Death or Forgetting

What is death? If you asked anyone on the street, most would probably say something akin to “Death is when you are gone, when you are not alive anymore”. Then they are talking about the physical attribute of it. If the body is gone, rotting in the ground, then there is no return. That’s what most consider what death is.

I don’t think that’s the only time you die.

What about the times you forgets who you are? About the times you forget your whole life and the people in it? You’ll forget every experience who make you, you.

Amnesia. Alzheimers. All sorts of dementia.

They make you forget who you are. Some more than others. You might retain some memories, often from when you were younger. Maybe you will gradually forget, maybe you will forget all at once. It doesn’t matter, you will still lose a part of you.

I’m sure I would never become the same person if I lost my memories. Maybe it would be a blessing, maybe it would be a curse. Maybe people would try to make me remember, maybe they would let me be. I would get a new beginning, a new start. And if I regain what I have lost, would I have been revived?

I think so. But I would still be different. I would be an experience richer. But if I never regained my memories?

My past self would be dead.

My body would be alive, I would look like and sound like the person the ones around me knew, but I wouldn’t be the same. I would never be the same person. I wouldn’t recall of those times my dear ones would speak about with fond smiles. I’m sure it would feel like they were telling me about a stranger I would never meet.

But I don’t know for sure.

I’ve never experienced how it feels to forget about yourself, how it feels to die. I can only speculate.

Many people die each day, more people than most probably think. There are more ways than one way for death to exist, and yet we don’t recognize it as dying. We claim that they are just forgetting, believing that we might one day will be able to give them back their memories. We don’t acknowledge that they have already, in a way, died. But we do acknowledge that they might not ever remember.