The Empty Chair
Learning to carry loss without carrying it alone.
One day you're talking about raising children.
The next, you're standing around hospital beds, funeral homes, and gravesides.
There comes a point in a man's life when the empty chairs begin to multiply.
A father.
A mother.
A brother.
A friend.
That's not pessimism.
That's reality.
In the last month alone, two men I care about have lost a parent. This month marks one year since I lost my father. And it seems like all of us are beginning to realize we're entering a different season of life.
The temptation during loss is rarely the loss itself.
It's what follows.
Regret.
Remorse.
The endless replaying of conversations.
The "I should have called more."
"I should have visited more."
"I should have said more."
We start trying to renegotiate history with people who are no longer here to negotiate with.
Ecclesiastes reminds us that there is "a time to weep and a time to laugh, a time to mourn and a time to dance." Grief isn't a sign that something is wrong. Grief is proof that something mattered.
But grief becomes dangerous when we isolate with it.
Men have a habit of disappearing when they're hurting.
We retreat into work.
We withdraw from community.
We numb ourselves with distractions.
We tell ourselves we're fine because we don't want to burden anyone else.
Yet Scripture paints a different picture.
"Carry one another's burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ." — Galatians 6:2
The answer to loss is not pretending we're strong enough to carry it alone.
The answer is brotherhood.
It's answering the phone.
Showing up to the men's group.
Taking the walk.
Having the hard conversation.
Sitting with another man who understands that some wounds aren't fixed—they're carried.
The goal isn't to forget those we've lost.
The goal is to honor them by continuing to live.
To keep loving our families.
To keep serving.
To keep laughing.
To keep showing up.
The people we miss most would rarely want us trapped in a prison of "what could have been."
Most would want us to take what they gave us and invest it into the people still sitting at our table.
There will always be an empty chair.
But there are still chairs that aren't empty.
Don't miss the people who are still here while mourning the ones who are not.
That's how grief matures into gratitude.
That's how loss becomes legacy.
And that's how men endure the seasons that eventually come for all of us.
