To me, asking the question "Is that person alive?" shows the decreased importance of being alive. We can find an old letter written by Grandma. At the moment, she might be alive or not but the letter stands as a message, as evidence of her thought and we can tell what she conveyed and understand what she was telling us, independently of her heartbeat at that time. In other words, we don't need her to be alive. In a limited sense, Grandma transcends death with writing.
Of course, there are limits and conditions. It helps a great deal if we know the language she used to write and if we are conversant with the times of her life. Recent thinking about making a sign or communication that lasts 10,000 years while worrying about some radioactive materials points out how language and writing and speech change in just 500 years, never mind 10,000.
As I age, there is an increased probability that I will die, come to the end of the time of being alive. So, asking if a person is alive is not nonsensical or pointless.
These days, with handy voice recorders and video cameras, we can do even more to keep aspects of a person handy and useful regardless of the heart beat of that person. I think the well-known video taken with a cellphone camera of the murder of George Floyd shows the effect of many citizens carrying quick to use cameras everywhere.
There is another aspect of words, spoken and written, that matters. The phrase "talk therapy" emphasizes the fact that we have active, internally articulate minds and emotions that can only be partially visited and understood using words. Progress is being made for instruments to be able to perceive what I am doing with my mind and emotions by other means than words I speak or write, but we have a long way to go before we can match self-created words as a tool of explaining what's inside.
