The Empty Chair


Last night I got to thinking about empty chairs. The people who sat in them. The new makoms people look for and really that hard emotional feeling that tends to rip your heart out. It's the same way you can pass by a house of a friend who once lived there, and they are gone.

We said goodbye to a Sharon congregant on his way to vacation this morning and in that shul row also sat a man who committed suicide (his unveiling is today - - we had no idea that he was in such  distress - - that was an awful oversight), another fighting cancer, one who swapped his seat due to aveilut, and an elderly gentleman who changed his seat for better comfort than sitting in a corner. And then there's my husband's seat. Next Monday, it will be empty and filled someplace else (with so many shul options in Beit Shemesh, not sure where).

Emptiness is a hard feeling. It's different than missing someone. The people you miss you can contact, follow up with and while the friendship won't entirely be the same, it simply adapts. That piece is very much dependent on effort.

Emptiness is a painful feeling in which gravity shifts as such you realize there's no return. You avoid looking and internalizing it because it's uncomfortable. I got stuck in that thinking and for the first time, felt really awful since the passing of my father (in which case I did have a makom, changed it and later still could never find my place).

That empty chair will be there.
I have no words of wisdom.
It just sucks.

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