It is subject to modification, but the dead person himself is no longer in control of this modification. Death is a fact of life for all higher animals. Poe is a name , a proper noun . If we honor the dead, it is because death is a moment of crisis, when the referent of a public meaning, a proper name, is no longer directly available. What we fear is not the mere fact of death itself, but the extinction of a communally agreed-upon meaning.
Death is the sign of a violence perpetrated against the community.
What I mean to others. Before, I had the potential to modify this meaning, even if I could not define it. Yet it has not changed the essence of our situation. Animals do not want to die, but they have no desire for, or concept of, immortality. That is a human trait, and like all human traits it is the result of our possession of language .