Personal Summary: Who Was Madison Gaither?

Who was Madison Gaither?

On February 10th, 2015, Madison Gaither was in a tragic car accident leaving her in an unresponsive state surviving only by means of a mechanical ventilation system. The doctors determined she had no brain functioning, and family decided to withdraw life-sustaining care May 3rd. She was pronounced dead at 5:32pm. At the memorial in her honor, friends remember her as “independent” and “funny,” and family say she was “bright and gifted.”

Who was Madison Gaither? Her death was pronounced at 5:32, but was she gone before then? If she was merely a physical body in the hospital bed, then where was Madison? This is not a discussion of when or where life ends or begins, but rather what defines the self, how we function in

However, I disagree with all of these views; there is a distinct self in each and every living human being. The Oxford dictionary describes the self as “a person’s essential being that distinguishes them from others.” In Jim Holt’s Why Does the World Exist that states, “To say ‘I exist’ is just to assert the existence of a certain more or less continuous bundles of memories, perceptions, thoughts, and intentions. What makes me me and you you is our distinctive bundles” (258). What made Madison Madison was that she was a unique being with not only a unique genetic makeup, but also a unique personality and life experience; there was never anyone exactly like her and there never will

The bigger picture here is how all of the 7 billion collective selves out there situate themselves in the world. We can start small by asking, “What was Madison’s purpose in the world, and what would the world be like if she never existed?” You can argue that she was just one person, merely a small, admissible speck in the eye of the universe. But Rivka Weinberg argues something different: “Our physical smallness relative to the Earth and the universe is taken by some to imply insignificance and, in turn, our absurdity. But absurdity occurs when things are ill-suited to their purposes, and neither human size nor the space allotted to humans is ill-suited to human purposes… we’re neither too small nor too large to do what we want to do.” Madison’s existence was not absurd, nor was it by chance. She was not born into this world for herself, but as an essential piece to the puzzle of life. Albert Einstein once said that “strange is our situation here on Earth. Each of us comes for a short visit, not knowing why… however, there is one thing we do know: that we are here for the sake of others.” Madison created meaning for her life by the way she affected others. Her mother describes life without her as “unimaginable,” and her friend describes it as “lonely.” From the expression she wore on her face to what she decided to eat for breakfast, each and every decision she made had an impact, positive or negative, on someone