Copley Square Ten Days Later

I went into town yesterday, intending to gallery hop and take pics of fab art and the lovely, young blooms along Marlborough, Newbury and Beacon Streets.

I was more drawn, like so many others, to Copley Square. The memorial that’s been set up there in the Square, between Trinity Church and the Library isn’t some official deal. Nope, it’s way more heart splitting than that.

Like all those roadside shrines that spring up after life ending car crashes, there are bouquets of bright daisies, daffodils and mums. There are lilies and roses -- many still wrapped in cellophane as though the mourner was in too much pain to do anything but toss the bright bundle onto the still white hot pain point.

Mostly though, there are mounds and piles of stuffed Teddies and Pandas, plush puppies and bunnies.

I don’t understand this, the leaving of plush toy animals but then, I don’t need to. We each mourn, pay tribute to our lost loved ones, salve our pain points in our own ways.

Because I could not stop for Death – 
He kindly stopped for me – 
The Carriage held but just Ourselves – 
And Immortality.
-- Emily Dickinson (from Because I could not stop for Death (712))

Such clouds of nameless trouble cross
All night below the darkened eyes;
With morning wakes the will, and cries,
"Thou shalt not be the fool of loss."
-- Lord Alfred Tennyson (from In Memoriam, [To Sleep I give my powers away])

That boy that they was mournin'
Was so dear, so dear
To them folks that brought the flowers,
To that girl who paid the preacher man—
It was all their tears that made
   That poor boy’s
   Funeral grand.
-- Langston Hughes (from Night Funeral in Harlem)

That boy that they was mournin' Was so dear, so dear To them folks that brought the flowers, To that girl who paid the preacher man— It was all their tears that made That poor boy's Funeral grand. - See more at: http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/15613#sthash.EkBpMn5I.dpuf