What's love got to do with it?

How can you love someone who is beyond any need for human love? If love is a decision to put another's welfare, if not first, then at least as a priority, to always want the best for them, etc etc - then how do you do that for someone who no longer has needs, who already has the best? So in other words, when you say you love someone who's dead, are you actually saying you love their memory, or that you loved them while they were alive? I suppose the emotional component of love can survive the other's death...