At the end of October, in many parts of the world, people set a place at the table for someone who will not come.
A plate. A cup. Sometimes a favourite food, a photograph, a candle in the window so the way home is lit. In Mexico, families build ofrendas for the Day of the Dead, with marigolds and bread and the things their loved ones liked. In old Celtic traditions, Samhain marked the turn into the dark half of the year, when the dead were thought to walk close by and were welcomed rather than feared. In countless ordinary homes, someone simply leaves the light on.
I find this one of the most tender things human beings do.
Grief in our time can be oddly lonely. After the funeral, the casseroles stop. People assume you are getting on with it. The calendar fills again. And then one evening you hear a song on the radio or smell a particular soap in a shop, and you are undone in the cereal aisle, and there is nowhere to put it.
Older cultures seem to have understood that grief needs somewhere to go. Not once, but again and again. A day in the year. A place at the table. A ritual that says: you are still part of us.
Psychologists have tested something close to this. Norton and Gino (2014) asked people to recall a significant loss, such as the death of a loved one or the end of a relationship, and to describe either a ritual they had performed afterwards or simply the loss itself. Those who wrote about performing a ritual reported less grief. In further experiments involving smaller, laboratory-created losses, people who performed a brief ritual afterwards reported less grief than those who did not, and the researchers found that the rituals seemed to work partly by restoring a sense of control. These are not deathbed studies, and no ritual takes away the absence. But they suggest that doing something deliberate with grief can help us carry it. Norton & Gino (2014)
I like that the rituals in these studies were often very simple. Writing a letter. Visiting a place. Playing a song. The size did not seem to matter as much as the doing.
Setting a place at the table is one of the oldest and simplest of these.
It does not need a belief system. You do not have to think the dead will eat the bread. You only have to want, for one evening, to make room for someone who is no longer in the room. A plate where they would have sat. A candle. Perhaps their favourite thing to eat, or a cup of the tea they always made too strong. A few minutes in which you allow yourself to miss them on purpose, instead of being ambushed in the supermarket.
Some people speak to the empty chair. Some sit quietly. Some laugh at a memory and then cry and then laugh again. Some write a letter and leave it under the plate.
The grief may come up. That is part of it. But it comes up into a space you have made for it, at a time you have chosen, with a candle burning. It is held instead of hidden.
And afterwards, when you clear the plate away, there is a strange lightness. Not because they are gone, but because for an evening you let them be here.
This year, as the veil thins and the nights draw in, you might set a place at your table. For a grandmother, a friend, a child, a parent, a version of yourself that did not get to live. For anyone you miss.
They are still part of the family. Let the table say so.
Ritual Invitation
On one evening this week, set an extra place at your table: a plate, a cup, a candle. Add something they loved if you can. Sit with it for a few minutes before or during your meal. Say their name aloud, or write a short letter and leave it under the plate. When you clear the place away, blow out the candle slowly and say thank you.
Your Turn
Who would you set a place for this year?
What did they love that you could put on the table?
Keep the Thread
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References
Norton, M. I., & Gino, F. (2014). Rituals alleviate grieving for loved ones, lovers, and lotteries. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 143(1), 266–272. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0033211
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