Perhaps it was because she had always been such a salty soul that on the drive to Tennessee my thoughts seemed to focus on the contents of a shaker of salt. Some would call it sodium chloride. To them, it is an innocuous chemical. It’s base elements would hardly be palatable, or even safe, if consumed separately, yet, the precise combination renders it a tempting treat to us taken in moderation. How important it is for each quanta, electron, proton, and neutron, to be in just the right location for our universe to exist. Indeed, even for us to exist.

That unique combination of protein; nitrogen and carbon atoms, that formulate the amino chains, the DNA that becomes the very blueprint for our existence – how fragile and wondrous it is that you are you, and I am me, and she was she. But is this all that we are? Certainly none of us are ourselves alone. The cells that are me are formed from the same cosmic stuff that is you, that is the grass, the air, the sun, the ocean; yes the salty ocean.

Take that simple compound of sodium and chlorine and then add it to our favorite refreshment – water (another simple compound) – and once again the rules change. The new suspension becomes an electrolyte; a formulation found in abundance not only in the seven seas but within us as well. It is a magic liquid that conducts electricity. A tiny electron flowing from one molecule to the next to the next and the next until in a tiny burst of light it becomes free. A spark. The spark of life? Indeed. Each move of muscle depends on it. Each firing neuron in our brain, each memory, dream, or cognition – a spark of electricity through the electrolytic saline brine.

Is it this flowing of electrons through our bodies that constitutes our life though? When it stops we certainly will cease to be alive in the biological sense. But indeed, bits of us die biologically each day. A constant birth of new cells sustains us day by day, year by year all the while with each passing moment some tiny cell within us ceases to function and dies. When the length of the telomeres in our DNA becomes so short that our cells can no longer reproduce then biological life ends this is certain.

Is it, perhaps, the existence and reproduction of our DNA that constitutes our life? Certainly our unique DNA exists from the moment the sperm and ovum combine. Indeed the DNA is present in the cells that die. So, the unique combination of matter that defines us is certainly not us. Perhaps it is the combination of that spark and our unique genetic code that is us… but, again, that is present from inception. Are we really us until we know we are us? And, how do we know we are us excepting for the existence of our brains?

Indeed, even though parts of her body one by one were ceasing to function, and in the last days the proper functioning of her brain may have been in question, indeed we knew she was still alive. But is a brain any more than a storage device for memory? As electrical thought, short term memory, the time we call now fades away, it is stored within the very cells of our brains in chemical codes, or, long term memory. Aren’t we more than the sum of our memories? Aren’t we more than the sum of our experience? And, if we are more, what then?

Perhaps it is, at some physiological level, that the core of our being is the combination of neural activity, both electrical and chemical, within a unique genetic pattern. When the brain ceases to function then our finite existence would certainly be at its end. The stuff that is us would return to that from whence it came, and, in some form or another find it’s way into another life and the physiological circle goes on. But is that what is us? And, is that inevitably the most we can aspire to?