Perhaps the thing we yearn for most when a loved one passes on is to bring them back for just one more day. We yearn to hold them, tell them again how much we love them. This year especially has brought a new form of grief for many who, because of pandemic restrictions, have had to say goodbye to family and loved ones without the added comfort of being by their side. 

The Discoverer of Christian Science, Mary Baker Eddy, expressed similar feelings when her beloved husband Gilbert Eddy passed on after just five sweet years of marriage. At this point, Mrs. Eddy had founded her Metaphysical College; taught many classes of students; published the third edition of her textbook on Christian Science, Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures; and been ordained the pastor of her fledgling church. Although a 19th-century woman, she had demonstrated great self-sufficiency and was not dependent on her husband for her livelihood. But in addition to being one of the first of her students to advertise as a Christian Science practitioner, Gilbert was a tremendous aid to her in many aspects of her work, and she dearly missed his strong, gracious, and stalwart support. 

Nearly a month after his death, “she felt almost as though she never could be comforted while separated from her beloved Gilbert,” according to Robert Peel in Mary Baker Eddy: Years of Trial. In a letter to a friend, she described her husband as “ ‘strong, noble, and [with] the sweetest disposition and the most benevolent charitable nature I ever recognized in any person’ ” (p. 117).