Celebration and Sorrow

I love the holidays.  As each year winds down, the holidays usher in a time spent on reflection and being mindful of the abundant overflow we find ourselves in and being truly grateful for all that we celebrate in this life.

I love the fellowship of the holidays when our houses are full of friends and family and we overindulge in laughter.  I can never seem to get enough of all the things and people that make life special and make the hardships and difficulties bearable.  Throughout the holidays, I find myself taking inventory of my life and acknowledging all that is good and right.  It's a time for being present.

And so as I began my love fest with the 2017 holiday season, my long-term love affair was interrupted by a morsel that a friend had posted on her timeline that simply read, "Happy Thanksgiving to family and friends near and far.  Prayers for those with empty chairs this Thanksgiving."  With those words, my Kirbyoblongata was thrown into disarray. With a  propensity to over-think everything, I couldn't get the words, "empty chairs" out of my head.  To say that I spent a little bit of time that day contemplating the meaning of those words would be a tremendous understatement.  My holiday discourse was now embarking on a detour that would take me onto an uncharted journey of thoughts and memories that would forever change my view of the holidays.

We all have so many reasons to celebrate, be thankful and feel fortunate during the holidays, however, I was now faced with the thought that for so many people, myself now included, what the holidays are marked by, more than anything else, is absence.  Even when surrounded by the laughter, noise and activity of family and friends, like so many others, I now found my eyes and my heart drifting to that quiet, unassuming space occupied by an empty chair.

In my ever contemplating mind, I began to be aware of another side of the holidays that maybe I had forgotten or perhaps never knew at all.  This one simple phrase had now shown me that even though the holidays are supposed to fortify our gratitude and deposit peace within our hearts, they also have a way of magnifying loss.  Right in the middle of our celebrations, the holidays can have a spectral way of reminding us of our incompleteness and our mourning.  While the symbolism of an empty chair is different for everyone, it is equally intrusive for all.

For some, the chair is a memorial, the bleak reminder of what was and no longer is, of that which will never be again.  It is a face for which we close our eyes to remember, a hand we stretch to hold and a voice we strain to hear.  It is a household headstone where we grieve and remember.  For others, the chair is a vigil; the eternal hope of a prodigal returning home.  It is a place of painful but patient waiting for what is unlikely, yet still possible. For many, the empty chair is a fresh wound from a battle whose aftermath is now silence.  It is a reminder of a relationship destroyed. 

For me, this year marked the first time that I was mindful of the empty chair next to me as I celebrated Thanksgiving with my family.  Amongst the festivity of our Thanksgiving feast, the chair reminded me of one of our children lost before birth; of a voice never heard; of a childhood gone before it began.  I sat motionless for a moment unsure of the emotion that was gripping at my heart.  It was as if there was a deep, mortal wound that had gone untreated.  An emptiness in my soul that had never been mended.  It was a nightmare with whom I had never made peace. 

This would normally be the place in my blog where I would offer up some joke or anecdote that would sum up everything and make us all feel good about ourselves.  Or, maybe now would be a good time to say how the empty chair is actually a blessing because it reminds us me that in our life's journey there will be both good and bad times and that God's grace is sufficient.  But there will be none of that.  In some strange way I feel like, as humans, we all sit together around the same incomplete table.  This year I felt an unfamiliar pain, one that taught me that it is possible to have celebration even if it is accompanied by sorrow.  We've all lost someone.  We've all experienced the pain that has come from loving and losing. 

For the first time in my life I understood that there is a paradox between loving and being wounded simultaneously.  For the first time, this year I believe that I finally made peace with the empty chair that I had kept hidden away for so long. 

As we celebrate the holidays this year, may we all make peace with the holidays and with our empty chairs.

Be Well.

Bill