People do not die for us immediately, but remain bathed in a sort of aura of life which bears no relation to true immortality but through which they continue to occupy our thoughts in the same way as when they were alive. It is as though they were traveling abroad.

Proust describes the psychological lag between a person’s physical death and our emotional recognition of it. In the first phase of mourning, the dead persist in memory with the same practical vividness they had in life: we still “consult” them inwardly, anticipate their reactions, and feel them as part of our daily mental landscape. This persistence is not presented as spiritual immortality but as a residue of habit and attachment—an “aura of life” sustained by routine, imagination, and the inertia of love. The comparison to someone “traveling abroad” captures how absence can initially feel temporary and reversible, delaying the full shock of irretrievable loss.