A Place at the Table

This has been our first holiday season without our son.  We planned well…new activities and traditions to keep him present, letting go of a few traditions that would just be too painful to experience without him, and allowing ourselves to stay present with family and friends.  There has been love and laughter.  Sadness too…but manageable.  In truth, we did very well.

But then the penny turned up.

Do you recall the film Somewhere in Time?  The protagonist is able to time travel through the power of his own thoughts by keeping only the time and place to which he wishes to go alive and present around him.  But he forgets a modern penny in his waistcoat pocket.  It is a penny from his actual time that he pulls out unwittingly and then is instantly brought back to this time, unable to return to the past where he longs to be.

We pulled out the penny.

It came by way of a place card.  My extended family is large, and when we gather at my mother’s house, we have place cards around the table.  The place cards are used year after year.  But this year, I was asked if I’d like my son’s place card as a keepsake—to perhaps put in a memory box.

Now, here’s what I know.  The place card was handed to me with thoughts only of love.  I know the individual who offered it loves my son and me and wishes with all her heart to make this agony better.  But I cannot feel any of that.  All I feel is that there is no longer a place for my son at the table…in her eyes at that moment, it was time for his place to be removed.  His place card would no longer be needed.  Moving forward, the space he occupied will have closed in.  His chair will not be empty: it simply will not exist.

The truth is, the deepest fear I have in all this heartbreak is that my son will be forgotten—that the space he takes in the lives and hearts of those who knew him…know him…will close in—that only we (his mom, dad, and brother) will hold his place in our hearts and lives.  For all others, he will be resigned to a memory box.  He will be a card that shows he once belonged to a family, but he no longer has a place.

If there is anything I need, it is to know there is always a place at the table for my son.

If there is anything I can control, it is to be sure there is always a place at the table.

If I am to breathe, there must always be a place.