how-i-was
Explanation
This comic is a dark joke about how people are remembered after death, contrasting deathbed confessions with posthumous reputation.
In the first panel, an elderly woman is at the bedside of her dying husband. She confesses: "Celia, I wasn't perfect. I know I haven't been a good partner, but..." She trails off. In response, she says something like: "I will only say good things about you, David. I will say nice things to the world -- member of the community, good father, helped stop the..." suggesting she'll present him favorably after death.
In the second panel, the man protests: "No! No! I was a real man! Say what I was!"
The third panel jumps to "Later" and shows a gravestone reading: "David Jenkins -- beloved husband, devoted father, and hero." The old woman stands before it, having done exactly what she promised -- giving him a sanitized, glowing epitaph.
The joke is that the dying man wanted to be remembered honestly, warts and all, as a "real man" with flaws and complexity. Instead, his wife gave him exactly the kind of generic, saintly eulogy that erases all individuality. The comic plays on the tension between how people want to be remembered (authentically) and how survivors actually memorialize the dead (with flattering cliches). The gravestone's generic praise is the exact opposite of what the man requested, suggesting that the impulse to speak well of the dead overrides even explicit dying wishes.