You come across them unexpectedly, though your reaction is more curiosity than surprise. Maybe you stop to get a closer look and try to puzzle out what happened and who it happened to. But roadside memorials rarely tell the whole story - they're just fractured narratives at best, with only the ending predictably the same.

R.I.P.

I once entertained the notion of chucking it all and heading out across the back roads of America, documenting roadside memorials that I'd come across. I could see myself hauling around a 4 x 5 view camera, waiting Zen-like for the right light on the side of a desolate highway to make haunting photographs. Not like these crappy digital snapshots. Maybe I'd score a Guggenheim, maybe even do a coffee-table book. We all seem to be fascinated with death, or at least the trappings of it.

Of course, I needn't travel across the country to discover these testaments because roadside memorials spring up right here in my own hometown, spring up unexpectedly, like wild flowers growing from a crack in the sidewalk.