Nope, this is no existential question (although...). Everybody's talking about "When will Bitcoin die", but what if you die, and your family don't find your key, or don't understand it, or think it's only a useless sheet of paper with some code on it, or simply throw it away... Does this mean the currency's gone forever?
I find the possibility of this event rather realistic (yup I don't believe in eternal life), so that means that someday there might be 21M BTC but only 18M (and counting down...) is left in the market?
If it happens as you said, of course the bitcoin we have will not be usable and will be buried forever, unless your family understands it and knows the bitcoin password you have then they can use bitcoin you have and can do transaction on bitcoin that you have.