When someone has been dead for a while, you don’t remember how they look. Their image, in your mind becomes muddied. The image is not that sharp. It feels like you are looking at them through a muddied window or without eyeglasses.

It happens gradually of course. Perhaps because there’s peace in that, peace and a respite from suffering.

In your mind’s eye, this new image, this muddied not-so-sharp image is the correct image. It’s how they looked.

Recently, I got a picture of my mother, cropped, sharpened so I could put it on a wall in my home. The first time I saw that picture, I thought this is not right. This is too sharp. This is artificial. But I just did not remember her face that well.

It had felt that way since the day I had put up her picture on the wall. Something felt wrong all these months.

Today, as I saw her smiling face, I felt recognition. I saw her, and remembered her. I felt glad to have spent the extra money on this picture to get it sharpened.

Someone somewhere had said this once -

Dead people die twice. Once when they die. And the other time when people stop talking about them.