At a memorial this Sunday, Fort Worth folk and soul singer Abraham Alexander will perform songs from his new album, “BIG/SONS“, in honor of those who died in traffic accidents.

A song, the song “Today” includes the lyrics: “If I were to die today, what would I say to you?

The record commemorates the painful loss of the singer’s mother, who died at the age of 11 in a car accident shortly after his family arrived in the US. They moved to Texas from Greece, where he was born to immigrant parents. from Nigeria. Nine months after moving to the United States, his mother was hit head-on by a wrong-way drunk driver on the freeway, killing her.

“It was the love that he shared with me and the message that he gave to me and my brothers and sisters right before he died,” he said in an interview a few days before the event.

Alexander will distribute the track at World Day of Remembrance for Road Traffic Victims at the City Park Pavilion. The memorial started in 1993 in Europe and has since spread around the world.

Crystal Wise

Other communities will also remember those lost in traffic accidents. Boulder will hold a commemorative walk on November 16. In Colorado Springs, memorials will be placed at intersections where a person died in a car accident between December 2023 and November 2024. In Greeley, there will be a memorial vigil where family members and survivors can share stories; in Parker, there will be a prayer and candlelight memorial at the O’Brien Park Gazebo, both on November 17.

In addition to Alexander’s music, other events at the Denver memorial include music by cheeksa local band and altar creation by Cal Duranof Denver, who described himself in an interview days before the event as an educator and multimedia artist specializing in Dia de los Muertos memorials and images.

It honors the memory of people lost, and in Colorado, the number lost to traffic accidents has averaged nearly two a day in recent years. The Colorado Department of Transportation reported more than 750 fatal car crashes in 2022, a number that dropped nearly 10 percent in 2023. The data goes in the opposite direction for the number of seriously injured; CDOT reports that number has increased from nearly 3,700 in 2022 to more than 4,100 in 2023.

For Sunday’s event, he will create an altar using a closet that he will decorate with roses.

“I’ll be there with just space.”

He will smear the area, burn incense and hang a line from which people can display photos of those they have lost and also write messages to them.

“There will be pictures of loved ones hanging, sort of like a rope,” he said. “So those images will be represented. And then there will be Day of the Dead themed skeletons and garlands.”

He said he’s done about 10 of the same kind of shrines around Colorado this year, and the shrines always include offerings.

“We have water to quench the thirst of our loved ones. We have candles to represent fire,” he said. “And then we have food and offerings just to really remember and celebrate your loved ones in some way and (let them know) that they’re always with us and their lives should be celebrated.”

Cal Duran

Singer Alexander said he was looking forward to arriving in Colorado on Saturday in preparation for Sunday’s event.

“I can’t wait to celebrate life and honor the people who have lost loved ones who will be there, who have had a personal experience … or support others who have. And so I think when we’re all there collectively, that’s not (a) coincidence. We chose every day to be at that event and I think it will have a very big and very significant impact.”

When the event is over, Duran said he will take the pictures and notes home; then he will honor the lost with a final step.

“I always have a ceremony, a fire ceremony at my house with friends and family, and we read the messages and throw them back into the fire, and then it goes back to the sky, back to the great mystery of life.”

Those who have lost a loved one in a road accident can complete a form through Nov. 17 requesting stories and pictures of loved ones lost or injured in traffic accidents. Duran will receive the images, which he can then weave into his altar ceremony, he said.