Grief expert calls for special ritual in removing roadside shrines on Gold Coast

A GOLD Coast expert in grief and death is calling for a special ritual to remove roadside shrines after a disgruntled property owner swiftly removed a Tallai shrine yesterday.

A car accident last week claimed the life of a female passenger. After her funeral the shrine was immediately removed. Picture Mike Batterham

REMOVAL of a roadside memorial should involve a special ritual for both mourners and the person whose property is affected, says a Griffith University expert on grief and death.

Dr Margaret Gibson says the controversy over a Tallai roadside shrine demonstrates a new tension in modern life in which the old boundaries between spaces for the dead and the living – cemeteries and the outside, everyday world – have broken down.

Shrine no more- the property owner quickly removed the shrine after the woman’s funeral. Picture Mike Batterham

Dr Gibson, whose specialty as a senior lecturer in Griffith’s School of Humanities is death, grief and culture, said yesterday it was unfortunate a Tallai property owner removed the shrine so quickly. Such memorials were symbols of loss for grieving families and friends and a stark reminder of the inevitability of death.

“These are tensions of modern life where signs of grief and death do not fit neatly into their assigned spaces such as cemeteries or memorial parks,’’ she said.

A roadside shrine on the South Eastern freeway just below the Heysen Tunnels. Photo: Calum Robertson

“The idea that someone else’s grief from a death is close to the home of a stranger is also complicated. I think in these matters some kind of ritual has to take place for the memorial itself.

“It has to be removed in a way that involves the grieving and perhaps even oddly the willingness of the property owner so that they understand that it is not a simple thing and that place right at their home does hold this terrible sadness for a stranger.’’

Dr Gibson hopes the property owner and mourners can come together in a roadside shrine removal ritual. Picture Mike Batterham

The Tallai man removed the shrine after objecting this week to people placing flowers around a tree at the front of his property where a woman died and a man was critically injured in a crash on The Panorama on July 9.

Dr Gibson previously told the Bulletin – in an interview about roadside shrines in 2014 – that makeshift memorials set up by grieving families and friends, and other practices such as going online to express grief directly to the departed, are part of coping with loss.

A roadside shrine on the Pacific Motorway at Coomera for the 5 people killed last weekend was moved to the adjoining Foxwell Road behind the scene. Pics Tim Marsden

“We still believe in ghosts, we still have ghosts in that sense. Our dead loved ones never really go away,’’ Dr Gibson said at the time.

“Even in what you might call a post-religious society, people talk directly to deceased friends (on Facebook, at a grave or at a roadside shrine).

“In some sense we’re shoring up our sense of coping. We direct it to the deceased, but we’re really assisting ourselves to cope with loss.’’

A roadside shrine was erected over night at the site of an accident on Nerang-Broadbeach Road which killed 18 year-old Bodie Apps. Photo: supplied

Shrine of Darren Lawson, who died when a 4WD turned across the path of his Harley Davidson on the Flinders Highway. Photo: supplied

Dr Gibson’s published academic work includes a book called Death and Grief in the Landscape: Private Memorials in Public Space.

She told the Bulletin in 2014 that roadside memorials would not go away because they were part of people’s response to death “in transit’’, which was all too frequent in a highly mobile, high-speed society.