When a loved one dies, there is sorrow and loneliness; but this sense of loss is rooted in attachment to the form independently of the soul. It is the form that has vanished, not the soul. The soul is not dead; in its true nature it has not even gone away, for it is everywhere. Nonetheless, through attachment to the body, the form was considered important. All longings, desires, emotions, and thoughts were centered upon the form; and when through death the form disappears, there is a vacuum, which expresses itself through missing the departed one.
If the form as such had not come to be surcharged with false importance, there would be no sorrow in missing the one who has passed away. The feeling of loneliness, the lingering memory of the beloved, the longing that he or she should still be present, the tears of bereavement, and the sighs of separation-they are all due to false valuation, the working of Maya.
When an unimportant thing is regarded as important, we have one principal manifestation of the working of Maya. From the spiritual point of view it is a form of ignorance.
-Extracted from Discourses, 7th Ed., p373