I fear death a lot and it sort of ties in to my weird concept of memory. If we take the idea of consciousness as experienced by the mind as it functions in the

I fear death a lot and it sort of ties in to my weird concept of memory. If we take the idea of consciousness as experienced by the mind as it functions in the present moment, the past does not exist at all. It has never existed. This concept of mind is separate to the biological realities of memories in the brain, it's the unknown bit that transforms the grey goo into me. I have been annihilated an infinite amount of times since I started writing this message. I have only lived because of my memory of the past presents I experienced. By which I mean the sensation of being alive and having lived is intimately tied up with memory. For past events I don't remember I was effectively dead. I only lived my life because I'm able to live all of it currently. Rather than life being a column of infinitely small slices of time building up they're all occurring in the present moment. While I'm lying in bed writing this I'm also at school, at swim classes, on work experience, at university, at my first job interview, etc because they are events I know to have happened and experienced because I don't just replay them, in order for my brain to have knowledge of them they're happening concurrently. If I don't remember these did they ever actually happen? From my perspective of the person I currently consider to be me? What happens after a catastrophic brain injury or during a disease like Alzheimers? I don't think this makes any life worth less but from the perspective of current you it doesn't take the end of life for the death of your current 'life', the impression of an unbroken chain of having lived that forms you, in the snapshot of the present. During temporary short term memory loss do you effectively die? I know it all sounds very confused but the nature of memory, existence and death freaks me out. As a counterpoint during Alzheimers a patient will experience bursts of lucidity so obviously there's a solid state backup of the past, distinct from the present, but I get positively vertiginous thinking it over.