Chairs

Christiana Rasmussen wrote about chairs in her grief post last week. I imagine she will say something more about it this week, but I’m also going to run with the image. You can read her posts at www.secondfirsts.com.

She also interviewed me for her Dear Life podcast via Zoom. She was sitting at home in her chair while I was at home in mine, and it felt like we were in the same place, sharing our experiences of grief over a table. It’s rare to find someone who understands everything you are saying about grief without having to explain.

 

After years of sending notes back and forth in response to something the other had written, it was delightful to finally talk with her face to face, as it were. Our freewheeling conversation covered a variety of topics like the wide landscape of grief, the great compassion that exists in the grief community, how grief opened the door to growth and wisdom that we never expected, and whether or not to date again after the loss of a spouse. 

 

Christina asked me to summarize grief in one word. After a moment I said, “wilderness.” Grief had been a wilderness because my friends were young and didn’t know how to help after my wife Evelyn died. It was a rugged terrain without any paths to follow, and I had to find my way through territory that held both terror and beauty, with periods of darkness that opened to vistas of awe. You can listen to our conversation at http://www.dearlifepodcast.com/episodes/ep78

 

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Christina’s visual imagery of chairs was striking. 

Chairs can speak of presence as well as of absence. They can hold feelings of joy, loss, love, despair, and hope. After a loved one dies, chairs remind us who is missing. They are, perhaps, the most visible and heartbreaking reminder. 

 

Every time we sit down to eat, there is an empty chair at the table where we expect to see our loved one. In the place where we used to share what went on in our day, and talk about what to do tomorrow, there is silence. In the evening, when we sit down to watch TV, listen to music or read, there is an empty recliner or place on the couch where they should be, and rather than relax, we grieve.

 

There are other empty spaces— the bathroom where they would get ready for the day, the desk where they did their work, the kitchen where they cooked, the bed where they slept, and the bench in the park where we would sit and watch nature. All are empty now. Yet, for a long time, we anticipate seeing our loved one moving around the house, and when we don’t, the finality of their death sinks in a little further.

 

We sit in the emptiness of the day and listen to their silence.

 

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When friends come over to hear how our grief is going, we add a chair to the table for them to sit. While the words they share are important, their presence may mean more, because this tells us that we’re not alone. Some of the chairs that we’ve reserved for friends are empty, because they couldn’t deal with grief.

 

There is another table, an imaginary one where the memories of friends who have died sit. For me, there are chairs for Molly who died from a brain tumor, Giff who died of AIDS, Dan who was murdered in Greece, John who died of cancer, and several friends who died in their 20s from car accidents.

 

There are chairs for family members who passed on—the grandparents I didn’t think to get to know better before they died, my mother who was lost first to dementia and then to death (she has two chairs, side by side), a father who kept his emotions inside until he died, and a chair or two that I thought might be filled with smiling, rambunctious children one day, but were not.

 

There are chairs for our mentors who continue to influence our lives, and chairs for writers we never met, yet whose words continue to challenge us to explore deeper into life’s mountains and dream larger. 

 

            When we sit in ancient cathedrals, we feel the presence of people where centuries of devotion and incense have soaked into the wood and stone. When we sit outdoors, the wisdom and comfort of nature remind us that we are part of something greater than ourselves.

 

Chairs are doors that help us see beyond the boundaries of time and feel the presence of love.