I look at it slightly differently. I interpret it as, you take your reputation with you to the grave because when you die, your reputation as it stands, is as dead as you are.
How you act while you're around will be interpreted in one way, but when you're gone, you are no longer around to defend your reputation, or to act in a way that reflects the times.
In this way many people, and especially white males, have had their reputation tarnished. Instead of being good, accomplished, respectable people, they have been labeled racist or sexist or misogynist, and have had their achievements diminished or taken away from them entirely.
Don't believe me? Look for articles in the Guardian or NY Times about Albert Einstein, Shakespeare, Gandhi, Nietzsche, Bill Hicks, DH Lawrence, and on and on and on and on.
Apparently it's trendy to take people out of the context in which they existed, and judge them based on a different one entirely.