Ghost protocol: Keep it real

Death is the ultimate whitewash. People who pass on are suddenly the best people we've known. Why the selective memory?

- SEEMA GOSWAMI

The evil that men do lives after them; the good is oft interred with their bones. So William Shakespeare wrote about Julius Caesar, putting his words in Mark Antony's mouth.

But I can't help but think that Shakespeare got it wrong this one time. The truth is that death is the ultimate whitewash, cleansing the deceased of all their sins and leaving behind a saintly figure that often bears no resemblance to the person they actually were while alive.

The revisionism starts soon after death. All eulogies by family members and friends focus on the many virtues of the recently departed, some real but many imagined. Even the worst parent is recast as a doting presence by bereaved children. The surviving spouse of the most fractious relationship will have you believe that theirs was the love story of the century. And so on.