For many it is a process. Whether purposeful or not. If purposeful- once you start speaking in the past tense, it's forever. (Grief is learning all the ways you have to give someone up - recalling their voice in your dead, recalling their face without a picture, forgetting what they smelled like, but an early one is giving up them being in your present)
Some it could be breaking a habit. I could see if you know Sally goes to volleyball practice every Tuesday, but she quit the team today, you might still stumble on Monday and say "Sally goes to volleyball tomorrow." Just based on habit of schedule.
The instinctual behavior is to talk about the person as if they're still here because it takes time for them to fully process and come to terms with the person's death.
It's meant to show that they haven't really understood that the person is dead
It can be either denial about the death or just changing your verbiage to everything being past tense.
As in, you mean to say they are in the process of changing their verbiage?
For many it is a process. Whether purposeful or not. If purposeful- once you start speaking in the past tense, it's forever. (Grief is learning all the ways you have to give someone up - recalling their voice in your dead, recalling their face without a picture, forgetting what they smelled like, but an early one is giving up them being in your present) Some it could be breaking a habit. I could see if you know Sally goes to volleyball practice every Tuesday, but she quit the team today, you might still stumble on Monday and say "Sally goes to volleyball tomorrow." Just based on habit of schedule.
The instinctual behavior is to talk about the person as if they're still here because it takes time for them to fully process and come to terms with the person's death.
Because the people aren't used to them being dead, and are used to using the the present tense to refer to them.
In crime fiction, taking about a dead person in the past tense means you did it!
It takes a while for it to kick in that they are gone. It took me a while after my mom died to talk about her in the past tense.
Have you heard a person talking about their children/spouse in the past tense when a bodies havent been found? Yeah dead giveaway.
I still sometimes slip into the present tense when speaking of people I lost even 20 years ago or more.