You reach a certain point in life and suddenly know a lot of dead people, and I’ve noticed you don’t stop getting to know people who are dead. Those relationships continue and I like that.
What happens when we die?
Question
What is the trait you most deplore in others?
Values & belief
Question
What is the most important lesson life has taught you?
Time & hindsight
Question
Which moment embarrassed you most?
Failure & regret
Question
What most recently made you cry?
Identity & self
Question
How close have you come to death?
Death & what remains
Question
When were you happiest?
Time & hindsight
Originally asked
The Guardian, to a different person each week, The Q&A
A recurring late-stage question in The Guardian Q&A, with materially different answers on publisher-hosted pages.
You answer as yourself. Nobody on FLAPSS answers as anybody else.
I think we live on in people’s memories until those memories go.
The Q&A, The Guardian, 25 October 2025 source ↗
Others on this question
View all 51 →That’s the 64-million-dollar question.
I don’t know and I don’t really care – I’ll be dead.
The worms get to feast.
More from Shobna Gulati
View profile →Ignorance and unwillingness to learn.
If somebody doesn’t want to understand or see you that’s on them. You don’t have to carry that with you.
If you’re a mother, you are embarrassing. Is that not just the way?
I cry every day. Sometimes out of frustration. I do grieve my mum, so I allow the grief to sit until it’s not there any more.
A piece of scenery fell on my head during Richard II at the Globe theatre in 2019. I was very badly hurt.
In recent times, when I was looking after my mum. She would take me on journeys in her mind and I’d travel with her wherever she went. I felt happy that I had the opportunity to have that time despite her illness.
More on death & what remains
- What would you like to be remembered for? 214 answers
- How close have you come to death? 209 answers
- What song would you like played at your funeral? 178 answers
- If you had only one day left to live, how would you spend it — and what would you deliberately avoid doing? 54 answers
- What would you like to leave your children? 44 answers
- How would you like to die? 44 answers
Also answered this
Sarah Perry, Tony Judt, Hugh Grant, Neil Gaiman, Rosalind Eleazar, Marcus Brigstocke
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- All death & what remains questions
- The The Q&A questionnaire — 25 questions from the same format
- Explore the archive — by field, age, era, and subject