καὶ ποθήω καὶ μάομαι

in odyssey 10 circe warns odysseus that apart from tiresias (who's got a special deal going with persephone) the spirits in the underworld do not retain their memories or knowledge or sense of self and are nothing but "empty, flitting shades". in book 11 odysseus describes the underworld as fields of insubstantial spirits shambling restlessly about as they gibber meaninglessly. it seems the extremely recently departed (elpenor and later the suitors) are able to remember who they were for a bit, but after that it's only through drinking the sacrificial blood odysseus offers them that the dead can temporarily regain their senses of self. not even the spirits of agamemnon or odysseus' own mother are able to remember or recognize him until they've drunk the magic blood.

in iliad 22, achilles is painfully aware "the dead forget the dead in the house of Hades", and swears that he'll be the exception, he'll remember patroclus even in the afterlife. whether he succeeds or not is unproven in the homeric sources (magic blood in the odyssey not withstanding) but it confirms how that's the general rule of the afterlife as these characters know it.

as elizabeth vandiver says in her iliad lecture series,

"This is not the kind of afterlife to provide comfort for bodily death or hope for glorious reunions. It is an extremely pallid substitute for life in this world."