We Should Remember the Dead Better

(and I miss Zee)

I want people to remember the best of me when I’m gone.

Not the sharp edges.
Not the years I struggled.
Not the moments where I came up short.

Just the parts that loved well.

And I want to remember the best of the people who came before me — not frozen at the moment they left, not reduced to how it ended, but as they were when love was loud and ordinary and alive.

Somewhere along the way, we decided that remembering the dead too vividly meant you weren’t healing.
That talking about them meant you were stuck.
That love was supposed to learn how to behave.

I don’t believe that.

In many cultures, grief isn’t something to overcome — it’s something to tend.
In Mexico, Día de los Muertos isn’t about resurrection or denial.
It’s about acknowledgment.

The dead are invited back.
Photographs are placed where they can be seen.
Favorite foods are made.
Candles are lit — not to mourn, but to guide.

The message isn’t they’re gone.
It’s they still belong.

I’ve seen that idea show up in unexpected places.
In the sci-fi series Altered Carbon, the dead are allowed to return for a single day by inhabiting another body.
It’s unsettling — not because it’s futuristic, but because it’s honest.

Who wouldn’t want one more day?

That same longing appears more gently in Coco, where the dead exist as long as they are remembered.
Not haunted.
Not tragic.
Just waiting.

The truth is, most of us don’t want closure.
We want continuity.

We don’t remember the dead well because remembering requires permission — permission to love without resolution, to admit that some bonds don’t dissolve neatly.

And if I’m honest, the thing I want most isn’t abstract.

More than being remembered well.
More than legacy.
More than understanding.

I want to see Zee again.

Even for one day.

I want the weight of her beside me.
The way her whole body reacted when she realized it was me.
The way the world narrowed to that moment and nothing else mattered.

I don’t need forever.
I don’t need explanations.

Just one day where love gets its body back.

Remembering someone at their best isn’t denial.
It’s devotion.
It’s refusing erasure.
It’s how love survives.

I hope when I’m gone, I’m remembered that way —
for how I loved,
and for who I loved well.

And I hope we get better, collectively, at saying the names out loud.
At setting the extra place.
At admitting that some absences don’t fade — they deepen.

If love doesn’t end,
why should remembering?