Field Note #10: Why Do We Like People Better When They’re Dead?

On a sunny and joyous Tuesday, I went to a funeral. I walked by the canal thinking it was a very charming day to be buried — if such a thing even existed… A very talented artist had died, leaving behind a collection of stunning sculptures ready to be cast, enormous piles of books and sketchbooks… and a mural in the kitchen — instead of kitchen cabinets.

He was a very noticeable figure in the city, and truly arty, by all means. Flamboyance and decadence, sophisticated and mysterious conversations — those were Gregory’s thing. And with that, he used to annoy a lot of people.

Many found him irritating and blunt. Others enjoyed a clever chat with him from time to time over a cup of coffee. Gallery managers, meanwhile, used to duck under bridges and turn corners at the first sight of him. He was a difficult person. And he did not take No for an answer.

I wasn’t sure who was going to turn up at Greg’s funeral. I knew he had friends, but I wasn’t sure how many. I myself had fallen out with him a number of years ago, and in the last few years I would politely acknowledge him without getting drawn into deeper conversations. So I was pleasantly surprised to see so many familiar (and new) faces when I arrived. And later, to hear so many lovely things said about him.

And it got me thinking something rather challenging and bizarre:

Why now? Why when he is dead?

How many of us used to avoid Greg simply because we weren’t prepared, at that particular moment, to engage in a long and thought-provoking conversation? And how many things that irritated us about him when he was alive suddenly looked rather different once he wasn’t?

Perhaps this is what death does? It removes ‘the inconvenience’ of a person while leaving their character behind…

Greg could no longer stop you in the street when you were in a hurry. He could no longer insist on showing you something when you had somewhere else to be, challenge your opinion when you really didn’t fancy having it challenged, or refuse to accept a polite No when you desperately wanted the conversation to end. All that was gone.

What remained was the flamboyance. The intelligence. The eccentricity. The refusal to be ordinary. The sculptures. The stories. The mural where any sensible person would have put kitchen cabinets. And suddenly some of the very qualities that made him difficult to deal with became the qualities that made him interesting to remember.

I find that fascinating. Because we like to think our opinions of people are about who they are. He is annoying. She is arrogant. He is difficult. She is too much. But maybe they are sometimes also about what that person requires from us. Patience. Attention. Energy. An argument. An uncomfortable thought. Twenty minutes we didn’t intend to give them. Remove the requirement, and strangely enough, the person can change without changing at all!

Annoying becomes eccentric.

Blunt becomes honest.

Attention-seeking becomes flamboyant.

Difficult becomes uncompromising.

And impossible becomes unforgettable.

Of course, death has always had a rather suspicious talent for improving people’s reputations. We edit and soften and forgive. There is something almost indecent about standing at a funeral listing all the ways somebody drove you mad! But I don’t think that entirely explains it. I think distance changes the emotional meaning of people.

We do this with the living too... An ex becomes more romantic once they can no longer leave their socks on your floor. A difficult parent can become easier to understand when you no longer live under their rules. The colleague who drove you insane can become “quite a character” five years after you stop sharing an office with them. Nothing about the past has changed — what has changed is that it can no longer happen to us today.

And maybe that is why death can perform such an extraordinary transformation: it creates the ultimate distance, because there will be no next encounter, and no awkward coffee, and no argument, and no demand. No opportunity to disappoint each other again — or to be disappointed. The very possibility of friction is gone.

And once the nervous system no longer has to prepare for the person, perhaps the mind finally has the luxury of simply remembering them. Which made me wonder, walking home from Greg’s funeral:

How many people in our lives would look different if we could separate who they are from how inconvenient they sometimes are to us?

And, perhaps more uncomfortably:

How many of us are waiting until someone is gone before allowing ourselves to see what was wonderful about them?

And there may be another uncomfortable question hiding underneath all of this:

When we call someone difficult, are we describing them — or ourselves in their presence?..

Because “he is difficult” and “I find him difficult” are two surprisingly different statements. The same person can be exhausting to one human being and fascinating to another. Blunt to one, honest to another. Arrogant to one, confident to another. The person hasn’t changed — the nervous system receiving them has.

Greg was still Greg.

Flamboyant. Clever. Blunt. Infuriating. Talented. Persistent. Occasionally impossible.

Only now, nobody needed to cross the road.