My Mother died rather suddenly when I was about twelve years old. It came as quite a blow to my two sisters and my father. My brother was too young at the time to realize what had happened. I had been raised in a Presbyterian Sunday School, and my understanding was that Mom was now in heaven with God. She was so good that I felt there could be no doubt of that, but I still felt a terrible sense of loss. I missed her so much. Even though I was surrounded by a loving family, there was a void that just could not be filled.
I found some comfort in religion, but there was no definitively healing answer to the loss I felt. This sense of loss continued through my highschool years. In my freshman year of college, I met a wonderful woman, whom I later married. She was and is a Christian Scientist, and we'd spend hours talking about its teachings. I began to gain a clearer conviction that God is our Life, and that since God is eternal, our true identity — which is made in His image and likeness — is also eternal. This strengthened my belief that Mom was going right on living and progressing in her understanding of God.
The healing of the sense of loss, though, took several years of prayer and study. Gradually I began to see that the nurturing qualities Mom expressed were also being expressed by those around me. Looking back over the years since her death, I saw so many instances where love had been shown to me — by my family, friends, and later by Christian Science practitioners. I began to see that there are no voids in God's love. As Mary Baker Eddy writes in Science and Health, "Divine Love always has met and always will meet every human need" (p. 494). Certainly one does need to feel loved and cared for. However, I was learning that the source of all true love is not human. The source is God, who is eternal and always with us.
