To achieve 1) a single global cutbuffer accessed by both ctrl-c/ctrl-v and highlight/middle mouse (synced CLIPBOARD and PRIMARY) and 2) the persistence of the selection after the source window closes, you can use autocutsel and clipit simultaneously. Running autocutsel -s CLIPBOARD & autocutsel -p PRIMARY & will synchronize CLIPBOARD and PRIMARY, while clipit -d & persists selections. I also prefer to store bit of my selection history, so my .xinitrc contains a line for clipmenud as well.