Empty Seats, Full Hearts

Last week we went to dinner with my brother-in-law, niece, and nephew. It was for my sister-in-law’s birthday, her first one since she died. My youngest, Peter Jack, was quiet throughout dinner. I thought it was merely him protesting me making him leave his phone in the car. Later in the evening, when we had returned home and were getting ready for bed, he said, “I really felt an empty seat at the table without Auntie Lois.”

Milestones, dinners, family gatherings, life marching on, and always…empty seats. I feel like I’m finally at an age where I vividly remember family gatherings, laughter, food, people, and when I think about how long ago it was, the amount of time that has passed always shocks me. Decades don’t mean much when you are younger and lack perspective. Now decades seem to fly by. I remember being so excited to host our first Christmas. Our first Christmas was in a house we no longer live in. Many of the people who were there are now gone, either deceased or have drifted out of our lives. The children are grown or nearly grown. More children were born. The mind twist is feeling like it was just yesterday, but knowing it was almost twenty years ago, wondering where the time went and why it is all going so fast.

The days are long, but the years are short.

Later that night after Peter Jack’s sad reflection about empty seats, I woke up in the middle of the night from a dream where I saw Kenneth, but something felt off. It didn’t quite look like him. And then for some reason I was mad at him, and then he got mad at me for being mad at him, and I woke up feeling startled, upset, desperately trying to go back to the dream that felt so real to find out what happened. I lay in the darkness, unable to fall back asleep, alone with my nagging thoughts, wondering if Lois’ birthday dinner triggered thoughts of Kenneth. Her absence has certainly magnified his absence. For a fleeting moment, I thought about how nice it would be if Lois could give my husband an update about us—that Ethan is getting tall and likes Magic the Gathering like he did, or how Eloise grew up to be athletic and creative, and our baby, the one he never heard talk, has a wild spirit and a loving heart.

But you don’t believe in that, I reminded myself.

But it sure would be cool, I thought, the conversation unfolding in my mind.

It occurred to me that we are already not the same people since my sister-in-law passed away, so any reports she could have given him would be outdated anyway. A sobering thought.

Still, we yearn for that connection.

What would she say to him?

What would he say back?

What would I want him to know?

Would he be proud of the people we are today?

I finally had to get out of bed and start the day, and the thoughts of talking to the dead dissipated into the aggressive forward ticking of time.

Empty seats at the table. Missed milestones. Growing into people who were not the same people your deceased loved ones knew, in a life you no longer share. Feeling their invisible presence, and simultaneously feeling their physical absence.

Peter Jack recently asked what exactly happened to his dad. I pulled up pictures of an aorta online, pointing to the ascending part of it, and then clicking through pictures of an ascending aortic aneurysm. He said quietly, “I think I’ve lost my appetite.” I recognize that his process is delayed because of his age, but he is in the stage of trying to make it make sense. Sometimes, it never makes sense.

A few days later, I woke up from sleep agitated again. I had a dream that I shared custody with Kenneth, and I had to keep dealing with his new wife over child logistics. She was nice enough, but he wasn’t warm toward me. I realized that the son we were sharing wasn’t a kid I recognized. Somehow I ended up in this alternate reality, with a kid I didn’t know, a husband who no longer loved me, and a stepmom in my business. Kenneth handed me tickets they he was apparently not going to use. I looked at the name he wrote in a ledger, in his handwriting: my maiden name. Like we were never married. I got more agitated. And when the woman tried to talk to me about kid details, I remember feeling confused— who is she? Why is she talking to me about my kid? Who is this kid? Why is my husband so distant toward me?

Two Kenneth dreams in one week. That almost never happens. And both dreams agitated me.

I went out for a run before meeting my family for my mom’s birthday breakfast. I thought about the weird dreams while I ran. Running has always been a great way to sweat and think. Maybe the dreams were trying to convey something to me. Maybe I’m looking at empty seats, but we’re not in that storyline anymore. The storyline threads are infinite; the one I knew in that previous life is over. I don’t need to search for anything. There are no messages that need to be conveyed. I just need to focus on the one right now. My story as it unfolds.

That’s when it came to me.

It’s difficult, but we have this impossible task of holding space for the invisible force of a legacy that will always reside inside of us—people and the previous lives we will always love and sometimes yearn for— while simultaneously continuing our journey into new terrain. That’s a lot of juggling, especially in the early rawness of grief and pain. It can be scary. Sometimes it feels heavy even when we think grief should be cleared out of our system by now, when enough time has passed that others may even think you have forgotten, or should have forgotten. It reminds me that we all carry invisible baggage. I need to be kinder and patient with others. If they are anything like me, they are schlepping a load up a steep mountain just trying to survive and thrive.

It’s a tall order, but we have to make sure we don’t lose our perspective, that we keep a balance of heart, mind, and soul despite the empty seats. That we stay open to seeing new seats and new people, more opportunities, to joyfully let ourselves live new storylines without guilt or sadness, to loosen our grips on the baggage we carry, and to keep our minds open to the causes and conditions that will present themselves over time.

Somehow Kenneth’s death led me to pursuing Buddhism, and he left me with his sect that focuses on gratitude. Zen Buddhists meditate and seek enlightenment, Shin Buddhists seek to be more grateful. Rev. Dr. Kenji Akahoshi describes the practice as one of gratitude for everything we’ve received to balance our desire for what we don’t have. It’s really a helpful way of thinking. I can fall into bottomless pits of wallowing in what I don’t have or what I have lost. But I’ve received so much in my lifetime. I have so much. It’s easy to lose sight of that. Gratitude has a way of finding our center within.

One of my fondest core memories of Girl Scouts as a child was our Girl Scouts Olympics day. I remember a relay race where you pass the baton. I think life is like that. I got handed a magical baton to be alive, and while it’s in my hands, I want to run like hell toward the things that bring me joy and meaning, knowing that passing the baton is just as important as holding the baton, and knowing that one day my race will be over. Interdependence. Impermanence. Gratitude for being a part of this life. I need to be fully present in this experience while I still can.

Recently I had a meeting for my oldest son. One of the adults commented that he is a very present person at school. He’s not on his phone in class, ever. He loves to learn. He’s curious. He participates. My mom brain wants to gravitate toward the things that he needs to improve. I sat there thinking: my gosh. I fixate on my complaints, but how rare is it to have a teenager who is “present.” I thought about his dad. How I wished he could see this almost-grown man child of ours. How much Ethan is like him.

Then I remembered: the greatest way to honor our loved ones and stay connected to them is in how we live right now. They gave us a gift, and we get to carry that baton forward.

I went to work last week and arrived to find that someone was parked in my assigned spot again. I was seething. This keeps happening. The powers that be haven’t been able to stop it, while simultaneously forcing us (for the first time in my almost 20 years working there) to have assigned spots this year. You know, bureaucracy. Rules. Dealing with humans. People not following rules. I had a student meeting to get to and a million things to do that morning. Mornings are not my best time. Almost nine years of solo parenting, and I still haven’t perfected the art of doing it all by myself in the morning. I can’t stand the rat race, packing lunches, making breakfast, rushing kids out of the house, doing drop offs, inevitably dropping balls in the process. A car parked in my spot may seem like no big deal, but for me it was salt in the morning wound.

I was in a sour mood. But when I got to my classroom and had the meeting, the student was a kind, interesting person who happened to bring me a gift for the holidays. Then, another student—someone who I didn’t know—came in to talk to me. The student wanted to know if we had information about Social Justice Day yet. This might be a teacher thing, but when a student is interested in something we are doing in an ocean of apathy, the joy is indescribable. They give us the gift of hope, and even a drop of it is enough to fuel our teacher souls for a while. It’s like magic! It was my second gift of the morning, and I had only been there for 20 minutes. Then, I opened my door for first period, and a student commented that the color of my jacket (the first time I wore it) really suited me, and she said it so genuinely that I actually felt good about myself. Three gifts in less than half an hour! And to think I was in a sour mood. I felt guilty that I let my mood blow out of proportion, only to have it dissipate so quickly, making me realize that I got upset over things that don’t really matter. It was all silly.

I completely forgot how mad I was about the parking spot.

But here it is Monday, and I was unbelievably stressed out again this morning trying to get my kids out the door, make it on time, carry the weight of so many different things on my shoulders, and that’s not even counting holiday grief, which those of us with empty seats will surely experience during this season whether we know it or not.

I already forgot the lessons of last week. I’m a fool.

I get mad at myself. What happened to the gratitude? Why did I forget again? Why couldn’t I let go? How did I end up back at square one? What’s wrong with me?

I think the practice of gratitude doesn’t mean we are always happy-go-lucky thankful, positive people. I think it’s more of a course correction. When we start veering too far into the lane of what we don’t have, we make a correction and remember what we do have and get back in our lane. It’s part of the journey, and it is the cost of being human. The goal is to stay centered, but to do so requires negative feelings for us to navigate. I’ve got a lot of work to do, but perhaps this is half the battle: recognizing when we are off course.

Yesterday at Sunday service, Rev. Marvin Harada spoke. He’s currently our Bishop of the Buddhist Churches of America. He was the resident minister at our temple for over 30 years, so he is the only one left who knew my in-laws. He presided over my husband’s funeral and my father-in-law’s funeral, and it was listening to his talks that drew me into Buddhism in the throes of my grief. It’s always a special treat to have him visit. He talked about the Wizard of Oz, and how it related to Buddhism. One thing he said stuck with me: “the destination is attached to the path. It’s not separate.”

It’s so strange how our minds want to put things in boxes. Here and there. We crave certainty. We mistakenly assume people and things will stay in our lives forever; we neglect the impermanence of life. We look for magic bullets to solve our problems, seeking wizards to give us answers. We take impermanence as signs that our life has been derailed, rather than innately embracing these challenges as part of the journey. The destination is attached to the path. This is the destination: the here and now. Yet, we are so often led astray as to what really matters. We want to put our eyes on a faraway prize when this is the prize.

As we close out another year, I think about what I want for next year. How I want to grow and get better. Things to take on, what to let go. I want to work on my journey skills. Less complaining, more strategizing. More perspective when times get hard. More thank you. Eliminating what does not work, staying away from people and things that derail my efforts, moving toward what brings me joy. Being present, savoring right now. Knowing and protecting my priorities. Taking advantage of every opportunity as I live the best storyline possible, understanding that all storylines have a beginning and end, and all we are guaranteed is right now.

I hope everyone has a wonderful holiday season and a very Happy New Year, from my family to yours. I am grateful for you all.