How You Died Does Not Redeem How You Lived

In Kenya, funerals are often not about truth. They are about performance. A drunkard becomes a “community man.” An absent father becomes “a pillar of the family.” A corrupt politician is mourned as “a servant of the people.”

And if someone dies violently, or after a long illness, the script shifts even more dramatically. Suddenly, all sins are erased. It doesn’t matter if they abandoned their children, exploited others, or lived recklessly. Their suffering — or the tragedy of their death — becomes a shield. We act as if pain in death cleanses pain they caused in life.

But it doesn’t.

How you died does not redeem how you lived.

Cancer doesn’t rewrite your cruelty. A fatal accident doesn’t transform a selfish life into a noble one. Even being killed unjustly doesn’t wash away the harm you may have caused when you had power and choices. Suffering in death may make us feel pity, but it does not make you a saint.

Why do we do this? Because it’s easier. It’s easier to package death with nice words than to confront the real legacy someone left. It’s easier to comfort the living with lies than to sit with uncomfortable truths. And maybe, deep down, we do it because we are afraid that when our time comes, someone will also rewrite our story — because the truth may not be flattering.

But here’s the danger: if death erases accountability, then integrity becomes optional. Why live responsibly if one violent headline or one drawn-out illness can baptize you in sympathy? Why struggle to do right if the eulogy will anyway be written in your favor?

We bury not only people, but the truth. We bury it with applause. We bury it with selective memory. And in doing so, we rob the living of a chance to learn, to reflect, to demand better.

We need to stop. To honor the dead is not to lie about them. If they lived well, say it. If they didn’t, let silence speak. Let the emptiness of their deeds remain unpadded by poetry.

Because death does not redeem a life. It only ends it.

And maybe if we told the truth at funerals, people would finally care enough to live lives worth remembering — not rewriting.