His black button eyes stare up into the falling rain. Days full of downpours have flattened his fur into clumpy, brown tatters. But his stuffing is still intact, so he still looks like what he was: someone’s teddy bear. A dead someone’s teddy bear, the centerpiece of a roadside shrine.
He had started out fresh and hopeful. Bundles of plastic flowers wreathed his neck. Bright satin ribbons trussed him to the guardrail – an adorable prisoner, a cloying memorial to someone whose life had been smashed into oblivion at that very bend in the road.
I’ve driven past every day for a month and now the flowers are faded, stained, cracked or simply gone. The soggy ribbons are losing their grip. He’s begun to tip over backwards, his face lifted up to the sky, pudgy arms outstretched, legs limp, a little teddy bear Christ on the cross. No longer a loving commemoration of life; this is a tragic, wet reminder of death, indignity and loss. My daily dose of depression ingested at 40 miles per hour.
I’ve driven past every day for a month and now the flowers are faded, stained, cracked or simply gone. The soggy ribbons are losing their grip. He’s begun to tip over backwards, his face lifted up to the sky, pudgy arms outstretched, legs limp, a little teddy bear Christ on the cross. No longer a loving commemoration of life; this is a tragic, wet reminder of death, indignity and loss. My daily dose of depression ingested at 40 miles per hour.