You're listening to shortwave from NPR.

COVID-19 has claimed the lives of five million people around the world, which means that globally speaking,

there are hundreds of millions of people grieving the death of a loved one.

Grief is like someone turned up the volume dial all of a sudden.

And the grieving process can look very different from person to person.

Psychologist Mary Frances O'Connor says the range of emotions is wide.

Commonly there's panic, there's anxiety, there's sadness, there's yearning,

there's also difficulty concentrating and confusion about what happens next.

Mary Frances says it's like the spin cycle of a washing machine.

Our whole world turns upside down.

When we have the experience of being in a relationship, the sense of who we are is bound up without other person.

The word sibling, the word spouse, implies to people.

And so when the other person is gone, we suddenly have to learn a totally new set of rules to operate in the world.

And to do this, our brains are processing a lot.

Mary Frances studies what happens neurologically when we experience grief.

I really think of grieving as a form of learning.

And the background is running all the time for people who are grieving.

Today on the show, we get into the nitty gritty of grief.

Why we experience it and how the brain registers it as a learning process,

just as much as a healing process.

You're listening to Shortwave, the Daily Science podcast from NPR.

Mary Frances, thank you so much for joining me to start.

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