The recent incident about the death of Tony Halme and the column written by Kaarina Hazard has caused quite a turmoil. When Halme died, Hazard wrote an article, which was quite rude in many ways about Halme. She broke the unwritten rule about beating a dead horse – and had a good point in doing so. Though the tone of the column was really bad, she brought about the good question of glorifying people post mortem. We tend to look dead people with more reverence than those that yet live. She wanted to break this illusion, but there was an important thing missing in her thought.
The Why behind.
Why do we glorify people after death? In death we always want to understand people. Our point of view changes from outside spectator to inside understander. What we used to see as a racist drug addict and a weapon misuser, we now see as a person with great hardships and tribulations. Why does this change occur? Why do we want to see dead people as good? It’s because we want to see ourselves as such.
We want to keep the illusion, that in the end, we are good as human beings. Sure, we have had our mishaps and wrong doings, but all accounted for, surely we stand in the positive side, don’t we? If it were to be, that someone could be judged as Bad after death, it would most likely mean, that we could be judged as such aswell. We can’t have that.
Death is the ultimate mirror.
If we see something we don’t like in that image, we smudge it and pretend it is not there. This is an uncomforting thought. The truth about ourselves is hard to handle – in the end, nobody stands on the positive side.