Remember Your Loved One—Build a Birdhouse
Remember Your Loved One—Build a Birdhouse
![Along the St. Johns River in central Florida, scores of personalized birdhouses decorate the “Birdhouse Canal.” The birdhouses are constantly changing. Some birdhouses disappear as they fall into the canal or are purposefully removed, while new birdhouses populate the canal as folks create a memorial for the recently deceased. The variety of birdhouses—their form, construction materials, and unique attributes—is remarkable.](https://www.sapiens.org/app/uploads/2016/03/01-2012-BH-1024x683.jpg)
![Occasionally, birdhouses do not occur alone, but rather appear in a series with a single meaning. These four birdhouses commemorate a marriage and the couple’s love.](https://www.sapiens.org/app/uploads/2016/03/02-2014-JW-1024x751.jpg)
![Certain birdhouses directly and playfully address the significance of their form. This builder chose to quote the Chilean poet Pablo Neruda: “Don’t call up my person. I am absent. Live in my absence as if in a house.”](https://www.sapiens.org/app/uploads/2016/03/03-2014-JW-1024x768.jpg)
![Some of the birdhouses on Birdhouse Canal are entirely handmade while others are store-bought and then decorated with artificial or natural items of personal significance. This homemade birdhouse is a memorial to a person nicknamed “Papa Smurf.”](https://www.sapiens.org/app/uploads/2016/03/04-2013-BH-1024x717.jpg)
![The public display of these birdhouses is a very personal and emotional undertaking. Intimate items from daily life are often attached to convey the individuality of each person being memorialized. This birdhouse is ornamented with buttons glued to its base.](https://www.sapiens.org/app/uploads/2016/03/05-2013-BH-1017x1024.jpg)
![Most birdhouses memorialize family members or friends who are recently deceased. A birdhouse in the form of a train car (with an appended U.S. flag) honors a deceased child by noting her “freckles” and, presumably, some of her favorite things in life: “coco” and “candy.”](https://www.sapiens.org/app/uploads/2016/03/06-2014-JW-1024x768.jpg)
![Some birdhouses mimic a defining object in a deceased person’s life. This birdhouse, made from a fishing tackle box, honors a person who loved to fish and be outdoors.](https://www.sapiens.org/app/uploads/2016/03/07-2013-BH-768x1024.jpg)
![Oftentimes birdhouses bear quotes, signatures, or photographs. Camo tape, along with a child’s hand-drawn images, decorate this homemade birdhouse.](https://www.sapiens.org/app/uploads/2016/03/08-2013-BH-1024x768.jpg)
![Periodically, park officials and volunteers remove birdhouses to protect the canal from obstruction and pollution. Since 2014, more than 120 birdhouses have been removed and discarded. Despite such cleanses, this new tradition persists.](https://www.sapiens.org/app/uploads/2016/03/09-2013-BH-1024x768.jpg)
Not far from where I live in central Florida, dozens of remarkable birdhouses grace a short canal along the meandering St. Johns River. Some of the birdhouses are store-bought. Some of them are handcrafted. But every birdhouse is uniquely decorated. Written messages, painted images, and personal photographs adorn them. Every small house takes the form of a memorial.
Memorialization is how humans commemorate people, events, and ideals. Miniatures, like birdhouses, suit the task of memorialization because they focus viewers’ attention on the similarities and differences between the “real” and the “replica”—between our actual lived experiences and how these experiences can be condensed into a symbol.
And the house is a powerful symbol: a shelter from the storms of life, a dwelling for family, a connection to community. The place where we eat, play, converse, grow, work, slumber, and dream, our homes shape our memories of youth and our roles as siblings and parents. The house is a symbol of who we are at our core.
This photo essay explores how Americans use unique objects, in this case birdhouses, to celebrate and memorialize important people—especially the deceased—in our lives. Less than a decade ago, people began spontaneously decorating the canal along the St. Johns River—which borders two Florida state parks—with birdhouses to publicly display their lives, their sense of themselves, and, often, their losses. Like the familiar roadside memorials to victims of automobile accidents, birdhouses along the St. Johns River illustrate how objects and performances (making, hanging, and maintaining memorials) help people in their search to comprehend the enigmas of life and death.
Humans are uniquely symbolic animals: Unlike beetles or cats, we understand that an object can stand for an idea, that one thing can represent something else entirely. A red octagon means stop. A heart means love. Along the St. Johns River, miniature birdhouses mean self, family, community, and humanity. Birdhouses treat souls.