ghoulish.

It's only one example, but do you remember the hoo-ha after the Belgrano was sunk? Yes, yes, I know that goes back a long way, but the blessed Sun didn't empathise with the drowned men - it crowed and gloated! It seems to me that some people follow the lead of the media, whatever that might be, and any empathy is rather selective.

Would the children in what would have been Maddy McCann's class not have been at nursery school with her? If so, they would have known her and so would their parents and the children would have heard their parents talking about what happened. My kids certainly knew the kids they started school with before they started school. It can't be that unusual.

My mother was always very anti public displays of grief, yet she cried when George 6th died and dragged me out to the public phone box to phone her mother's next door neighbour (her mother didn't have a phone) I was only six at the time but I remember wondering what all the fuss was about.

My thoughts entirely, nightowl. Of course people should be to allowed to grieve for their own family members in whatever way they wish, but public displays of artificial, sentimental sorrow by those who never knew the deceased are crass, in my opinion. And yes, involving small children in such behaviour is unfair.

I was quite disturbed to read in the article that the week Madeleine McCann was due to start school, the teachers turned an empty desk into a kind of shrine, complete with candle, and had an empty coat peg etc. That can't have been right for a class of four year olds who could have no knowledge of Madeleine or what had happened to her (nor should they in my opinion). If the adults - teachers and parents - wanted to mark her absence in some way I think they should have kept it well away from the classroom. I feel it is unfair to involve children in mass displays of grief for a child they did not know. On the other hand, when an older child dies I think it might be helpful for their friends and classmates to be able to display their grief publicly.

It started before Diana because i remember an American friend who was living in the UK during the early nineties commenting upon the British habit, as she saw it, of placing flowers at roadsides where people had died in accidents. Presumably she hadn't seen this in the States, and she'd lived in a few of them.