there’s an empty chair in everything i do
It might sound like a small thing, but I don’t know how to eat anymore.
Not really.
Not now that they’re gone.
I used to think I was grown. I’ve been away from home. I’ve lived with people, lived alone, lived in cities they never saw. I’ve eaten in different countries, different rooms, rushed breakfasts, late-night dinners, burnt things, microwaved things, skipped things. I’ve made full meals and emptied them into the bin.
And still. I don’t know how to eat now.
Because all my life, no matter where I was, I was eating away from them. Not without them. That was the difference. They were still in the world. My parents were alive. Breathing somewhere. I could imagine them doing something as ordinary as lifting a spoon. I could call. I could picture my mother by the stove. My father sitting at the end of the table. I could imagine their voices, even when I couldn’t hear them.
And now?
Now they’re just… gone.
Not in another room. Not busy. Not on a trip. Gone.
And no one tells you how brutal the silence gets.
I sat down to eat today. I made a beautiful meal. My husband said it smelled lovely. My children came running down the stairs. We held hands and said the grace. Everyone dug in. The table was full of life.
And I looked up. And I broke.
Because for the first time, I truly understood that my father is not sitting across from me. That my mother is not beside him. That they will never sit at my table, or taste my cooking, or see the life I built from the love they gave me.
They weren’t there at my wedding.
They never held their grandchildren.
They didn’t get to see the version of me who finally figured things out, who started healing, who started loving, who finally forgave herself for not calling back every time.
They didn’t get to see me become someone they would be proud of. And maybe that’s the part I can’t swallow.
There’s this one seat at every table, in every room, in every part of my life now. It’s always empty, but it’s never unoccupied. Their absence takes up space like a person. It lingers. It watches. It aches.
And I’m just here, spoon in hand, trying to learn how to eat again.
Trying to learn how to live again.
Trying to stop looking up, expecting them to be there.
Because they’re not.
And grief doesn’t knock. It just sits down. Across from you. In their chair.
And eats nothing.
In AA and NA there is often a chair, purposely left empty, to remember the addict that is not in the room, perhaps waiting to find the strength to try a break their bounds or have broken the bounds of this existence and carried on elsewhere.
I love the theme. I love that the act of eating (I am struggling with this, so I came at the piece from a completely different angle) is the equivalent of the moon. How the moon is often held between lovers or families, that wherever they may be they both will be staring at the same moon and touching each other in that magical way.
I do not believe in an after life, not in the Christian way, of prancing through the fields of Elysium.
But they say people never die until the last thought of them leaves this world. So, my grandmothers, dead for 30plus years, still exist as I remember them.
And knowing they would be proud? Well. This is the simplest thing. You know they would be proud. In thinking you wish that they could see you now, they have seen you now, even if only in your own mind's eye. And that is magical. Not anything woo-woo. But that you had a relationship that you knew they would be proud of you, that you thought of them, and they of you, even during moments far away. So maybe, I can't tell you anything, but maybe leave a chair as they do for Elijah during Passover. And maybe, each first bite is a prayer and a thanks, an aloha, both hello and goodbye, and an acknowledgement that they are closer then they ever were, as they are firmly residents in your heart.
Dealing with absence that lingers💔💔