The Empty Chair

THE EMPTY CHAIR

           A grotesque scream erupted from the heap on the floor. It took a moment to realize the heap was me. No parent should ever have to write their child’s eulogy. That kind of pain doesn’t politely knock; it breaks the door off the hinges and walks in like it owns the place.

           People love to offer small fortune-cookie philosophies in grief. “It’s not the destination; it’s the journey,” someone said to me. Well… sure. Except when the journey is a culvert of sorrow and you’re stuck sideways.

           I had a dream soon after Chris died. I was wedged tight inside a cement culvert—the claustrophobic, nauseating kind where you suddenly remember every medical show you’ve ever watched. Chris lay at the far end, close enough to see his expression; he called out, “Move forward, Mom. Just move forward.” He always did have a way of simplifying things I was determined to complicate.

           Chris drowned in a rip tide in Panama on a Thanksgiving visit. The news hit like a sucker punch to the gut combined with the sudden removal of my heart. People say bizarre things to the grieving—sentences that sound like they were grabbed at random off a dusty, apathetic calendar. I don’t remember most of them, but one person said, “God knows what it’s like to lose a Son.” That one felt honest. That one I could hold.

           The next two years passed in a blur as I tried with his father to settle his considerable estate without a will. When the court finally accepted the last of the paperwork, my entire body collapsed again, this time into a grief-soaked pile on the floor. That led to a seventeen-day psych-ward stay and four months of daily medical care. During that time, I lost fifty pounds, not because of any glamorous diet trend, but because I forgot how to eat and sleep. I fell several times a day, ricocheting off furniture like a pinball with poor aim. I ended up in the ER often enough to earn a parking spot with my name on it, VIP visitor, and when we walked in, everyone cheered, “Hey guys, Linda’s here".

           My memory vanished. My handwriting looked like primitive scratches by someone in a moving vehicle. One day in the psych ward, they handed me a crayon (pens and pencils are a no-go because apparently someone could get stabbed in the eye), and I tried to draw a star. My brain simply shrugged. No instructions available. Come back later.

           The neurologist began three months of testing: CT scans, MRIs, nerve studies, a spinal tap, and a full gallon of refrigerated urine that looked suspiciously like Texas sweet tea. I warned James not to drink it. All the tests came back normal. At the follow-up, the neurologist asked, “Have you been under any stress lately?” That was the moment I melted like a snowman in July. This whole ordeal nearly cost me my life and my marriage. James stayed steady and stubborn in his covenant with God. I’m certain I would not be here if he hadn’t.

           But even in the darkness, God sent gifts.

           One afternoon, sitting in my red folding chair in the backyard, I watched a giant iridescent bubble float across the lawn. No children were outside blowing bubbles, no bottles of soap lying around. The bubble drifted up and down, nearly grazing the grass but never bursting. I watched it glide away, whispering some strange invitation to stay afloat myself.

           A butterfly landed on my leg, brushing me with a tiny promise: you’ll make it through this, too.

           A white grocery bag danced across the yard like it had momentary aspirations of becoming performance art. Lucy’s drifting fur floated past like a fleet of miniature clouds.

And the dandelions. Chris had given me my first bouquet of them when he was two, sweaty and proud, fat dirty little hand presenting the “flowers” as if they had been imported from Paris. One day, long after he was gone, I counted over a hundred dandelions in the backyard. I stood there crying, feeling like he had handed me that bouquet all over again. Other people see weeds. We saw wishes.

Other unexpected gift appeared too. At Walmart, in the tiny travel-item aisle where all dignity goes to die, I heard a desperate little voice plead, “Can I PLEASE get out of here now?” His mother, clearly negotiating for her sanity, said yes. The boy hopped out of the basket and sprinted straight to me. “I’m having a Spidey Man birthday party, and you’re invited!”

“Well,” I said, matching his enthusiasm, “Isn’t Spidey Man just the best?”

“I’m going to be FIVE,” he announced, chest out. After a minute of delightful chatter, he turned to go back to his mother, then paused. “Can I give you a hug?”

“If it’s OK with your mother.” She nodded.

He wrapped his arms around my neck and gave me the best five-year-old-Chris hug I’d had in decades. I cried all the way to the car. Sometimes a child delivers a message God knows you’re too tired to miss. Sometimes you just need a hug.

Chris was brilliant. Duke University courted him in 7th grade. While other kids were learning how to throw a football, he was off at science and math camps. One night in high school, I asked, “Whatcha doin’?” Trigonometry, he said, as casually as if he’d said brushing my teeth. I asked him to explain it. Three sentences in, I interrupted: “Hon, you’ve already lost me. Let’s talk about literally anything else.”

He was responsible in every way except for the one that would’ve saved me and his father years of legal acrobatics: he forgot to write a will. It took twenty-eight months to resolve everything. When the final papers were filed, I fell apart again and ended up back in the psych ward. I had held off grief for too long, laser-focused on paperwork instead of pain.

Chris always had plans A, B, and C. In seventh grade, he could have accepted a full-ride academic scholarship to an Ivy League school. By high-school graduation, he had letters of recommendation from state senators to the Air Force Academy. So, I finally asked in December, “Why haven’t you submitted your college applications? You’re running out of time.”

He calmly replied, “I joined the Navy.”

“You WHAT?”

When he was twelve, he announced he wanted to be a doctor. When I asked what kind, he said, “A podiatrist.” I asked why he wanted to spend his life smelling feet. He shrugged. “They make a lot of money.” The boy had done his research.

Plan A: the Navy.

Plan B: use the GI Bill for nursing school.

Plan C: medical school.

But before he reached Plan C, he fell in love with nursing. He became an RN Specialist in Cardiac Care, guiding surgeons through intricate procedures. Only three people in the state could do what he did. One was ours. He made great money, lived in an expensive home, and inherited his mother’s gift for picking out the priciest item in any store. And yes—he had investments, a 401K, savings, and life insurance. Just… still no will.

Through it all, God used me—even in the psych ward. Even when I couldn’t remember how to draw a star. Even when my heart had been shattered into something that didn’t look rebuildable. God doesn’t wait until we’re polished; He works beautifully with what’s cracked.

I am grateful for the 44 years Chris was in my life. I miss him every day. At the end of his eulogy, I said, “I will see him in every sunrise, sunset, and the brightest star in the sky.” Every night, I sit in the backyard and look for that brightest star, certain he’s smiling back. Sometimes, if I’m lucky, he even twinkles. I smile.

The Bow at the End

Looking back, I see now that grief didn’t break me in half so much as peel me open. It forced everything loud and fragile to the surface, where God could get a better grip on me. I used to think faith was mostly about being strong, the kind of woman who could quote Scripture while stirring chili and paying bills on time. Instead, I learned faith is a bit more like learning to walk again after your legs forget how. Wobbly, humbling, occasionally involving a helmet.

I didn’t rise from the ashes in one triumphant swoop like a Phoenix rising from the ashes. I rose in increments: one butterfly, one bubble, one miraculous grocery store hug at a time. God didn’t hand me answers. He handed me breadcrumbs. And somehow, I kept following them.

For a long while, I thought healing meant going back to “normal.” But normal was gone. What came instead was something quieter, wiser, more spacious. I discovered there’s a kind of holiness in simply staying alive. In feeding the dog. In watching the sky bruise into evening. In finding the brightest star and whispering, “There you are.”

Every sunrise now feels like a small sermon God preaches without words. Every sunset feels like a reminder that endings don’t get the last say. And every night, when the star flares brighter than the rest, I feel Chris close—not in a way that hurts, but in a way that feels like a nod from heaven.

I’m still learning how to live with both sorrow and joy sitting at opposite ends of the same dinner table, passing the salt to each other. But I’m here. I’m loved. And I’m held by a God who specializes in turning shattered pieces into stained glass.

That is the bow at the end of this chapter: not tidy, not perfect, but tied by someone who knows how to keep me together.

Normal life never returned, but something sturdier took its place. A version of me who knows the sacredness of dog hair drifting through sunlight, who recognizes that sitting in the backyard staring at the brightest star is, in fact, a spiritual practice. Who finally understands that broken hearts don’t stay broken; they just change shape.

And here’s the quiet punchline: God held the whole thing together while I was convinced it was all falling apart. I kept thinking I was the one tying the bow at the end of this chapter, but truly, God was behind me the entire time, straightening it, tightening it, and whispering, “Close enough.”

So here it is. The bow. A little crooked, slightly frayed, but absolutely holding.