The Weight of an Empty Chair

There are chairs we never move.

Even when the person who sat in them is long gone, even when the fabric starts to fade or the leg wobbles slightly, we keep them right where they are. As if some part of the one we lost is still anchored there, waiting.

For me, it’s the chair on the porch.

My grandfather sat there every evening for as long as I can remember. It was his ritual. He’d pour a cup of strong chai, light a cigarette he rarely finished, and sit in that wooden rocking chair like he was keeping watch over the world.

He wasn’t a man of many words. He didn’t believe in long stories or loud laughter. But in the silence, he said so much. A slow nod. A glance up at the sky. The way he always patted the seat next to him, even when I was too busy or too young to sit.

That chair outlived him. It still creaks at the same rhythm, swaying with the wind, singing a song I now associate with both comfort and loss.

When he passed, I expected grief to come all at once like a flood.

But it didn’t.

It came in waves. Gentle at first, like ripples on a lake. Then sharp, sudden—when I poured tea and instinctively reached for the second cup. Or when I stepped outside at dusk and saw the chair empty.

At first, I avoided it. Couldn’t look at it. Couldn’t bear how still it looked without him in it.

But over time, I began to sit in the chair myself.

Not to replace him—how could I?—but to remember.

To feel the wind on my face like he used to. To watch the sky fade into darkness and think about all the stories he never told. Sometimes, I’d bring my tea, like he used to. Sometimes I’d just sit in silence.

One evening, months after the funeral, I found a letter tucked under the cushion. His handwriting—crooked and careful.

He had written:

“If you’re reading this, you probably sat down. That means something.

You don’t have to become like me. You just have to remember what this chair meant.

A place to rest. A place to think. A place where nothing was expected of you but presence.

Life will keep rushing you. But don’t let it. Sit. Be still. Watch the light change.”

I wept that night. Not the polite kind of crying you do around others, but the deep, gut-level sobbing that makes your shoulders shake.

That letter sits folded in my journal now. I’ve read it dozens of times.

Grief is strange like that. It turns the smallest moments into monuments.

A chair becomes a temple. A cigarette, a memory. A letter, a lifeline.

People tell you to move on. To clean out closets, donate clothes, “let go.” But I’ve come to believe that letting go isn’t about forgetting. It’s about carrying someone differently.

I carry my grandfather in the weight of that chair. In the quiet moments at dusk. In the stillness he taught me to value.

And I think about how many people around the world have a version of that chair. An object left behind. A favorite mug. A garden tool. A scarf still holding the scent of the person now gone.

We’re all haunted in gentle ways.

But it’s not always sad. Sometimes it’s beautiful. Sacred.

Last week, my niece came over. She’s seven, full of curiosity. She ran onto the porch and climbed into the chair, giggling at how it rocked.

I opened my mouth to stop her, then paused.

She looked up and said, “This chair’s cool. Can I sit in it?”

I smiled. “Of course. He would’ve liked that.”

And just like that, I knew it was time to share it again.

The chair will always be his. But maybe it can belong to all of us now too.

A place of memory. Of presence. Of stillness.

We don’t get to keep the people we love forever. But we get pieces of them. In habits. In objects. In chairs left behind.

And sometimes, when we sit still enough, we realize they never really left.