Someone Is Missing From the Table This Christmas

Learning to live alongside grief during the holidays

For those of us who have someone we love missing from our tables this Christmas.

This is the second Christmas since my mum passed away and, if I'm completely honest, I have deliberately chosen avoidance.

I've done something completely outside of our usual Christmas tradition and jetted off to Dubai with my dad, spending some time with friends over here.

Because I knew my heart wasn't ready to do Christmas at home without her.

Last Christmas — our first without Mum — was nothing short of excruciating.

And yet, somehow, she had left us one final gift.

Mum's last Christmas dinner

Let me go back a little.

After my mum passed away in September 2021, we began joining together little pieces of information she'd left behind.

Things she'd said.

Things she'd done.

Hints none of us had fully understood at the time.

We eventually realised that Mum had known for several months that she was seriously unwell and potentially didn't have long left due to multiple heart problems and heart failure.

And in true Mum fashion, she'd thought about everything.

She planned her funeral.

The songs.

The scriptures.

The poems.

Who she wanted doing what.

She even left specific instructions that I was to make sure her makeup was done!

That was Mum.

So when my gran casually mentioned that Mum had come round before she died and put some meat in her freezer for Christmas, we couldn't quite believe it.

Surely she couldn't have thought that far ahead?

She had.

My mum had bought duck — our favourite Christmas meat — seasoned it and put it in my gran's freezer.

She knew there was a possibility that we would face Christmas without her.

And somehow, in the middle of everything she must have been thinking, feeling and coming to terms with herself, she was still thinking about us.

Food was one of the ways Mum loved us.

So she left us one final meal.

We called it “Mum's last supper.”

I remember the anticipation of cooking it.

Then the oven beeped.

We lifted the foil and watched the steam slowly rise.

And everything seemed to stop.

There it was.

The last meal my mum would ever prepare for us.

We stood there crying, smiling, overwhelmed with gratitude, grief, love and disbelief all at once.

It was strangely sacred.

For a moment, she felt incredibly close.

And perhaps that's why our first Christmas without her was somehow survivable.

Mum had still found a way to be at the table.

The second Christmas feels different

This year, there's no duck waiting in the freezer.

No final surprise.

No tangible piece of Mum waiting for us at Christmas.

There are memories.

And somehow that has made this Christmas feel different.

The reality of her absence has settled more deeply.

She's missing from the meals.

The birthdays.

The celebrations.

The milestones.

The ordinary Tuesdays.

All the moments when something happens and, instinctively, you still think:

I need to tell Mum.

That's something grief has taught me.

The firsts are incredibly painful.

But grief doesn't necessarily become easier simply because you've survived them.

Sometimes the permanence of loss becomes clearer with time.

I had to learn a life I didn't choose

My mum's death was sudden from my perspective.

One minute I was sitting with her in the living room watching television.

Then she was gone.

I wasn't given time to prepare my heart for what life without her would look like.

I was simply thrown into it.

And day by day — sometimes minute by minute — I had to begin figuring out how to live without the woman who gave me life.

There are countless books, theories, models and resources about grief.

Some can be incredibly helpful.

But one of the most important things I've learned is:

Nobody is an expert on your grief.

Because nobody had my relationship with my mum.

Nobody saw her through my eyes.

Nobody experienced what happened through my body.

Nobody lost exactly what I lost when she died.

And the same is true for you.

Two people can lose the same person and experience completely different grief because we don't simply grieve a person — we grieve our relationship with them.

We grieve who they were to us.

The conversations.

The routines.

The roles they played.

The future we expected to have with them.

The parts of ourselves that existed in relationship with them.

Grief can be incredibly lonely for that reason, even when we're surrounded by people who love us.

I didn't just lose my mum

Mum filled so many spaces in my life.

She was my mum.

My best friend.

My shopping partner.

My decorating partner.

My cooking partner.

My Pastor.

My Co-P.

And, because I liked winding her up, my Auntie Carol.

There wasn't a day that went by without us speaking or checking in with each other.

So her death didn't leave one empty space.

It left many.

That's another thing I've come to understand about grief.

Sometimes we're not grieving one loss.

We're grieving all the little secondary losses that came with it.

The person you called.

The person sitting beside you.

The traditions.

The advice.

The jokes.

The role they played in the family.

The version of life that existed when they were still here.

This year, I couldn't sit at the table

I knew what Christmas at home would mean.

Sitting around the table and seeing the chair where she should have been.

Being in the kitchen without my tag-team partner the woman I'd been washing and seasoning Christmas meat alongside for as far back as I can remember.

Not hearing her slippers slapping against the floor as she wandered between the kitchen and dining room.

Not hearing that ridiculously high-pitched screech when she gave my brother six-love in dominoes like she did every year.

I knew myself well enough to know:

I wasn't ready.

So I left.

And I want to say something about that because sometimes we put enormous pressure on grieving people to maintain traditions.

You don't have to.

You are allowed to do Christmas differently.

You can go away.

You can stay home.

You can cook the usual dinner.

You can order a takeaway.

You can talk about them all day.

You can decide you don't want to talk about them at all.

You can participate in everything.

You can leave early.

There isn't a correct way to grieve Christmas.

Of course, grief came to Dubai too

Changing my surroundings didn't mean escaping my grief.

Unfortunately, grief doesn't need a passport.

It came with me.

But being somewhere different removed some of the familiar triggers and gave me breathing room.

And perhaps that's how I'd describe what I've been learning.

Not how to control grief.

Not how to defeat it.

Not even how to leave it behind.

But how to make room for grief without allowing it to become the only thing in the room.

I've had to learn to be gracious with myself.

To loosen some of the expectations I place on myself.

To enjoy moments without feeling guilty because the person I desperately want to share them with isn't here.

To understand that laughing doesn't mean I've stopped grieving.

Travelling doesn't mean I've moved on.

Having a good day doesn't mean I miss her less.

And crying doesn't mean I've gone backwards.

I can be grateful for the life and people I still have while being absolutely heartbroken about the person who isn't here.

Both can be true.

Grief is love with somewhere different to go

There's a thought I've carried with me:

My grief is an expression of my love, and my love is what gives my grief its weight.

The goal, then, isn't to deny the grief.

Because I would never want to deny the love.

Instead, I'm learning to notice when grief arrives.

To acknowledge it.

To give it space.

And then, when I'm able, continue living alongside it.

Some days I do that better than others.

And that's okay.

For whoever is missing from your table

Christmas is often presented as the happiest time of the year.

For some people, it is.

For others, Christmas simply makes the empty chair more visible.

So if someone you love is missing from your table this year, I don't have a perfect Christmas message that will make that hurt disappear.

I wouldn't insult your grief by pretending I do.

But I do want you to know:

I see you.

Give yourself permission to experience this season however you need to.

Change traditions if you need to.

Keep them if they bring comfort.

Say their name.

Tell their stories.

Cry.

Laugh.

Remember.

Step away when it becomes too much.

And don't feel guilty for experiencing moments of joy.

We may not understand the specifics of each other's grief, but we're connected by something incredibly human:

We know what it is to love someone who is no longer physically here.

I will forever miss my mum.

I will forever cherish the role she played in my life.

There will always be moments when her absence hurts.

But one of my deepest hopes — for myself and for anybody navigating life after loss — is that eventually we discover that continuing to live doesn't mean leaving them behind.

Perhaps it's learning how to carry their love forward while allowing our own lives to continue unfolding.

Not simply surviving life after loss.

But, slowly and in our own way, learning how to live alongside it.

To Mum, and to Ashley, one of my closest friends:

I love you. I miss you.

Rest in His eternal peace.

With love, Chaz'ara x