What happens in the brain when someone you love dies — and how to overcome it with time.
It was a crisp night in June, the sky bright from the light of the full moon. I stopped at a gas station to fuel up before heading to the hospital to see my father. Three months after heart surgery, his newly replaced valve had begun driving bacteria into his brain, causing multiple strokes. He was dying.
I was embarrassed, ashamed and, most of all, in despair — not just because my dad was dying, but also because I was losing my mind. But I know now I was not alone: Frequently, humans who have experienced grief can recall incidents in which their brains seemed to stop functioning. If these things can happen to a neurologist who understands brain biochemistry, what hope was there for me?After a loss, the body releases hormones and chemicals reminiscent of a “fight, flight or freeze” response. Each day, reminders of the loss trigger this stress response and ultimately remodel the brain’s circuitry. The pathways you relied on for most of your life take some massive, but mostly temporary, detours and the brain shifts upside down, prioritizing the most primitive functions.
According to Helen Marlo, professor of clinical psychology at Notre Dame de Namur University in California, that’s not unusual. People who are grieving may lose their keys several times a day, forget who they’re calling mid-dial and struggle to remember good friends’ names. What I hadn’t fully grasped in the early days of my grieving is that the brain and the mind, while inextricably linked, are completely separate entities. Like the parts of a car engine, the two feed off of each other. That’s why my amygdala sounds an alarm when I see a grandfather playing with his grandchildren at the park. It’s because the brain triggers a stress response attached to my feelings of loss.