Perhaps the greatest pain in love is losing the person loved to death or to the memory of that love. People we love may die or their love for us dies. Either way this imparts a sort of death that wounds the heart that loves. The wounds can bleed and fester through life. Only a love that loves without expecting to be loved in return can heal its own wounds. Selfless love survives loss because it heals itself. The reason it exists is only to love, nothing more, and death has no power over it.