The other day, Bunny and I were talking about a myriad of topics. One of them happened to be how people's perceptions of an individual change after they die, especially if they die in an unexpectedly shocking manner.

Why do we martyr the dead so consistently? Why do they only begin to live when they die? And why do we lie about the person they really were?

Take my cousin, for example. Her death was shocking. She was shot at the age of 17 in a drive-by. The entire ordeal, of course, was horrible for everyone involved and her immediate family needed massive support overcoming their grief.

Now, I am not so tactless that I would yell out, "LIES! LIES! All of you are lying!" at a funeral. I spared them my brass opinions while they mourned. I noticed, however, that during the funeral, the way people remembered her had nothing to do with the person she really was. The whole experience felt so dishonest.

A funeral, though, is always about remembering the good that the dead brought to their life and the lives of those around them, so I can understand that.

After the funeral, though, and even continuing 9 years later, people insist on making portraying her as an angel.

An angel, she was not. Far from it, actually.

I will say it out loud. The girl was a bitch. A mega-bitchy bitch. She was promiscuous, snotty, shallow, rude, spoiled, treated most of the family like shit, and really was not even that bright. The family, of course, insists on pretending she would have been a combination of Mother Theresa and Stephen Hawking. That was not who she would have been.

So why, then, do most people insist on remembering her that way? It reminds me of my last essay in which I spoke of society wearing masks all the time. If someone in our life dies, we put on a mask and pretend they were someone else. It shoudl not be taboo to get up and say, "You know, I honestly did not like this person. I thought they made a shitty human being."

Take, for example, one christmas at our grandmother's house. See, cousing and her sister (cousins1) did not get along with another set of cousins (cousins2). The main reason for this was that the other group did not kiss their ass and they were poor. Cousins1 made fun of their clothes, their frizzy, irish curls and basically took every opportunity to mock the girls to their faces. Cousins2, however, were not wallflowers, so they did not sit idly by while it happened. So, there had been quite a few verbal confrontations. This year, however, the verbal confrontation escalated. Everyone ran out when they heard obscenities flying. Cousins2 had decided to kick cousins1 asses (it's not as white trash as it sounds).

Yet, when cousin died, no one remembers this tidbit. They do not recall how horrible she was to people who didn't wear the latest in trendy, name brand clothing. Nor did they recall how their mother spoiled them so, even when she could not afford it.

The strangest part of the aftermath, for me, was going back to school, where I was also a senior, like she would have been, and hearing my classmates martyring her. Suddenly, everyone at my school not only knew who she was, they were her best friend. Which makes me also wonder, why do people want to get that close to death?

Are we so empty that we can't, for once, just be honest about who we are and who others are? Can't we ever stop lying?