When did people start to leave cuddly toys on the graves of lost children? I’ve always found it sad to see them, fresh and new at first and then over months and years, seeing how they become weather beaten and faded. What I saw today was one of the bleakest things I have ever seen, a Christmas gift for a daughter who has passed. It was still in its box and with dew on the inside. I almost dread to see it deteriorate and wonder about the pain of the parent who left it. I hope it helps with their grief.
Lucid Gypsy 
It looks like a little coffin. Ew. It is an interesting phenomenon. I’d rather plant a tree and see it grow, to mark time’s bittersweet passage.
I agree Brenda a tree would be much nicer, and now you mention it yes a coffin …
Wow, that is so sad! My heart goes out to people like that. I don’t even want to imagine what it would be like to lose a child!
It is rather like the idea of grave goods that used to be buried with people; things they would need in the afterlife.
I find them rather haunting too, and a bit macabre.
I’ve thought about this too. Mindful capture here.
Grief follows no rules, know no common path. More, it can ambush you when you least expect it, months and years later.
it’s sad …
Oh, but worse are the eternal flowers — the fake ones that don’t die, like plastic smiles that hide sadness.