Mary-Frances O’Connor: Not One, Not Two
After a loved one dies,
they are clearly no longer with us in the physical world,
which each day proves to us.
On the other hand, they are not gone,
because they are with us in our brain and in our mind.
The physical makeup of our brain—the structure of our neurons—
has been changed by them.
In this sense, you could say that a piece of them physically lives on.
That piece is the neural connections protected within our skull,
and these neural connections survive in physical form
even after a loved one’s death.
So, they are not entirely “out there,”
and they are not entirely “in here,” either.
You are not one, not two.
That is because the love between two people,
that unmistakable but usually indescribable property,
occurs between two people.
Once we have known love,
we can bring it into our awareness,
we can feel it emerge and emanate from us.
This experience reaches beyond
the love for the flesh and bones of the person
we once knew on this earthly plane.
Now loving is an attribute of us,
regardless of who we share it with,
regardless of what is given to us in return.
This is a transcendent experience,
a felt sense of being loving without needing anything in return.
In the very best moments together,
we learned to love and to be loved.
Because of our bonded experience,
that loved one and that loving are a part of us now,
to call up and act on as we see fit
in the present and the future.
Mary-Frances O’Connor, PhD
The Grieving Brain
The Surprising Science of How We Learn from Love and Loss