Passover was always Mike’s favorite holiday. For a man who loved food, at first this surprised me, because while the table was lavishly set, there were so many food restrictions, the food was different, and the only thing he ate was meat and potatoes. He said my Passover brownies were better than the ones I made during the year. For me, all the cleaning, shopping and cooking in the weeks leading up to Passover were exhausting, and I would joke that while Passover was the Festival of Freedom, by the time I sat down for the Seder, my head might fall in the soup from weariness.
Mike would come home from work early to help set the table for our family and guests. He would put extenders in our dining room table so that sixteen people could fit around it easily. He set up an assembly line with our kids, pulling the Passover fine china and crystal that once belonged to my parents out of the garage where they were stored all year long, along with other gifts from prior guests that brought back memories. By the time the table was set, it was festive and dazzling and fit for royalty. One place setting was different though; when everyone was seated we deliberately left an empty chair at the table. It was Elijah’s chair. Jewish tradition teaches that Elijah the prophet will be the harbinger of the coming of the Messiah and the world’s redemption. It is a chair of hope. When we sat down to begin telling the story of the going out of Egypt, we raised the matzah, and sang the words “This is the bread of affliction that our ancestors ate in the land of Egypt. Let all who are hungry come and eat. Let all who are in need come celebrate Passover”.
When it came to the story of the four sons, Mike would tell it from his perspective of being one of four boys, always pointing out with a mischievous grin that he was the “wicked son”. At the end of the Seder, when the children would run to the door to open it for Elijah to enter, Mike would then tell the same story year after year about his grandmother in the Old Country and how she opened the door for Elijah to enter, to find a stranger was standing there. They invited him in and he sat in Elijah’s chair, ate, drank, and without saying a word, went on his way. Every year, while our children were at the front door, Mike would tip some of the wine out of Elijah’s cup so that when they came back to the table, the kids would think that Elijah had come like some ghost and taken a sip of wine.
Mike died the day before Passover in 2009 at the age of fifty-five. I insisted on having a Passover Seder the next day for my kids and me. In shock, I did what I knew how to do, trying to keep some normalcy where there was none. When it came to the empty chair, however, now there were two. One for Elijah, and one that none of us could sit in, because it was Mike’s. I’ve since led many a Seder at that table, and two chairs remained empty. Last year, I came home from New York just before Passover, two weeks after the pandemic lockdown had begun. I was alone in the house. I sat at the head of the table in Mike’s chair for the first time. All the other chairs were empty, and in front of me was my laptop, where I could connect with my family through Zoom. The youngest child always asks at the beginning of the Seder, “How is this night different from all other nights?” In 2020, this question was weighted with more meaning. None of us knew what would unfold in the year ahead.
Again this year, I will sit in Mike’s chair, all the other chairs will be empty, and I will again connect with family and my community through Zoom. Every Passover since Mike died, it has been a challenge getting into the spirit of the holiday, not because of exhaustion, but because of that empty chair which reminds me of loss. It has been twelve years now since Mike died, and this year, I know that there are hundreds of thousands of families around the world who will be facing empty chairs. My heart goes out to them, and if I could tell them one thing, it would be that despite the things going on in the world, despite being a Covid long-hauler, I am still here to tell Mike’s stories, and just like Elijah’s empty chair is one of hope, so too my empty chair of loss has transformed into a second chair of hope.