When I suddenly lost my father, I wanted time to stand still for a while. I wanted everyone who knew him and loved him to remain in mourning with me for as long as I felt my pain. I soon realized that shortly after his passing, life went on for everyone else. People moved on and continued to live their lives. This wasn’t their father, and that made sense, but it still bothered me. I sometimes felt like I was alone in the world. In a strange way I longed to go back to the moments when time felt like it wasn’t moving forward, and others were still crying with me.

I have always noticed roadside shrines and I realized after my own loss, it seems that the loved ones of these accident victims may want the same thing that I wanted when my father died. Perhaps these people want time to stand still too. They want to remind everyone that the person they loved was here on this earth, and although others have moved on from or maybe never knew the person they loved, they are still lamenting this loss.