Our Ghost Story

"Every family is a ghost story. The dead sit at our tables long after they have gone." ~ Mitch Albom, For One More Day

My Uncle David had a cough this time a year ago. In less than a month, he would have been diagnosed with cancer and a week later, he would be gone.   Our last family event was Family Thanksgiving 2011.  It was also Uncle David's birthday.  We were together, with Uncle David right in the center of everything.  It all changed after that day.

This year, even in a room full of complete chaos--my mom and her sisters hystarically laughing, me yelling at the football game, the little cousins running around screaming like crazy people--there was a deafening silence.  It came from the absence of the man in the black hat, who was, for the first time ever, not sitting in the corner recliner. 

At dinner on Friday night, Uncle Black Belt introduced us to a military tradition of having an empty char at the table when a man was lost.  And so, there in the midle of the room, sat an empty chair and a black hat.  And Uncle David sat at our table, even though he was gone.

And that won't ever change.  That silence, the ghost story, the missing black hat, will always remain.