When the holidays are approaching and festivities are being planned, for families who have lost a member — which is a lot of us — we often think of the empty seat. Where a beloved person once joined in, a place is now vacant.
In my case, it’s specifically the empty daybed at the edge of my mother’s round table in her informal dining room, where my big brother David always sat. The funky old metal-framed single bed that Mom had spray painted dark red and outfitted with a patterned tapestry and a bunch of colorful cushions, is pushed against the wall like a make-shift couch.
I think David appreciated that his seat of choice doubled as a place to lie down after he stuffed himself with a feast. He was an athlete and a doctor, so he had sometimes run 10 miles before Christmas breakfast following a long shift at the hospital the day before and was sincerely tired, as well as full.
Anyone who lives long enough loses someone from their family table and has to look at the empty seat in their lives. Holidays tend to exacerbate the sensation.
It’s been fifteen years now of visiting Mom’s house without David showing up for Christmas or Easter or birthdays or anything. Fifteen years of no one sitting on that day bed. On the occasions when my surviving brother Tommy and I meet up at her place for a bite together, we always take the same places we always have, as families often do; we flank Mom on either side, sitting in the antique wood and wicker chairs that surround the other three sides of the table. It’s an unspoken thing, done automatically out of habit, and now, out of reverence.
We don’t often talk about how vacant the day bed looks as we eat baked eggs and pastries or salmon and asparagus or whatever we’re grateful to have her serve us. But it’s amazing how present the absence of something can be. Even unspoken, and even after fifteen years.
That first Christmas after David fell while hiking in the mountains of Colorado and died suddenly, we assembled, as usual, minus one. Tommy’s son Christopher, who was seven then, noticed the unusual votive candle Mom had lit in the center of the table and asked, “Is that for Uncle Dave?” I always appreciate how much easier it is for kids to say the things we adults tend to stifle. Of course it was for Uncle Dave, and of course it made us all cry.
I can still see my handsome brunette brother crossing his hands over his belly and closing his eyes on that day bed. He’d lean back into the pile of pillows, making a joke about how he was just going to take a little nap right when we were about to move to the living room to unwrap gifts. Christopher and his little sister Emily would yell, “No, Uncle Dave! You can’t go to sleep now!” They would poke him and try to tickle him while he pretended to snore, until he would finally smirk, jump up, and chase them to the Christmas tree.
Anyone who lives long enough loses someone from their family table and has to look at the empty seat in their lives. Holidays tend to exacerbate the sensation. For years, that day bed, colorful though it is, looked like a black hole to me. It felt impossible that my brother wasn’t there to sit on it and crack jokes while we enjoyed each other’s company. I resented it reminding me of what had been, and what we’d lost. Though when one of Mom’s cats occasionally decided to curl up there, it felt like an affront.
Now that a bunch of years have passed, things have softened a bit. I can now smile when I think about my heroic sibling taking it easy at Mom’s place on the day bed. I sit in my usual chair and look across the dining room at the wall of mementos: a photo of him grinning at his college graduation, one with his arms around me and Tommy protectively, and the framed article from when he made the local paper for winning a big race. I feel happy he was part of our family holidays for as long as he was.
But I’m not sure I’ll ever be OK with anyone else sitting on the day bed, our empty seat. It will always belong to David.
Photo courtesy of our mom: David, at his seat on the daybed, Christopher, and Tommy.
Anne Pinkerton 
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