Editorial July 20, 1974 Issue

Comfort for Widows and Widowers

Naomi Price

Some people feel the desire to remarry after they have been widowed. After years of happy companionship, perhaps the loneliness of a vacant chair by the hearth is depressing. Women may find it hard to manage day-to-day affairs after having delegated much decision-making. Men may dread returning to an empty house. But as these individuals become better acquainted with the actual nature of their spiritually whole identities as offspring of God, the tough challenges of widowhood become easier to overcome without necessarily seeking another person to fill the gap. Ways appear to take them around a valley of separation and sorrow, up to an even higher sense of completeness and fulfillment than they had known before.

In a tender message to one widow—Mrs. McKinley, the wife of President McKinley who was so tragically assassinated in 1901—Mrs. Eddy writes: "My soul reaches out to God for your support, consolation, and victory. Trust in Him whose love enfolds thee." And she continues farther on, "Divine Love is never so near as when all earthly joys seem most afar." Then she concludes: " 'I knew that Thou hearest me always,' are the words of him who suffered and subdued sorrow. Hold this attitude of mind, and it will remove the sackcloth from thy home."^{ The First Church of Christ, Scientist, and Miscellany, p. 290;}

Many men and women have been wonderfully comforted after the passing of a spouse through the understanding of God's nearness. By holding in thought the actual, indissoluble unity of God, divine Love, the Father-Mother of all real being, and His idea, man, they have risen above sorrow and loneliness and been enabled to go forward to live useful, happy, fulfilled lives.

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