In general, we pretend that the recently deceased were good or better than they really were. Why? Perhaps we think that we owe it to the deceased person’s family to show deference. This makes sense in cases where the deceased person is a public figure who, while reviled by segments of the public, was deeply loved by his or her own immediate relatives. But it does not tell us what is going on in a large number of other cases. Many of those seen as unsavory characters by outsiders are regarded as morally deficient by their families as well. I have personal knowledge of cases in which the adult children of an abusive now deceased parent were pressured to pretend the deceased were good mothers and fathers. At least one person I know faced harsh criticism for refusing to comply. This suggests that the norm is so strong, we are willing to force people abused in childhood to hide their pain behind a socially acceptable mask.

One may suppose that we are concerned, rightly, with the deceased person’s current inability to defend him- or herself. Decency, it could be argued, requires that we not attack an opponent who happens to be lying defenseless on the ground. And the deceased, it may be thought further, are less capable of fighting back and to that extent, more defenseless than any living person.

I doubt that this is the reason either. We do not have parallel norms, for instance, against gossip behind another’s back, even though the harm we can inflict on a living person is much greater than any possible harm to the dead, save the possible damage to their reputation or legacy.

It’s possible that we see funerals and memorial services as public affairs and believe we ought not air dirty laundry there, but rather keep up appearances for the sake of family pride. But I suspect that we feel pressure to whitewash the acts of the dead even when only immediate family are present. This stands in stark contrast with the way we behave at family affairs not involving death. Those are not generally known for their high level of decorum. It depends on the family, of course, but it is quite common for people to express mixed feelings (or worse) about family holidays and reunions. We are not, it seems, all that committed to saving face at family gatherings.

I wish to suggest here that there is something about death itself that motivates us to act as we do. Death seems significant and perhaps, otherworldly. Think of our tendency to lower our voices when in a cemetery. We see this tendency in both religious and nonreligious people, that is, both people who do and who do not believe that the dead might hear them. What explains that tendency? I am not sure, but my best guess is that it has to do with the perceived otherworldliness of death. If that’s right, then perhaps, it is not the person who has just died that we want to show respect to — for that person may well have been a terrible human being — but death itself. It’s as though death has put a stamp of nobility on the forehead of the one whose heart is no longer beating, and it is that stamp, that halo that pushes us to act as we do. The deceased belong to death now, not to us. And it may be that we feel that it is not simply other people watching us; we are being watched by death itself. Death has come to visit, and we are all in its presence when we share a room with one of its recent claimees.