Holiday Grief Survival Series: Thanksgiving with a Ghost at the Table
by Shawn Carney for Thin Veil Death Collaborative
There’s always a moment, the pause before everyone sits down, the clatter of dishes as they make their way to the table, when I feel the absence most.
The air fills with familiar smells: roasting herbs, sweet potatoes, the faint metallic note of gravy bubbling on the stove. The same scene unfolds each year: laughter rising from the kitchen, someone calling for the carving knife, the cat waiting hopefully under the chair. But there’s an empty space where my eyes keep landing. A chair, a voice, a rhythm missing from the room’s music.
That’s the thing about grief at holidays like Thanksgiving: it arrives not as a single emotion but as an atmosphere. Everyone else seems to be leaning into gratitude and abundance while your own heart feels tight and uneven, like it’s keeping a different beat.
You can love the people still here and still long for the ones who aren’t. You can laugh over mashed potatoes and still feel your throat catch when someone lifts a glass. Grief and gratitude can share the same table, they just eat from different plates.
For those of us carrying loss, the holidays often ask too much. Gratitude can feel like a performance, one that leaves little room for the truth of longing. The cultural script says to focus on blessings, to count them, to smile for family photos. But sometimes the most honest blessing is to simply name what hurts, to let absence be part of the feast.
If you have a ghost at your table this year, here are a few ways to honor them and yourself:
Name them aloud. Before the meal, you might say something simple: “We miss Chris today.” Or you might raise a glass quietly, a private toast between you and memory. Naming their presence doesn’t dampen the mood; it brings truth into the room.
Leave a place, or a small gesture. A candle beside the serving dishes, a photograph near the pie, a favorite food on a small plate no one touches. These symbols tether love to the moment.
Share stories. Sometimes laughter is the deepest form of remembering. Let the tales be messy, funny, imperfect. The ones we’ve lost deserve the fullness of their humanity, not just reverence.
Give yourself permission to step away. Take a walk, sit outside, or excuse yourself for a breath when it becomes too loud. Grief doesn’t need an audience to be real.
For some, there’s no table at all this year, just quiet, solitude, maybe a takeout meal or a candlelit dinner for one. That, too, is a valid way to gather. Solitude can be its own form of communion.
What’s quietly beautiful is how grief softens the meaning of gratitude. It strips away the performance and leaves the core truth: that love and loss are two sides of the same offering. Gratitude isn’t denial. It’s a way of saying, even this ache is proof that I loved well.
When the plates are cleared and the room quiets, maybe the absence will still hum in the air like a second heartbeat. Maybe that’s the real prayer of the season, that love, even when it changes form, doesn’t stop showing up.
So set your table how you need to. Speak their name or keep it silent. Cook their favorite dish or light their favorite candle. There’s no wrong way to welcome a ghost.
They’ve already found their seat.
