Today marks the one-year anniversary of my daughter’s passing. My emotional journey over Morgan’s unexpected death has taken many twists and turns, not following the textbook path of the five stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. My grieving phases were more meandering than linear. Lots of back-and-forth. Perhaps this is because I lost others close to me this year: my aunt, uncle, and two close friends.
Until recently, I didn’t consider myself old enough to see funerals replace most other social functions. Gatherings with friends and family seem to move through the stages of life: graduation parties, friend’s marriages, first birthdays, then, much later, funerals and memorial services. I imagine many other people would agree as they deal with their own sorrow in Covid Land.
Many “firsts” keep bringing me back to Morgan’s untimely passing. The first birthday she did not celebrate, the Halloween she missed (her favorite holiday), and the first Christmas without our laughing together. How many other families, I wonder, will have an empty chair at their table this year?
Some say that grief is the uninvited guest at every holiday gathering. When there’s an empty seat at the table, we’re reminded of the undeniable, inescapable reality that something is not right with our world. The holidays always bring with it assorted emotions, and for many, the experience of grief is the one that catches us the most off-guard. The holidays are markers of the passage of time and thus can bring with it their own unique blend of losses and change. While serving in the Navy, the empty chair at the Christmas table was mine. It was my wife and children back home, not me, who witnessed my absence. For me, watchkeeping, shipboard duties, and wardroom meals filled that day in the same way as any other day.
Now, it’s my turn to see the empty chair.
My father did not raise me to be comfortable feeling or expressing grief or sadness. My motto had long been “Keep Calm and Carry On,” despite my shortcomings at not always putting this into action. Yet therein lies a paradox. Muffling our grief takes a great deal of psychological energy, leaving us more exhausted than if we dealt with it face-on. Being accepting and compassionate through my loss requires me to be patient with myself and willing to make room for grief and invite it into my consciousness without getting stuck in it or allowing it to define my complete experience of the holidays.
Patience and compassion may show me that the empty chair is not really empty after all but filled with the warm memories of my daughter’s life, her infectious laugh, her silly jokes, her love of animals, her simple way of living. All of her.
