The Empty Chair

The Empty Chair

The holidays again. The worst times of the year except his birthday. Thanksgiving. Christmas. Chanukah. Kwanza. Times to be happy and celebrate. For them but maybe not for me. For me it is a time of an empty plate at the table. A remembrance of my child.

My child used to sit at that plate heaping turkey and potatoes on his plate. A smile on his eager face. But no more. No more will I see him and that plate will remain empty. Empty as my heart I fear.

And all around me will be celebrating and smiling while I feel I have little to celebrate or smile about. He is gone and his plate, his place at the table are without him. It is too much to bear it seems. I wish I could just go and skip the holidays. They are just days of pain and hopelessness.

I should have just stayed in bed where I feel most at home. Not get up, get dressed and pretend to be alright so as not to upset others on their day of happiness. “Okay everyone. We’ll go round the table and everyone will say what they are thankful for.” It will be my turn soon,. What am I to say? I have nothing to be thankful for. Yes I love my wife and my daughter but right now they do not compensate for the loss that digs into me.

Staring at the table, all set with tablecloth and linen. All the silverware in place but he is not where he should be. His chair will remain unused. The plate empty. The table was set for him too “so we would all remember him”. As if we could forget him. But that empty plate just will make me remember that I lost him.

Or will it? That plate, an emblem of what I lost is also a holder of what I gained from his life. That shiny white plate holds memories of him at the table. Eating with his mouth open. Reaching across the table. Not wanting to eat his vegetables.

The plate holds the joy I had and could have when he was with us in physical form. It contains my calling him from the TV to come and eat. And the smile he had when he saw that the meal was one of his favorites. That smile! So big and happy when he was enjoying himself. That smile that made the world light up.

And if I look into the empty plate I can just see that smile if I allow myself to do so. And I see memories that made us all glad and even some that made me upset but now can make me happy to recall them. That plate can recall the times when I had to send him away from the table to wash his hands and he’d come back with the same dirty hands having forgotten that soap was needed to get them clean. Or the times when he would either not want to eat what was served or ask for seconds and even thirds.

That plate can be empty or it can be full of the life he brought to us. The joys he set at our table. It can be a cause of pain or a source of joy that we had him at all. It can remind us of his death and what we lost, or all that we gained from his living. It actually is our choice to make. We can mourn at Thanksgiving or feel the joy and thanks that come from his having been our son. It may take a concerted struggle but it could be worth the effort.

We can fill that plate either with loss or with gain from having been blessed with his life and the exultation he brought us.

Introduction to Standing on One Foot

Our son Isaac died at the age of 26 in 2005. We have not been whole since. We carry on and even have days of happiness   with   our   surviving   daughter,   her   husband, grandchildren and some friends but we live trying to precariously balance death in life.

When Isaac died it was as if a leg were cut off and we lost our balance for a very long time. It is simply not easy to balance on one foot. Just try it. You may ha ve seconds of steadiness and control but then, imperceptibly something happens to disrupt your equilibrium. You begin to fall and have to put the other foot down. Try to imagine what it is like to not have the other foot. Can’t put it down and well, you fall.

That is what life is like after one loses a child. It is an eternity of trying to balance on one foot. Sometimes it can be maintained for a while but inevitably balance is lost and you fall down.

This is an account of losing a leg, falling down, getting up and then learning how to balance as best as is possible on one foot. It is the story and impressions of death, grief and resolution  to  live  again  without  a  significant  part  of  our lives.

Most books on grief and the death of a child tend to work in the mode of a journey from great pain, grief and then some sort of recovery into life. This book may not fully be one like that though it does finally get to some sort of new status in life. But maybe not a full recovery which may not exist. I am not at all sure that there is real revival or full

mending from the loss of a child. If there is, I fully admit I

have not yet wholly found it.

Just the other day after six years since our son’s death, I was struck, blindsided by a sudden realization that he was gone and would not be coming back. My life fell back into depression. Grief had snuck up on me again. Grabbed me as I sat there cross-legged in the calm belief that I was coping with it all well.

Yet I have to say that I am actually dealing with it better. The grief, the pain, the loss all have generally become less intense. Less immediate. But the longing to be with, to see, and to hold my son again has never gone away.

He did go away and left me with a phantom pain that exists most every day. Yes, I know tha t most books on grief and loss work their way to a point at which life goes on and there is  peace and calm. They can’t help it. They do not want to simply leave the reader with the hurt of the possibility that the loss of a child is an event that just does not disappear fully. Unlike a bad day at work or an intense sunburn that hurts like hell, burns like fire but does fade away and all is normal at some point. All is well again and the skin heals over so things are like they were before getting burnt. Not so for the death of a child.

The death of a child is such a traumatic experience that there is no other event that is strong enough to make it fade. The pain does diminish. The grief finds a place within the  daily  aspects  of  life.  The  excruciating  agony  of  loss does weaken into an everyday longing that sits at the back of the day like an imp just waiting for a chance to invade your     psyche.     Demanding    an    exorcism     of    and     by depression.   Life   becomes   livable   but   maybe   not   fully expandable.

Most books like to work to a climax at which life is again open and even happy. They are after all written to try and help  people  survive  grief  and  loss.  They  discuss  coping skills. They tell of how we made progress on the passage from  utter  despair  to  learning  to  live  with  t he  loss.  But along the way they leave out the pain and some of the raw reality of part of that journey.

This one will not leave them out. It won’t because too often grieving parents have experiences that they believe are aberrant or make them abnormal. From real physical pain and memories that don’t want to function properly to soul dragging depression to even thoughts of suicide. These are all normal if anything is normal after the loss of a child.

Much of the time, the books on losing a child and grief ar e written  trying  to  help  the  reader  learn  how  to  cope. Written   by   psychologists,   grief   practitioners   or   even parents who lost a child. This is normal for them to try and help with inspiring works that gloss over some of the realities, some of the anguish of the grief leaving readers wondering if their deeper, more painful journeys are somehow atypical. They are not. There is no typical grief.

This  book  shares  aspects  of  loss  and  grief  that  are  too often  left  out  of  the  journey  back  to  stasis  that  parents must take to survive and move on. It will try not to leave anything out so you know others have gone through what you   have   and   are   going   through   on   your   journey   to becoming more whole again and re-balance life with grief.

But it is after all my journey so I c an only relate what I went  through  from  the  losing of  balance in life,  to  guilt, depression,  thoughts  of  suicide,  even  brief  longings  for death  but  it  may  well  be  different  than  that  of  others. There are similarities in all bereavement it seems though. And these will be discussed through my own journey and my learning to balance on one leg and hop through life.