You simply defined consciousness as life, which seems like an unusual but also not very useful definition.

> an unusual ... definition

I don't think it's that unusual. It seems to me just to be a narrower version of panpsychism:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panpsychism

Someone that has recently dies has pretty much the same biology as when they were alive. The conciseness is the main difference, I would say.