Focusing on the goodness of the deceased and overlooking their shortcomings is a good social practice. Death is often a reminder that most of our quarrels are of little significance. The Buddha taught:
However, i am a breaker of tradition. I prefer not to replace the complexity of what it means to be a human being with an ideal, even if this ideal is eventually a product of what it means to be human.There are those who do not realize that one day we all must die. But those who do realize this settle their quarrels.
Two of dylanj's posts on this forum that i remember vividly:
1- His fierce opposition and criticism of exchanging birthday greetings between forum members. According to him, birth (and those who celebrate it) are ignorants.
2- At a certain point, i added Arabic poetry to my signature. In a reply to a post i made, he asked me at the end if i was using "Takiah", which is an Arabic word meaning if i am hiding my true nature being a Muslim in a Buddhist forum.
More generally, most of his posts came across as orthodox and non-compromising type of practitioner.
Few months ago, i lost a cousin who would look very bad on paper, but who also was fully human nonetheless. He was a gambler and drunkard and very disagreeable at times. He was a good friend of mine, i never attempted to change him and he was not open to any sort of advice anyway. He suffered from OCD but never got treated. When he passed away, the family was in a state of shock especially that he was relatively young (40 years old). Accepting him for what he was, with all his strangeness, i was a bit sad to see him go, but at the same time, knowing how he lived, i knew that going early has benefits to him and to his family. I honored him by washing his body as the majority who were weeping experience aversion from having to deal with a dead body. When i visited his family few months later, his mother took my aside and asked me if her son had depression. Instead of satisfying her curiosity, i reminded her of the imperfections of her son, emphasizing that i accepted him the way he was. I ended my conversation with her by asking how would he spent his time had he stayed longer? She paused a bit and then thanked me for calming her.