@rollingf
Great insight! I'm going further, and waaay out on a limb. Humor me?
The person is not the body. Flesh. Hair. Sweat. Saliva, and many other substances and fluids which I don't care to mention.
The person is the Soul (the foundation,down deep), and the Spirit (the penthouse with skylights) .
Our experience of a person is exposure to their Soul and Spirit, which over time are transferred into us and absorbed by us. That is who we "know." The fleshly body without those two things, S & S, is no more than a temporal container. A delivery vehicle.
Note, the biologically scientific study of epigenetics tends to bear out, cellularly, this methylation of genes at the cytosine level.
In the Material World (Sting- We are spirits in the material world), we are all caught up in what we can touch, see, taste, hear, and smell. We don't realize that this outer shell is not the person.
We had a great rabbi. He had a beard, eyes, nose, hands, feet, etc., but if that was all, then meh. In his presence, being, and sermons, he imbued us with his Spirit and Soul, which lives in us these many years since his flesh failed, and with which we imbue others. He lives in us and in everyone we embrace.
When the fragile and mortal body wears out, it's delivery job is done. The person's Spirit and Soul are "released," but during the "delivery period" -mortal life, the message(s) of the S & S were imparted to our Spirit and Soul (Soul mates?) which received those messages and internalized/incorporated them into us.
So, the essence of the person whose flesh wore out continues to live within us, as we go around sharing our S& S with others, until OUR fleshly messenger gives out, leaving those still breathing with the message(s) we delivered to them.
In Judaism this is dor l'dor- generation to generation. For the Succos holiday, all the Hebrew ancestors come to eat in the succah hut. In Christianity the Holy Spirit lives on in us after millenia, and we take the wine and bread, in case there is any doubt.
In Islam, it may be that of The Prophet (MABPWH).
Effectively, no one every really dies. The messenger (body) retires, leaving the essence of the person "living," and living within us. No need for touch, see, smell, hear, taste.
They are "in" us, not gone.
Remembering them is is nice, but too remote.
We must open OUR Soul and Spirit to 1. be in experience with what they left us, and 2. to take a "visit" from them should they be in the neighborhood (Succos). Do they come to you in dreams?
We throw words around like spirit, soul, soul mate, but they have no weight (21 grams?). We think the body is all there is because we can weigh it, like a pork chop, but why talk about the soul and spirit if they are no more than meaningless romantic concepts?
There is more to this existence, Horatio, than your philosophy foretells.