Forgetting yourself

Can you lose your identity while still being alive? Yes. I saw my mother lose hers, then regain something of it. One day she could do The Times crossword puzzle. A few weeks later she began to worry that there were small people crawling over the food in the supermarket. Only weeks after that she had forgotten how to speak, how even to stand up and sit down. She was a shell of herself. She couldn’t communicate and was detached from what she had been. Drugs and time brought back some of her pers...