In the days following my mother’s passing, my brother, sister, and I stayed with our dad in our childhood home, handling details and sharing fond memories, a few lighthearted confessions and even some occasional, good-natured teasing. The closeness of family was so comforting. Those first few days I leaned heavily on my understanding that life, through God, is eternal, and not dependent on a limited concept of time or a finite number of years. In the Christian Science textbook, Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, Mary Baker Eddy writes, “Eternity, not time, expresses the thought of Life, and time is no part of eternity” (p. 468). With this assurance, I never expected that I would grieve. 

However, a few days after returning home, my thoughts became so clouded by grief that I’d forget things I’d done moments before. I would pick up the phone multiple times a day to call my mom with the latest news, only to weep uncontrollably when I’d realize she wasn’t going to answer. After several days feeling overburdened by my emotions, I knew it was time for me to get to the bottom of what was really going on in my thinking, and I began to look at some of my long-held beliefs about what it means to grieve.

I remembered a training course I’d taken many years prior, where I learned about how to help people cope with grief. There I was taught that, from a psychological standpoint, grief is a necessary step in the process of acceptance and healing after the death of a loved one.

But one might ask, what is the appropriate response in the face of grief? I believe it is to love absolutely and completely! An understanding of life as deathless never promotes an attitude of casualness, stoicism, or intolerance to the pain of others. In fact, this understanding illumines the always present, Christly love, flooding consciousness continuously. Love naturally relieves us of suffering and is truly liberating. It never judges or condemns our humanity; rather, love brings comfort, reaching us right where we are in our deepest moments of grief, our highest moments of joy, and everywhere in between.

As I prayed, I saw that I could choose to cope with loss by going through certain stages, but that I would only find relief from sadness, and possibly only temporarily. I wanted much more than that. I knew I could trust my spiritual instincts, those angel thoughts, assuring me that my mom’s true nature was intact. I wanted to look deeper and understand life as God knows it—as eternal.

To do this, I saw the need to step outside my limited concept of time. Mary Baker Eddy explains that “one moment of divine consciousness, or the spiritual understanding of Life and Love, is a foretaste of eternity” (Science and Health, p. 598). As I considered this statement, it became clearer to me that eternity wasn’t measured by human time with a finite number of minutes, hours, and days, but that eternity is understanding unending life as God sees it. 

But my life still seemed full of calendars and beeping clocks counting each sorrow-filled moment of missing my mother. I wondered how do we let go of our reliance on a human sense of time and uncover the healing realization of our spiritual existence? 

Love brings comfort, reaching us right where we are in our deepest moments of grief, our highest moments of joy, and everywhere in between.

As I prayed to overcome the grief encompassing my daily life, I began by focusing my thought less on what my schedule demanded of me and instead listened quietly for direction from God. I acknowledged that God is divine, ever-present Love, caring for every detail of my life. God is the source and reason for all my activities, illuminating the understanding that my days are the unfoldment of His perfect plan for me. I am constantly interacting in God’s ordered universe—not for a time, but for eternity. By holding to this spiritual perspective—which is the truth of what is really going on in all my daily encounters, and applying this spiritual sight, or divine inspiration, to every aspect of my life, I could gain freedom from the demands of time and see myself, and others, as an integral idea in God’s eternal plan.

I stilled my thought, asking God to guide me away from self-imposed limitations and to lead me toward better understanding my spiritual and eternal nature. As my thought yielded to God, I could feel my concept of eternity solidifying. It was no longer an intangible idea reserved for some future place and time. 

Soon I saw that my weekly tasks didn’t need to be limiting or stressful, or possibly sidelined by grief, because God is the source of all my activity. As I continued to obediently listen for God’s perpetual guidance, I felt free to see and live my life as one seamless, harmonious whole existence. This was my “foretaste of eternity.”

I realized that eternity is not only for me and my mother, but also for all God’s creation. Over the years, my study of the Bible, rich with examples of men and women proving man’s inheritance from God of dominion over sickness, sin, and, yes, even death, has taught me that the real man and woman of God’s creating never truly dies. What appears in our human experience as death is a misconception; an incorrect assumption based on a limited view of life as dependent on what we see physically. 

Mrs. Eddy explains that “man is immortal, and the body cannot die, because matter has no life to surrender. The human concepts named matter, death, disease, sickness, and sin are all that can be destroyed” (Science and Health, p. 426). Jesus gave us proof of deathless life through his resurrection and ascension, demonstrating his spiritual, timeless existence as the cherished child of God. We, too, can strive for this understanding.

Whatever the situation we are facing, divine Love is with us, guiding and healing. In Psalms it says, “Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me” (23:4). This is our promise of comfort, and during that time when I was grieving my mom’s death, I knew I could trust this promise as I was gently lifted out of the sadness I was feeling.

Healing did not depend on an acceptance of my mom’s death at all. It came from understanding that her existence in God is always intact. I have come to understand more of my mom’s spiritual nature and continual progress, as well as my own. As Science and Health says, “Eternity is God’s measurement of Soul-filled years” (p. 599).