Soul of a bike - and some off-topic wonderings

I read an interesting line some time back that said "I've had the same bike for 25 years, replaced the frame twice, and every component has been replaced." So is that a new bike, or just a reincarnation of the soul or spirit of the old bike? I had a bike I sold in order to buy my newest bike, but I wouldn't claim that that one is still, or became, the new one. In strictest terms I would look at it mechanically and say if you put a bike on the workstand and clamped it in there, replaced everything on it but never unclamped it, you could say you upgraded it. However, if you clamped an old seatpost into the stand, added a new frame and every other component, I would call that a new build, and thus a new bike is born. It seems like semantics; but there's an existentialist argument to be made that while it is completely changed, it is still your bike. Is it the soul that continues to live in the new form?

If the soul of the bike continues on in some new clothes, let's say, then when does the soul of your bike finally release from this world and let you share time with a new one, or at least a different one. If you change all the components, and the wheels and the frame, don't you have a different bike. Precisely where does the soul reside? Is it analogous to the human soul, which is yet to be concretely and definitively defined? For example, if a person gets all new organs but maintains their own brain-matter, we would presume they are the same person, and would contain or "have" the same soul. However, if a person receives significant head injury, loses consciousness forever and yet the rest of the body and organs function properly, we say that person is dead and gone. Their soul is no longer connected with the body. Perhaps it never was.

My immediate catalyst for this discussion follows from a task I've wrestled with recently. I have a relative who has lost a lung to cancer, and has significant cancer left in his body. For a while the doctors were treating him with chemo, but have stopped, saying that the chemo is killing him faster and more expensively than the cancer. So until his final breath, he will live at home knowing that his time is nigh. During this time while he's at home with his family, he has had a birthday, and therein lies my problem. Note that this next line is not to be taken as funny or sarcastic or any way like I'm trying to be comedic. What do you write in a birthday card to someone you know (and he knows) will be dead in the next 30 days or so. In fact, the hospice workers have given their opinion based upon experience with people in this situation, that he will be gone in under two weeks. This will be the last birthday card I send him. It may be the last communication we have, as it's difficult for him to talk on the phone, and additionally, throughout our lives we never really just called one another to chat, so it seems a little unnatural to try it now. Given that, could you write anything that would be worthwhile to someone you truly care about but have never had a particularly loving or caring conversation with? And on further extension, why don't we write/talk to people we care about NOW while they're alive and fully functional to comprehend our conversation instead of never saying a word until it's too late. Then perhaps we will stay up all night before the funeral trying to craft something to say about that person. It seems a peculiar ceremony to write a eulogy ABOUT someone when clearly you've had a lifetime to say those things TO the person but never did. The old saying is that there are two things certain in this world, death and taxes. Well friends, we pay our taxes every year; but I bet it's been more than a year since you told someone in the last generation (like your mom or dad) what you really appreciate about them, or about the way they raised you. I know I've never uttered a word like that. Perhaps the time has come.

Too often on the TV and in the movies we see the same scene played out: one character lies dying in a bed, maybe in a coma, but certainly unconscious or unable to respond while another character finally decides to tell the dying one how much he loved him or respected him or enjoyed him or whatever. Maybe the media has programmed us to wait until the very last second to communicate anything meaningful. But then, it's always just a few seconds too late.