When my wife, Lindsay, passed away, my belief in God was shattered. And, since then, I have flipped back and forth. Even today, I am not really sure what I believe anymore.
On the one hand, I felt myself needing to continue believing in Him; as that would mean that Lindsay was in Heaven. But, on the other hand, how could He be real? I mean, if He was, why would He take her away from us?
As well as my grief, I have continued to struggle with this for almost 8 years now.
A few days ago, and, strangely, on the same day I had just decided I wanted to start a blog, I read the following article, and I felt my spirits lifted.
You want a physicist to speak at your funeral. You want the physicist to talk to your grieving family about the conservation of energy, so they will understand that your energy has not died. You want the physicist to remind your sobbing mother about the first law of thermodynamics; that no energy gets created in the universe, and none is destroyed.
You want your mother to know that all your energy, every vibration, every Btu of heat, every wave of every particle that was her beloved child remains with her in this world. You want the physicist to tell your weeping father that amid energies of the cosmos, you gave as good as you got.
And at one point you’d hope that the physicist would step down from the pulpit and walk to your brokenhearted spouse there in the pew and tell him that all the photons that ever bounced off your face, all the particles whose paths were interrupted by your smile, by the touch of your hair, hundreds of trillions of particles, have raced off like children, their ways forever changed by you.
And as your widow rocks in the arms of a loving family, may the physicist let her know that all the photons that bounced from you were gathered in the particle detectors that are her eyes, that those photons created within her constellations of electromagnetically charged neurons whose energy will go on forever.
You can hope your family will examine the evidence and satisfy themselves that the science is sound and that they’ll be comforted to know your energy’s still around. According to the law of the conservation of energy, not a bit of you is gone; you’re just less orderly.
Aaron Freeman, Physicist
For someone who is having trouble believing in God, I feel that this article has really helped me. I know that my wife lives on; whether in Heaven or as a force travelling through our world, and maybe beyond.
Obviously, our loved ones continue to live on in our hearts and memories. But it seems to me that it can comfort us a little more to know that they live on in so many other ways too.
The Triggered Limey 