Lies for the Lost

As it's been quite a while since I wrote, I've been trying to think of something to write about. The book I'm reading found a dead person, so they held a funeral for him and I found what I wished to rant about. Funerals and their processions.

When someone dies, whether they are buried or cremated, there's always a funeral. At funerals, the person's life is most always hallowed and only good things are said about the person - regardless of if they lived their life as a nice person, who tried to take care of everyone or if they were a cruel, sadistic and bitter old fool who lashed out at all around themselves. Regardless of how their lives were lived, all speeches and words said for them are only kind. When a friend of mine took her life close to a year ago now, my school district exploded. All the students that had hated her and treated her like awful shit - the ones who bullied and made fun of her, suddenly proclaimed that Faith, as was her name, was smart, beautiful, kind. They tried to be her best friends in death, when the reality was they were the reason she felt driven to kill herself.

I understand why we feel the need to speak well of someone in their passing, but why do we feel the need to make up lies about people in their deaths? They could be bitter and angry, someone who hated and bit at all who saw them, but the moment they die, suddenly they're saints.

One of my favorite books, Ender's Game, had a sequel called Speaker of the Dead. I loved Speaker of the Dead in particular, because Ender took it upon himself to speak for the dead. Not in false truths of only kind words, but to lay out the whole, pure truth of who the dead was. If the person had lived a life of vice, indulging in too much food and drink, who gambled too much and took advantage of others - those are the things Ender would speak of, instead of trying to portray them as someone who did no wrong.

Why can't our society be that way? Respect for the dead isn't given through creating the illusion that the dead were much better people than they were alive. Nor is it taken from them by telling who the dead actually was.