Empty Chairs - Full Hearts
When you walk into my living room, my collection of empty chairs may catch your eye. These are not my regular furniture, but my collection of small doll-size chairs. There are four wrought iron chairs of varying shapes and sizes and three unique wooden chairs. I have collected these over the years for no particular reason, but recently, I began to wonder why these chairs have become part of my home. What is the attraction for me?
You may recall that during COVID-19, President Biden referred to empty chairs in a message to America: “Today, we mark a tragic milestone: one million American lives lost to COVID-19. One million empty chairs around the dinner table. Each is an irreplaceable loss, leaving behind a family, a community, and a nation forever changed because of this pandemic.”
The empty chair metaphor is not a new concept. Elizabeth A. Topping writes, “Though the concept of a vacant chair predated the Civil War, it took on new meaning as a placeholder for soldiers far from home. Families unable to recover the remains of a father, son, or brother utilized the empty chair. This object could be physically seen, touched, and experienced to come to terms with emptiness, grief, and trauma.” Military Images, a publication dedicated to Civil War photography, notes families often include an empty chair in a photograph to allow the family to incorporate their missing companion.
This mourning observance entered American popular culture in late 1861 when a Massachusetts newspaper, the Worcester Spy, published a poem by Henry Stevenson Washburn titled “The Vacant Chair.” Washburn drew his inspiration from the death of 18-year-old John William “Willie” Grout of the 15th Massachusetts Infantry. Washburn’s poem alluded to the empty chair’s tangible link to the soldier often sitting there. It was later made into a song by George F. Root, often played at veterans’ funerals. The poem reads:
We shall meet, but we shall miss him,
There will be one vacant chair.
We shall linger to caress him,
While we breathe our evening prayer.
According to Mor Peled of The Librarians, “In the 1950s and 1960s, many Jews in Israel and the Diaspora used to commemorate their loved ones who perished in the Holocaust by leaving an empty chair for them at the Seder table. In the 1970s and 1980s, a custom began in the Soviet Union of leaving a chair empty on the Seder Night for the “Prisoners of Zion.” The idea behind the custom was not to forget the Jewish prisoners languishing in Soviet prisons.”
I suppose as I age and my family grows smaller, my collection of chairs begins to take on a new meaning for me. They are no longer just decorative; they are meaningful. Collectively, they represent the many people in my life who are no longer with me. Given their size, it is not a one-to-one relationship - this is my father’s chair and my mother’s chair. No, it is more symbolic.
On some days, my miniature empty chairs represent loss and make me sad, but on others, they remind me of the comfort I once received from the people who used to sit with me. Rather than an empty space, I think of the chair as a place still occupied by the love and memory of the special person who once metaphorically sat on it. Keeping those memories close to my heart means a person can never be forgotten. The person who once sat there may no longer be here in the flesh, but their love can still occupy a significant space in my heart.
As the holidays approach this year, I plan to make my chairs a prominent part of my holiday decorations, filling them with joy, love, and wonderful memories. God did not bless me with a spouse or children, but I am blessed with a big heart that is filled with wonderful friends, my church family, my faith, and my empty chairs full of memories. And nodding to Mr. Dickens, “God bless us, everyone.”
Eileen Brogan