I prefer to think of them as more death-adjacent rather than comatose. These are the ones who are never going to wake up. They are here simply because someone, perhaps a lover, a sibling, some randomly assigned government drone, but a someone nevertheless, insists on keeping them somewhere. The fact that they are now nowhere matters not.
Consider them merely as the inspiration for maintaining the idea of the person that they used to be. Which is now all that exists. The concept of that once-person, filtered through someone else’s frame of reference. And here they are kept, an occasional reminder, a prompt.
He hated cabbage, of course, but he’d never say it to her face.
I never saw him dance, not once.
She and I, well, let me just say we never saw eye-to-eye about those people.
Eventually this little dangling scrap of false memory will decay and fade, that being the way of all things.
I find it all depressingly untidy. I would prefer a clean cut. You were and now are not. People should accept that and move on. Less mess that way.