RIP: SHE EV & Nathan Schmeck

43.59615° N, 119.02004° W 71139 Fry Rd Burns, Burns, OR 97720

05/12/2023, 7:52AM

Just a few miles southeast of Burns, Oregon these two memorials reside alongside a two-lane highway and immediately beside a flashing sign alerting drivers to an intersection just a hundred feet ahead. The road sign is leaning and seems awfully close to the actual pavement, leaving the impression that it was, perhaps hastily put here after the accident(s) that took SHE EV and Nathan.

It's not at all clear from the side-by-side memorials if this was one accident or two, but given all the beer cans, chewing tobacco cans and tequila bottles at the base of the one and the neat rows of Matchbox Cars and Halloween paraphernalia at the other, one certainly gets a sense of their relative ages...

And all that is written here for visitors to try to make sense of…

SHE EV

RIP Nathan Schmeck. Love U bro.

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If you stop, if you see what the mourners have left as markers, you cannot help but sense the loss, and the awkwardness of trying to come to terms. It is beautiful in its strange way

(Be sure to check out Jann Glisson’s comment below to get more of the story. Having read this post she then actually went and did a little research, then shared her findings with all of us. Thank you Jann. And my sincere condolences to Sheeve’s loved ones for their loss.)

When my mother died in a car wreck that almost took my sister, as well I needed to go and stand at that place where it happened. I needed to see it, walk that stretch of road, again and again, try to understand, get a sense of that place where she took her exit from the world that we continue to wake and sleep in.

I did not build her a memorial at the crash site. We didn't have that sort of relationship anymore. But even more so, because she was driving drunk and in a jealous rage at the moment of her departure. She did not leave those of us who loved her on good terms.

I crawled in through the broken window at the junkyard, in sweltering heat to sit there inside the crushed car she died in, needing to feel something more, understand better, but in the end, did not ache to leave some mark of loyalty in the world for her. Not there. Not like that.

Perhaps it’s no surprise then how acutely aware of others’ tributes, their very personal and heartfelt exit markers I have been, ever since. And so, as the spirit moves me, I pull over. I look for a safe place to stop. I stand with the departed and with those left behind trying to make sense of things, bowing at their alters, reading their notes of loss and gratitude, trying to honor their hints and often bumbling efforts to memorialize their loved ones' passages.

From time to time I'll add another of these memorials, here. It won't make a lick of sense to some, but perfect sense to others. I’m ok with that. There are no written rules for this sort of thing, as far as I know, and yet, each Roadside Memorial I've encountered, whether alongside some crumbling, two lane road in rural Thailand or a busy freeway in urban Illinois, each always has some elements in common, the most discernible of which is a profound need to express one's sense of grief and loss. After all these years I still find it worth the effort to pull over, get out …then to listen to whatever voices might be carried on the breeze, touch the edge of someone else’s tale of loss, say thank you to a world big enough and imaginative enough to allow this possibility, too..