What does it mean to be a person?
My sister has vascular dementia. It is a terrible disease. It robs one of personhood. She is not the person who was my sister. She looks like her, but there is no person there. She does not even know who she is. All her senses are intact; she can see, hear, touch, taste, and smell; outwardly, she looks like my sister. But her disease affects her cerebral cortex, where the sensory inputs are synthesized to create a person. This is how it works for you and me as well. I am not me until my cerebral cortex creates me. There is no self when this process is disrupted, as it is for her.
In our interactions with her, a fragment of who she was appears when some synapse happens that triggers a memory. In those moments, I could see her as my sister. Most of the time, she has no memory of the past or thoughts of the future. She exists in the moment.
She is not unhappy, as far as we can tell. She smiles and responds to our questions mostly incorrectly; for example, when asked if she recognizes me, she would sometimes say “bhaiya” (my brother), but at other times, “Kutta” or some other random name, then she would laugh. She likes to be spoken to and wants to hear stories but does not initiate a conversation.
The disease is progressive, and it only gets worse.
Seeing her has made me reflect on what it means to be a person.
