Or, m Death is part of life — let’s keep it authentic.
In my previous blog (An Authentic Life – Part 1: The Layers), I spoke about how much more there is to each of us than others might know or recognise in the way we’re described. We spend our whole lives showing up in different ways. No matter how open and authentic we try to be, we can’t help it — sometimes (often) we reveal a filtered version of ourselves. Maybe to hide our insecurities. Or maybe to meet others’ expectations. Perhaps because we’ve learned to keep certain parts of ourselves tucked away.
The truth is, no matter how open we are, people only ever see fragments of who we are.
Some people know us deeply — the ones who’ve seen us at our best and our worst, the ones who can read our silences. Others only know the surface: the smile, the job, the social media version. And then there’s the version we hold inside ourselves — the one shaped by self‑doubt, old stories, and the things we never quite say out loud.
All of these versions matter.
>All of them are real.
>All of them are part of us.
How we show up is what people will remember
Here’s the thing we don’t talk about enough:
those versions don’t disappear when we die.
They become the foundation of how people grieve us.
Funerals aren’t for the dead — they’re for the people left behind. They NEED to be able to mourn the version of you they remember. And they may also benefit from hearing other people’s versions of you. How many times have you come away from a funeral and learned something new about the person? A good celebrant-led funeral often provides that.
Two things can happen at a funeral:
- People recognise you in the service — maybe even expand their understanding of you — and this helps them process their loss
or - They leave disconnected and confused because it felt like being at a stranger’s funeral, and they don’t have the tools they need to move forward
People have to be able to access what they know as YOU to process the loss of YOU.
So let them sit with their authentic truth.
Grief and authenticity
When someone dies, people cling to the version of that person they knew. They replay memories, conversations, arguments, laughter. They try to make sense of the loss through the lens of the relationship they had. And because everyone knew a slightly different version, everyone grieves a slightly different person.
That’s not a problem — it’s human.
But it does mean something important:
How we show up in life shapes how people mourn us.
And how clearly people understood us shapes how they heal.
If how you are mourned is important to you, you have to show up.
Because, if we’ve spent our lives hiding parts of ourselves, people may struggle to connect the dots after we’re gone. If we’ve lived boldly and openly, they have more to hold onto. But, if we’ve never talked about what matters to us — our values, our quirks, our wishes — then the people left behind are left guessing.
And that guessing can be painful.
Authenticity in life is a gift to the people who will one day grieve us.
