When someone leaves, they are, in effect, saying: There are going to be these important parts of my life—happy moments, sad moments, difficult times, joyous times—but I do not want you, from now on, to be part of any of them. This is such a difficult pill to swallow because your heart, over the years, has been molded to the needs of the other and has grown attached to the sparkles they bring. That heart will even miss the moments of anguish and heartache it once endured. But none of that includes you anymore. You have no right to be part of it anymore. It is even inappropriate to ask. And if you do, you must always make sure that it is at the same level as a polite How do you do? or How have you been?—the kind a stranger would ask—so as not to give the impression that your relationship is still an intimate one.
I am convinced that the same parts of the brain that give amputees phantom pain cause your heart to ache when that once-special person is no longer part of your life. And I can’t help but wish that, like amputees, we had a way to manipulate a mirror so that a once-existing piece of one’s heart could appear again—even if just briefly, so that we could believe it was never lost at all.
Khadim Zaman's Blog 