Elias Canetti wrote in The Agony of Flies:
Would it be better if nothing remained of our lives, nothing at all? If death meant our instant obliteration in the minds of all who have had images of us? Would this be more considerate of those who follow? For it may well be that what remains of us constitutes a claim on them, a burden they are forced to carry. Perhaps human beings are not free because they contain too much of the dead and because this surplus refuses ever to be abolished.
A Celebration of Reading 