The Empty Chairs
The chapel felt colder than it should have. November had arrived with its usual sharp teeth, but the chill I felt that morning had nothing to do with the weather. I stood in the doorway watching the funeral director arrange white lilies around George’s mahogany casket, their perfume too sweet, too insistent, as if trying to mask something death itself couldn’t hide.
“Mrs. Holloway?” His voice was gentle, practiced. “We can wait a few more minutes if you’d like.
Sometimes people run a bit late.”
I glanced at the rows of empty chairs stretching behind me like an accusation. Twenty-four seats, polished oak, cushioned in deep burgundy. Not a single body filled them.
Not our son Peter. Not our daughter Celia. Not one grandchild.
Just me in my black dress that George always said made my eyes look like storm clouds, standing alone while the wind rattled the stained-glass windows. “No,” I said, my voice steadier than I felt. “Start the service.
George hated tardiness.”
Even in his final weeks, when the cancer had hollowed him out until he was more shadow than substance, he’d insisted on routine. Pills at eight sharp. The evening news at six.
Slippers placed side by side before bed, as if order could somehow hold back the chaos of dying. He was a man built on structure, on dignity, on showing up when you said you would. Our children had learned none of these things.
The pastor—a young man I’d never met before, hired by the funeral home—delivered his eulogy with the enthusiasm of someone reading a phone book. Generic platitudes about eternal rest and loving memories floated past me like smoke. I wanted to stand up and tell him the truth: that George Holloway had built three houses with his own hands, that he could identify any bird by its call, that he cried watching old war movies but never at funerals, that he made me laugh even when I didn’t want to, especially when I didn’t want to.
Instead, I sat still, hands folded in my lap, while this stranger talked about a man he’d never known to an audience that didn’t exist. The morning had started with a text from Peter. Not a call—a text.
Seven words that felt like a slap: “Sorry, Mom. Something came up. Can’t make it.”
No explanation.
No apology that held weight. Just a digital shrug from the son who’d once fallen asleep in George’s lap while his father read him adventure stories, George’s deep voice turning dragons into friends and oceans into playgrounds. I’d stared at those seven words for a full minute before checking Celia’s Instagram.
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