Linked Queue ADT implementation, Lost node

Question

When I implemet the dequeue() method, and in the following code

    def dequeue(self): 
        if self.is_empty(): 
            print("The Queue is empty")
            return
        answer = self._head._element 
#---------------------
        self._head = self._head._next #here, what happens with the "lost" node, because i think it is lost by the linked list
#---------------------
        self._size -= 1
        if self.is_empty():
            self._tail = None
        return answer

Is that node retrieved by the garbage collector?, because when i lost the reference to that node, and i have no way to access it. The node is implemented as following within a LinkedList class.

class _Node:
   __slots__ = "_element","_next"
   def __init__(self, element, next): 
       self._element = element 
       self._next = next

Answer 1

Yep, it's a notation, and the garbage collector knows when to retrieve unused data.